Quote:

Quote:

Better advice: A Trumpet player should not have to rewrite notation in order to read and play any passage down an octave. Practice doing that.



Mac,

My former instructor would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. In fact, he would have scolded me if I'd have done otherwise. However, he is gone. I am still here. I'm old now -- I just want to have fun -- nothing too serious. There are other reasons that I like to use notation instead of transposing on the fly.

I'm a comeback player of 35+ years or so. I like using BIAB to create some quick section solos -- I listen and if I like it, I simulate it (generally without needing the notation in front of me). And, yes if Soloist has decided that the solo is gonna include some high C's or the like, I just transpose those down. But, more importantly what this does for me is it gives me some quick renditions based on different criteria I ask of the Soloist -- Wonderful! I get to hear how someone else would have played the same section! I especially like that trading-4's feature. When I write my own music, I like to put in a trading-X-measures as I typically play with other soloists (sax, flute, piano, etc) and takes a boring tune and spices it up -- I like! The other thing is if I don't like what Soloist has done, it's gone -- press a few buttons and do it again -- takes me all of 15 seconds to do it over and listen to the same or try another soloist. Man that is soooooo cool! Gosh I wish I'd have had this years ago.

Another thing I like to do is prepare music for my two twin nephews who play trumpet in jazz band in high school. We live 300+ miles away and I've been tutoring them for the last 3 years remotely using Hal Leonard's Smart Music Studio. It's been wonderful -- Uncle Russell looks like a genius -- I whip up multiple solos for them to practice, electronically provide them the notation, and they record their performance and I then get it back to review. Of course Mom occasionally asks for a report of their progress (maybe because she see's one of them slacking or something like that). The Smart Music Studio whips off a nice report that I email her -- the twins have never caught on in three years that Uncle Russell has been providing this information to their mother! She comes back with, "Well if you'd been practicing a little more this week, those triplets in bars 33 to 39 would sound better." You should see the look on those kids faces! Mom is by no means, musically-able and so they're stuck wondering how Mom can listen to them and come up with this stuff!

Anyhow, I appreciate your post. I agree on a technical level with your recommendation, but I'm having too much fun letting BIAB do this stuff for me and it's doing it (as far the the Solist generation goes), much better than I could given my ability at this time in my life. If you're a pro taking my money when I buy your CD's -- I expect you to transpose in concert. If I'm Russell in the comfort and privacy of my family room, BIAB gets the call!

Ike