Rangesongs

When I was a student at Florida State, we used to play Melodious Etudes in tenor clef in order to work on range. This works pretty well because you have a built in musical incentive to move your air properly, what with predictable high points and familiar phrasing. Trouble was, they were not very systematic – you would play one that wasn’t high enough right next to one that was too high or too long, etc. This is where Rangesongs came from. For Rangesongs, I wrote a series of etudes based on the idea of playing Melodious Etudes in tenor clef – that is, largely predictable, lots of step-wise motion, mostly lyrical, etc. In order to solve the problems mentioned above, I made each etude one page long and designated target notes representing the highest note in each etude. So for each etude, you know exactly how long it is and what the highest note is. I wrote 5 etudes for each target note, so the book starts with 5 etudes with the target note of F above the staff, and then continues with 5 etudes with the target note of G-flat. It proceeds in this fashion until high F is reached. For the second half of the book, the target notes are low, starting with low F and proceeding downward by half steps to pedal B-flat (including 5 etudes with the target note of low B-natural with the F attachment slide pulled!). Since the second half of the book is low, you can intersperse high and low playing for a balanced approach. Rangesongs is available for Tenor Trombone, Bass Trombone, Horn, Trumpet, Euphonium, Euphonium TC, and Tuba. NOTE that the trombone versions use tenor clef – those who would rather play just bass clef can purchase the Euphonium version.