Pares Modern Pares Foundation Studies For Trombone Pdf

Working Through Pares Studies on Trombone

Most trombone students eventually run into the Pares method books. They show up in school band rooms, private studios, and audition prep folders. The full title is Pares Modern Pares Foundation Studies For Trombone Pdf, and it's a reworking of older etude collections with a focus on building clean articulation and steady air support for low brass players. I've assigned these to students at various levels, and they reveal more about a player's habits than most drills do. These are etude collections organized by technique. You'll find material targeting single tongue patterns, double tonguing, range expansion, and flexibility work. The studies aren't just exercises pretending to be music. Each one isolates a specific mechanical problem and forces you to deal with it. That's useful, but it's also where people get stuck quickly. I don't hand a beginner the full book and expect results. The first few studies look simple, and that's the trap. They sound easy until you play them at tempo with a metronome. Then the weaknesses appear. I start students on the early pages with a slow pulse, focusing on clean note attacks and consistent airflow. Most players rush the beginning material because it feels comfortable. It's exactly where the foundation gets built or missed.

The middle studies require more attention. Slurs and tongue combinations appear together, which means your air has to keep moving while your articulation changes mid-phrase. I've watched students lose pitch on the third beat of a four-beat measure when they don't anticipate the slurred passage coming up. The workaround is to practice the transition separately first. Isolate the bar before the slur, slow it down, and loop it until the air doesn't drop. Then reconnect it to the full phrase. This usually takes about ten minutes of targeted work instead of thirty minutes of frustrated repetition. One edge case I run into regularly involves the longer endurance studies toward the end of the book. A student will play them fine at practice tempo but collapse during a full run-through at performance speed. The issue is almost always breath management, not lung capacity. Players take huge inhales between phrases instead of quick, efficient ones. I have them mark every breath point in the music and then practice the entire study using only those breaths at a faster tempo. It sounds brutal for the first few tries. After that, the study becomes manageable at speed without the note falling apart on you.

Common Mistakes That Wasted My Time

The biggest mistake I see is treating these studies like sight-reading material. Students power through pages without stopping. That creates bad habits that take weeks to unlearn. Another frequent error is ignoring the dynamic markings. Some players treat everything as mezzo-forte and wonder why their upper register sounds strained. The quieter passages are where your embouchure control gets tested the most. Playing an etude softly at tempo often reveals more problems than blasting through it loudly. Here's a detail most people miss: the fingerings matter more than you'd expect in certain studies. Trombone is a slide instrument, but many of these etudes pass through positions that favor one fingering over another for intonation reasons. A student playing a study in F through mostly first and fourth position will hit sharp notes on certain slides if they don't adjust. I keep a small chart of alternative fingerings for each position near my practice stand. It saves time during rehearsal because I'm not searching for the right alternate slide position after the fact.

Where These Studies Fall Short

The Pares collection is solid for foundational technique, but it isn't comprehensive. It doesn't address extended techniques like multiphonics or heavy altissimo work. If your goal is contemporary repertoire, these studies will only get you so far. They also lean heavily on traditional tonal language, which means they're less useful for players preparing for modern concert band or orchestral excerpts that use more dissonant harmonic contexts. Another limitation is the tempo markings. Some editions don't include suggested metronome ranges for each study. I've had students play everything too fast out of pride, which defeats the purpose of the exercise. I usually assign a specific tempo number rather than leaving it open-ended. Starting at quarter note equals sixty for the faster studies and building from there keeps things honest.

A Better Supplementary Resource

If you find the Pares studies too repetitive or not challenging enough in certain areas, I recommend pairing them with Repetitive Etudes by Schlossberg or the standard Arban method. These complement the Pares material well and fill in the gaps. The combination gives you more variety without abandoning the core work. Most serious trombone students end up using both at different stages of their development. The studies themselves remain a reliable tool for building clean articulation and steady air. They won't transform you into a virtuoso overnight, but they will expose exactly what needs work. That's honestly their main value. Play them slowly, mark your breaths, and fix the problems before they become habits.