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  • It’s official. I have a site of my own! I hope you enjoy what you see and read. I’ll be introducing you to the band for which I am Musical Director, and what I do in the music business.

Making It Through a Hard Time

We are facing a rough road for awhile with  COVID-19. Those of us in the arts are hurting because we’ve lost work:  gigs, pit work, and face-to-face teaching. We don’t get paid for being sick, cancelled gigs or theatre work, or collect unemployment. We are on our own, if what we do is perform for our supper.

In order to keep somewhat of a flow of income during this tough time, many of us are turning to temporarily teaching online. I, for one, am techno challenged, but this has been a positive thing, because it has forced me into the 21st Century to learn some of the new technology that’s available to us.

So, I will be teaching online for the net few weeks. Who knows maybe this could be a new step to teaching folks around the world, or mentoring them.

The platform I’ve chosen for this new journey is Zoom. It’s free and easy to use for a one-on-one lesson, and if you want do master classes, there’s a fee, but you can have up to 100 people in them.  If you do those all the time, I’m sure the fee is well worth it, but it’s a bit pricey for me right now.

Zoom has some things you have to work out so you can use its bells and whistles, and I still need to learn them, but for now, it’s getting me started.  I like simple and it’s free and easy to use. It works well with the built-in mic and camera on my MacBook Air, so that’s good. I tried it out with a student and his mom last night, and it went really well. I’m still learning how to do online lessons, so bear with me. This is all new to me. But: Win!

So if you’re interested in online lessons and we can work out a time, join me online. I take PayPal before we can begin the lesson, so contact me for more information at: beboplinda@gmail.com

Best wishes to everyone in this new trying time we’ve never experienced before in our lifetime. And let’s hope it doesn’t last long.

My First Method Book Is Finally Published!

Welcome to the new year of 2023! After 50 years of teaching private lessons and performing as a professional trombonist in many different settings, I have finally written a method book that is accessible by beginners as well as professional trombone players. The book is entitled: FLOW STUDIES AND MORE FOR TROMBONE and contains lots of tips on how to be a better musician, become aware of how the aging process affects us as trombone players, care for your best friend, but most of all, improve the forward flow of air to improve your trombone playing.

At the beginning of the COVID crisis I took a well deserved break from playing for a short time. I was also caring for my aging parent who passed last year. But because we were shut down, isolated from our colleagues, and prevented from working outside our homes, I spent a lot of time working on aspects of my own playing that had been overlooked for too long. I also played short tunes and posted them on my Facebook page for my friends to enjoy since we were so isolated from one another. That helped to put smiles on my friends faces and keep us connected in a positive way.

The result of my time during the shut down of 2020 has resulted in a method book filled with lots of exercises that have worked for me and my students over the years, and some I created over the shutdown that work as an alternative to mouthpiece buzzing and long tones. Since we all don’t benefit from the same medicines or exercises, nor do we wear the same size shoes, we all need something we can turn to, to at least try, and maybe stumble upon the answer we’ve been seeking that works for our chops.

I hope you’ll purchase my book and try the exercises, but above all, read the text. So many books on the market contain very little if any instructions on how to play the exercises or use the book. When I bought a Caruso calisthenics book, it didn’t actually say that all the exercises aren’t played every day. I learned that by calling a former Carmine Caruso student who told me how to use the book. He said, you only do the exercises that might pertain to what you have to do that day. You don’t do them all every day. Whew! What a relief. It felt like it should be used exactly as he said. Robert Marsteller’s book Advanced Slide Technique has a number/slide position marked over EVERY note! But because the print is so small, it’s hard to read. This book has a font that makes everything easy to read whether you get a hard or digital copy. Updates are also available if you’ve purchased one since there were a few snafus that happened during publication. None of us is perfect. And it was a labor and love and a year-long learning process to make this book come to fruition. Nothing is easy if it’s worthwhile. It’s a LOT of work. Thanks to my publisher, Ilan Morgenstern, it is available for all to enjoy.

UPDATE: Physical copies of the book as well as digital downloads are now available! We wanted the photos to look as good as they do in the digital version so it took a little longer for the physical version.

Here’s where you can purchase the book: http://www.imbrassworks.com

I hope you’ll give it a try. You and your students should all find something of value in it.

Thanks for stopping by.