Testimonials

Your story has always been one that I have followed closely. I ran into signs of early troubles in my playing just as you were “rebounding” from your dystonia. In what seemed like the nick of time, I enveloped myself (and my students!) in your wonderful resources, websites, and publications. My playing and teaching has changed profoundly because of the effort and time you have put into your life’s work. The information that you share is crucial to the development and maintenance of ALL musician’s work, not just trombonists. Thanks for this!

Tony Mazzocchi
Professor of Trombone, Montclair State University
Executive Director, Kinhaven Music School

David Vining is a master teacher. His students are fortunate to have hands on instruction from somebody who has come up with a well-organized way of explaining all things related to brass playing. Through Vining’s instructional videos and excellent publications, we can all benefit as musicians and educators.

I have been using David Vining’s “Daily Routines” book for years. This is a great way to keep improving on the horn without getting locked into playing the same routine every day.

David, thanks for your contributions to the world of brass playing!

Donn Schaefer
Professor of Trombone
University of Utah

I came to Mr. Vining suffering from a problem with hesitant entrances. I struggled for almost a year trying to just get the tongue out of the way of the air. I approached 4 other well known trombonists with the issue, who had no idea what I could be doing to cause this, but after just half an hour with Mr. Vining, I was cured for the most part. Now, after going through the process that he showed me many times for a week, hesitant entrances are not an issue for me at all. Mr. Vining has tremendous insight into the physical and psychological processes that go into playing a brass instrument, and I would encourage any brass player at any level to have at least one lesson with him.

I am currently using several of David’s books, for my own practice and for my students. I find the “Flow Studies” to be quite helpful with keeping the air moving in all registers and at varying tempos. It is organized so that, on each of seven days in the week, the trombonist plays two slow, two medium, and two fast etudes. I follow these recommendations and use the book all the time, so much so that the covers have fallen off! I also use David’s “Daily Routines”, for myself and for my students. The book is organized around various topics — for instance, Articulation, Flexibility/Accuracy, Range — to address the player’s current challenges.

Over the course of my career, I have had small, nagging questions about how the body worked, especially with regard to taking a breath. Piecemeal, through lessons with Arnold Jacobs and from visits to my physical therapist, from poring over Gray’s Anatomy and from visiting medical websites, I got a pretty good idea about how things work. But David’s book “What Every Trombonist Needs to Know About the Body” is all the information any trombonist needs. It is in a well-organized package that follows the outline of the Andover Educators course “What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body”. I believe that every trombonist, and every trombone teacher, needs to have this basic information about how the body works. “What Every Trombonist…” dispels longstanding misinformation and replaces it with anatomic fact.

I also recommend “The Breathing Book”. It has complete anatomical information, along with simple but powerful exercises that every teacher should know and use.

David’s trombonetools.com is a series of very useful videos that are based in anatomical truth. Some folks are visual learners. These videos cover every aspect of trombone playing.

David has done a remarkable job at providing a lot of extremely useful materials for the trombone community!

Timothy Myers
Principal Trombone, Saint Louis Symphony
Trombone Instructor, Washington University in Saint Louis
Member, Trombones of the Saint Louis Symphony

After a beautiful career as an orchestral player, soloist and member of splendid chamber music groups of more than 30 years, the last years, playing the trombone became more and more difficult for me (at the end impossible). On my search for new ideas, I found the Youtube clips of Mr. David Vining about different aspects of trombone playing.
I visited the website and stopped playing in the orchestra for six months to find out if there was a way for me to continue playing the trombone, or if it was the end of my playing career.
David was very understanding when I contacted him, and from the first skype lesson on, he changed my understanding of playing : balance, breathing, tonguing, flexibility, use of the air, I see it all from another point of view.
I use his books for myself and in my teaching and I recommend them to all trombone players and teachers.
The book “What every trombone player needs to know about his body” is the only book I know that describes in such detail the functioning of the body in relation with trombone playing.
The “Breathing book” is fantastic and at the same time very concrete and easy to follow, everything is extremely well explained. The practice of this book awakened my breathing and my understanding of breathing substantially.
“Daily routines” is a complete book with exercises going over all aspects of playing in a very clear and comprehensive way.
The “Flow studies” give a very good understanding of use of air for me.
I started back playing in the orchestra, and as David predicted, starting up again was not easy in the beginning. Still, I feel that bit by bit, confidence about the new obtained information is taking over from ghosts of the past.
I am almost 55 years old, and although I worked as if I was 18, my mind and body did not give the same reaction. Everything takes more time, I have gone through desperate days, but I am happy with the way things continue to move in a good direction. Staccato, breathing, flexibility, embouchure, I changed it all (sometimes small very detailed changes with big result), and got a better understanding.
Contacting You David was one of the good decisions in my life. You have given me oxygen to continue a while (hopefully some more happy years), I am extremely grateful to You.
Luc De Vleeschhouwer
Trombone player in the National Orchestra of Belgium
Teacher at the Ghent Conservatory (HOGENT).
http://www.koperstaal.be