Download the PDF of “Chord Tone Etude #2“ For this Exercise of the Week, Bryan Davis presents a new Chord Tone Etude based on the harmonic progression of a well-known bebop standard – “Confirmation.” The note choices are limited to the basic chord tones (root, 3rd, 5th, 7th only) indicated by the chord symbols, which…

Download the PDF of “Quick Facility Warmup“ This “Quick Facility Warm Up” is the sort of thing I play everyday to get my chops moving and air moving after my basic warmup. It combines different fundamentals to let you quickly feel which areas need more attention in your daily maintenance, as well as letting you…

Download the PDF of “Melodic Tonguing Routine #1“ This “Melodic Tonguing” Routine is part of a longer routine, working on tonguing along the subdivision chain. This excerpt contains the first 3 subdivisions of the beat – quarter notes, eighth notes and eighth note triplets. The full routine will be part of a forthcoming Airflow Music…

Download the PDF of “Range Smoothing #1“ This “Range Smoothing” Routine is designed to help you build and solidify your range, while maintaining a connected approach to all registers of the instrument. To begin with, aim to sustain each fermata for 10 seconds. This is an expanding series. However, while you should practice all the…

Download the PDF of “Alternative Technical Study #10“ For this Exercise of the Week, Bryan Davis presents another Alternative Technical Study. This one is a melodic pattern adapted to the major, minor, wholetone and diminished scales. There are 2 versions – one pairing the major and diminished patterns, and another pairing the wholetone and minor…

Download the PDF of “Twisted Flexibilities #4“ This Exercise of the Week is by request, from an Instagram and Facebook post, over the weekend. Viewer Dave P., asked for an exercise to work on larger interval accuracy in fast passages. These are often tricky because you are moving into a different partial of the range,…

For this Exercise of the Week, Bryan Davis presents the first of a set of exercises known as Inversion Therapy. Not as complicated as it sounds, it’s a simple developed scale pattern on the harmonic minor which descends first then ascends in the second half, which is the reverse of how we commonly practice scales….

For this Exercise of the Week, Bryan Davis presents another set of Twisted Flexibilities. These can be used to add variety to your daily practice, and reduce the monotony of practicing the same things over and over again. This set are all in 5/8, so you can familiarize yourself with that meter too. Download the…