Working with Concone's Solfeggi on Trombone
I've been teaching trombone students for over fifteen years, and Concone remains one of those resources that comes up constantly. People search for "Concone Giuseppe Complete Solfeggi Trombone Pdf" all the time, usually because they want something structured for daily technical work. The reality is a bit more complicated than just downloading a file and practicing, but it's worth understanding what you're actually dealing with. The complete Solfeggi collection by Giuseppe Concone has been in the public domain for well over a century. You can find scan copies on several free music notation sites. IMSLP has them. Several university library archives have digitized versions. A direct PDF download isn't always easy to locate because most of what circulates online are individual folios rather than a single compiled document. I've compiled a working folder of the most commonly used plates from the Bärenreiter edition and shared it through a Google Drive link in my teaching materials. If you want a reliable source, look for the version keyed to instrument transposition. Trombone players specifically need the C-transposed version, not the vocal original, or the exercises land in completely wrong ranges for tenor or bass trombone. The exercises are numbered sequentially. Plates 1 through roughly 30 cover basic legato figure work at a moderate tempo. Plates 30 through 80 introduce more rhythmic complexity and wider intervals. Anything past plate 80 gets into advanced coloratura territory that most intermediate players should approach cautiously. Your mouthpiece pressure and endurance will tell you if you're ready.
How the Exercises Actually Work in Practice
Concone was originally writing for voice. The Solfeggi are syllabic exercises designed to build smooth transitions between notes, control breath placement, and develop intervallic accuracy. When adapted for trombone, each exercise maps directly onto slide position changes and embouchure adjustments. The challenge isn't the notation itself. It's maintaining a consistent legato line while the slide is moving through different positions and your oral cavity shape is shifting with each interval. Start every exercise extremely slowly. I mean slower than you think. Play each note at mezzo piano with a full, centered tone. Check your intonation against a drone or tuner before you even think about speed. The first ten plates alone will reveal half the problems most students carry into their professional careers if they actually stop and listen. Most skip that step entirely and just play through, which is why these exercises feel pointless to a lot of beginners. The tempo markings in the original Concone editions are metronome markings. Use a metronome. Playing along with a recording won't teach you the same discipline because your brain will auto-correct timing errors when you're matching someone else's pulse. The value of these exercises is in building your own internal clock.
A Specific Problem I Ran Into with the Trombone Adaptation
Plate 24 in the standard transcription presents a recurring issue with position shifts between third and fifth position on a tenor trombone. The exercise has a repeated figure that jumps between F3 and C4. In the vocal version, singers just adjust their voicing. On trombone, that interval requires a quick slide shift that most players handle poorly because they're focusing on the embouchure change and neglecting the slide. My workaround was simple but took a while to discover: practice the exercise using only the first and second partials of the slide, staying locked in position 1 for the entire F3-C4 figure. It forces your embouchure to do the work instead of your hand. Once that feels comfortable, add the position shifts back in gradually. This approach cuts the adjustment period for that specific plate from weeks down to roughly three days for most students. One thing nobody warns you about is that the original Concone editions assume a certain breath length and phrasing flexibility that doesn't translate directly to brass instruments. Vocal players can slur between notes without any articulation break. Trombone players tend to re-articulate every note instinctively because of how the instrument responds. You have to actively suppress the tendency to tongue each note. Let the breath flow through without interrupting it. The first dozen plates sound ridiculous if you tongue everything. That's expected. Keep working at it until the line holds together on breath alone. Another overlooked detail is the rhythmic notation. Concone uses dotted rhythms and duplets that sit between straight and swung feels. Many players either swing them too hard or play them so rigidly that they lose the musical intent. The original Italian approach treats these as expressive rather than metronomically exact. A dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth shouldn't sound like a triplet. It should have a slight push without becoming a jerk. This distinction matters more than students realize when they eventually move on to real repertoire.
Get the Full Details
The Complete Solfeggi collection also includes plates that are simply out of reach for most intermediate players. Some of the later exercises demand interval leaps larger than a sixth combined with rapid slurred passages. These aren't useful for daily warm-ups at the intermediate level. They're more appropriate as occasional challenges. Don't force them early. Your slide technique and embouchure stamina will develop better if you spend solid months on plates 1 through 50 before touching the harder material.
What These Exercises Don't Do for You
It's important to be honest about the limitations here. Concone's Solfeggi will improve your legato, intonation awareness, and breath control significantly if you actually practice them correctly. They will not build your upper register. They will not develop your extreme low end. They will not make you faster at slurring large intervals. If your goal is range extension or facility in highalmighty passages, you need supplementary etude books. Jeanneret, Arban, Schlossberg, and Bordogni-Goldenberg all address different technical gaps that Concone doesn't touch. Using Concone as your only etude material leaves a noticeable hole in your technique. Another honest note: the PDF versions you find online vary in quality. Some are crisp scans with readable notation. Others are blurry photocopies of photocopies where the dynamics and articulation markings are nearly illegible. If you're copying from a poor scan, you'll miss crucial performance directions. I'd recommend cross-referencing whatever PDF you download with a physical copy or a well-scanned digital edition. The Bärenreiter Urtext versions are the cleanest available. Some players also use the Schirmer editions, which have fewer editorial marks but are still legible. Stick with the fundamentals for at least six months of consistent daily work. The results show up gradually, not dramatically. Students who get frustrated and abandon the book usually stop right before the exercises start clicking, which tends to happen around plate 35 if you're doing them properly. Keep going.
