Review

Michael Davis and Shari Feder
Just Add Trombone:

New York, NY, United States
Publisher: Hip-Bone Music, Inc.
Date of Publication: 2005

Primary Genre: Elementary Material - solo
Secondary Genre: Study Material - etude

This book is definitely NOT for those who believe that practicing should be all work and no fun. Here we have 20 beginner to early intermediate level etudes with a play-along compact disc. This is part of Michael Davis’ ‘Club Hip-Bone’ series and ‘hip’ is a good word to describe these easy little tunes and the contemporary synthesizer backups. The accompaniments are nicely composed and should easily pull a young motivated player into a time and pitch groove. The etudes go from one to two minutes and each has two adjacent backup tracks with Davis playing and setting an impeccable example on the first. The student can either listen or play along before taking a solo turn on the next track. As I have found with other “Hip-Bone” productions, these etudes are extremely well conceived and the compact disc quality is first-rate. Advanced players can enjoy them as warm-up material (maybe with some improvised elaborations) or, taken up or down an octave, for a simple workout in extreme registers. This is good stuff, highly recommended.

-Arthur Jennings
University of Florida