Customer Reviews

The Brass Player's Cookbook: Creative Recipes for a Successful Performance

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There's little here most brass players haven't heard many times before. And having it come from a name performer doesn't make it any more valuable, especially when it's as poorly organized as this compilation.

The book is a fund raiser for NAMM, a lobbyist and trade organization for manufacturers and retailers of musical instruments. Royalties for the book are donated to NAMM which, among other things, promotes music education in schools.

Someone came up with the thought of formatting it as a cookbook. Each contributor was asked to write a brief article on whatever they want - an extreme case of editorial abdication which resulted in the predictable redundancy and inconsistency. When the articles came in, you would hope someone would notice the cookbook idea wasn't working and either drop that format or hire a copyeditor to make it work. Unfortunately, they soldiered on and published them as written, in alphabetical order by author.

The most egregious example is Mr. VerMeulen's. Not content with the obfuscation possibilities offered by the cookbook metaphor alone, he adds a race car metaphor. One must slog through octane, continuously-variable transmissions, and the consequences of running a six-cylinder engine on five cylinders. Two suggestions: 1. When the actual point you are trying to make ends up in parentheses, something's wrong with the format. 2. When the metaphor (octane) is more difficult to understand than your point (take a deep breath), drop the metaphor. If you have the patience to find his three main points, it's actually one of the better contributions, but hardly a model of effective communication.

This book is worth a browse at the library, but I don't think most brass players would ever want to refer to it again.

The essays compiled in this book are nothing short of fantastic. I am stunned at how few of my fellow brass players that I know who own this book. The advice given represents some of the greatest brass players out there today. It is a must own for active brass musicians.

The Brass Player's Cookbook is filled with tidbits of wonderful advice. Covering topics ranging from easier travelling for gigs, vibrato, respiration, goal planning, mouthpiece selection...a plethora of insights written in succinct, easily read "recipes."

Recommendable for nearly everyone as the scope ensures something beneficial can be attained from the reading.

This book is an excellent piece of literature for any serious brass player. The advice from the pros is invaluable! Also ideal for a collegiate brass student.