I began playing trombone at ten years old. I have taken significant breaks between then and now, but cumulatively I have probably a couple dozen years of playing – and cleaning – trombones.
Now, proving that old dogs CAN indeed learn new tricks, I have come up with a way to clean my trombone slides without kneeling, hunched over my bathtub.
I suppose this is as much a “necessity being the mother of invention” as proof my creative mind is still functioning… knees and backs being things old guys do not love to overwork.
I recently found myself playing less and realized that having slides not all that slippery may have been a contributing factor. Yet I was not much inspired to take them to the bathtub, which is the normal place for cleaning.
“Why is that?”, I asked myself. The answer is above.
Then I visualized another way to do the job and began searching for the tool of my vision.
I thought it was a wallpaper tool when I began my search, but the hardware store knew it as a window-sill planter.
A slide trombone bathtub can go by any name they want in their store, but I know what it really is. 😉
… and that reminds me of the time I went to Home Depot to replace my trombone plunger mute because the rubber had become hard and stiff with great advancing age.
“Can I help you?” vest-wearing H-D clerk
“Yes. Where are your trombone mutes?” frisky trombonist
After some puzzlement and stammering, I added, “You might know them as toilet plungers.”
The video to the right will explain better than words can.
Most brass musicians simply throw the plunger handle away.
This time I decided to trim and paint it.
.
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This website is among four I produce as gifts to my community from a pensioner dedicating a bit of his life attempting to share thoughts, tricks, knowledge, and to help preserve humanity, integrity, honor and liberty – a world under attack. If I help one person find our side of the rampart, or help the resolve of one who found it via another path, my time and money have been well spent.
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Thank you, Ted Dunlap
