Description
Trumpet Pro Pentatonic Tonalization Studies
Trumpet Pro Pentatonic Tonalization Studies is a book in our Tonalization Study series. At the moment, this is the only Tonalization Study book not dedicated to the major scales. It’s a book I wrote because one of my students needed it at the time. If you are a trumpet player with a range up to high C, trying to learn the pentatonic scales, then this Trumpet Pro Pentatonic Tonalization Studies book is perfect for you.
Tonalization Studies
Tonalization Studies are a unique and comprehensive system of scale exercises. The biggest difference between traditional scales and the Tonalization Studies is that we only do Tonalization Studies in one key (scale) per day. Traditional scales tend to go through every key every day.
The reason for this change is because we perform better when we spend more time in each key. Going through every scale every day dilutes the experience. Focusing on one scale at a time is like soaking in that key. It seeps into your musical being and becomes part of your musical personality.
As an analogy, I like to say that learning scale patterns in every key is like trying to learn twelve different languages at the same time. If you learn “hello” in twelve languages, and then “good by” in twelve different languages, and continue adding vocabulary for years, then you would not be able to speak any of those languages at all. I learned this from my aunt Pat when I was in high school. She said that she learned Spanish by going to a small town in Mexico. She stayed there for two weeks and was able to learn enough to get her a bilingual job when she got back.
We know this about languages, but we don’t consider the advantages of this sort of submersion when we are talking about scales.
Pentatonic Scales
The Trumpet Pro Pentatonic Tonalization Studies contains 240 basic pentatonic exercises. There are twenty exercises for each of the twelve keys.
Some people would say that pentatonic scales are jazz scales. I don’t like to think of it that way. Pentatonic scales are often used by modern classical composers. The only difference between the jazz musicians and the classical musicians is that the jazz musicians need to be able to generate material from the scale on command. There are certain styles of jazz improvisation that are inaccessible without mastery of the pentatonic scales. So, while the scale itself is neither classical or jazz, it is a more important scale for jazz players to master.
Quartal Harmony
I teach my students that the pentatonic scales are your introduction to quartal harmony. If you stack perfect fourths, one on top of the other, to include five notes, you now have all the notes of a pentatonic scale. Transpose all of those notes into one octave and there is your pentatonic scale.
A lot of people teach the pentatonic as if it is a major scale with the fourth and seventh scale degrees removed. That’s fine. That approach gives you the notes. But it does not teach you the quartal tendencies of the scale.
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