One topic I wanted to bring up for a long time with some professionals in brass playing, is the lack of training literature for amateurs. And if I say "amateur" I am not talking about people spending all their free time practicing but about people that have 15-30 minutes a day (in average) to spend on training (next to other hobbies, family life and a 12-hour shift).
There are many great books available – such as brass gym, arban study books and similar, but they are great only for absolute enthusiasts, professionals or at least semi-professionals or music students at the university. For amateurs playing in a community band – such as myself, they are useless or even frustrating. Why? They ask for far too much time! This is true for all “daily routine” books I found so far. It takes at least a couple of hours, just to get through the basic exercises. As a result, most hobby musicians I know neglect any basic training and by that make no progress – which would be possible I am convinced, also with very limited time.
With 15-30 minutes a day, no-one will become a second Steven Mead but it should be enough to produce a decent sound and provide musical entertainment that is fun to listen too, i.e. play medium level literature without hurting anyone (ok, for a non-professional audience ;-)
So what am I looking for? It would be a great help to have a book with a comprehensive weekly routine based on 15-30 minutes a day and a medium difficulty level, e.g. do not waste paper on exercises with 32nds or triple-tonguing. Perhaps it could even have a modular build to allow for different amounts of time (from 10 minutes up to perhaps 1 hour max) and it should also contain some basic songs that are fun to play (for all the guys that play 2nd and 3rd and don't ever use their high register in rehearsals).
I could try and compile something like this by myself but to name only two issues with that:
- I would have to buy a lot of literature, I could never use – e.g. I will never be able to play at least half of the exercises in the Arban Study Book I have or from the “Brass Gym” book I bought
- I lack the know-how about what exercises would be more important or most efficient.
Why should someone write a book like that? I do not know, how this is in the UK or US but in Switzerland the standard "musical career" of an amateur looks like this: 3-6 years individual lessons with a music teacher starting with age ~8-10 (or training just with an enthusiastic amateur) -> playing in a youth band until the age of 18-20 -> after that, playing in a community band (ideally until the end of one's life ;-). Currently, there are approx. 72'000 amateurs registered within the Swiss Windband association, of which probably ~80% belong to the category of amateurs described above. ~50% of these amateurs playing a brass instrument would result in >28’000 potential happy customers in Switzerland alone. As chairman of our community band, I would not hesitate buying something like that for all our members and I am sure, many of my colleagues would feel the same. So there should be quite some market potential for such an "amateur training" book as I am quite sure, there is a similar musical culture also in Germany and perhaps France.
Perhaps there is already something like this available. In this case, please let me know.
Regards
Marco