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Brass Chats Episode 27: Phil Snedecor
Monster skills: making lubes, long-distance milkshake consumption, wearing colorful pants, water-balloon popping, assembling egg tacos... the list goes on.
Monster shortcomings: manners.
We contact this big fancy famous musicians, con them into getting together with us ("Don't worry, it's just an interview, it'll just take a few minutes of your tiiiiime, we proooooomise!!"), then spring ridiculous ideas on them.
"DANCE!! TOOT YOUR HORN FOR US!!"
"INVITE US INTO YOUR HOME SO WE CAN DEMAND OUTRAGEOUS TASKS OF YOU!!"
"YOUR COFFEE IS TASTY!"
You'd think, with manners so egregiously poor, that we'd just never even get to the interview part. The lesson?... I guess there's really no lesson – just wanted to say all that crap because what happens afterwards is usually a nice round 30-45 minutes of musical-learning-magic.
Enter Phil Snedecor.
That story above was about him and we did that—and his interview really IS magic.
Having trouble getting motivated today? Were you already about to procrastinate for the next half-hour?
Perfect. Make this your procrastination and watch your productivity soar afterwards. Guaranteed or no money back!
Enjoy.
Oh yeah, hey, he's a great writer too and you won't be sorry for checking out his stuff. Links below the video!
Phil Snedecor sits down with the Monster Oil dudes in a Brass Chat for the ages. We talk Arnold Jacobs, Mahler Miscues, why you should be a musician first and a trumpet player second, and much more in this fabulous trumpet interview. Enjoy!
Resources
WATCH THE TEASER EPISODE - "'Trumpet Challenge' with Phil Snedecor" - https://youtu.be/gq6SsN56EzA
Purchase Phil’s Etude books - http://www.pasmusic.com/PAS_Music/Etude_Books.html
Download a visual of the “air balancing” technique described by Phil at time marking 6:16.
Listen to Phil playing several excerpts from his NEW “Lyrical Etudes for Trumpet, Volume 2”.
Find Phil online - personal website, Washington Symphonic Brass website, Twitter, Facebook, LInkedIn.
+ Transcript of our Interview with Phil Snedecor (Click to Expand)
Thomas Brown:
Hey everybody welcome back to Brass Chats once again. Today we’re sitting down with a gentleman who teaches at the Hart School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut and he has played with pretty much every kind of ensemble you can think of including the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony and the Washington Symphonic Brass. Mr. Phil Snedecor. Thanks so much for being with us.
Phil Snedecor:
Thanks for having me, appreciate it.
Thomas Brown:
Let’s get right down to brass tacks, my favorite question. How did you get good at trumpet?
Phil Snedecor:
Ha. [laughter]
Thomas Brown:
Yeah, it’s a loaded question but people think you’re an amazing trumpet player. We think you’re an amazing trumpet player, we want to know what you did, especially from a younger age, more as a student to get really good.
Phil Snedecor:
That’s an interesting question. I just didn’t quit. That’s the only thing I did to get good because eventually I was going to beat my head against the wall enough times to get good but I just had to keep doing it. I almost quit a hundred times, actually.
Thomas Brown:
Seriously?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, oh yeah.
Thomas Brown:
Tell me about it.
Phil Snedecor:
Well, you know I went to Eastman and I was alternating between being a star and not being able to play anything and toward the end of my time at Eastland I just had kind of overuse syndrome. I was playing in everything from the jazz ensemble to the graduate brass quintet to orchestra to everything. I played first trumpet on the Eastman Wind Ensemble, recording with Wynton Marsalis, the Carnival cd which was a huge highlight, still is, in my career and it was great to hang out with Wynton and perform with all these great other players, Jim Wilt was on that session and Doug Prosser, great section to Bob Feller and Jerry Keener, all these great players in that section and we all played C trumpets in the section and then went and played at Shepherd’s Creek Cornet, it was awesome.
I was playing well then, shortly thereafter I just kind of went back and forth between literally not being able to play anything and playing great.
Thomas Brown:
Who were you studying with at the time?
Phil Snedecor:
Barbara Butler and Charlie Geyer.
Thomas Brown:
Oh, so it’s like both, I don’t remember how that worked.
Phil Snedecor:
I studied with Charlie for four years and then for my last year there in grad school I studied with Barbara, which was great. They were great. They didn’t, neither of them really knew what to do with my chop breakdown and so I did a brief stent with the Dallas Brass which was great but it also magnified the fact that I really needed to go get my act together and so I went to see Arnold Jacobs in Chicago and I studied with him for four years.
Thomas Brown:
Seriously?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, oh yeah.
Thomas Brown:
So, weekly lessons.
Phil Snedecor:
Well no, not really. So, the story is this. In high school I studied with a trumpet player named Don Jacoby in Dallas off and on he was an old school, old style jazz player that used to play with Les Brown. Really great person and great teacher. I went back to him after Eastman and he’s like I don’t know what to do with you I don’t know. So, he says, and his nickname was Jake, so he says I’m going to call the other Jake and we’re going to set you up there. So, he calls him up and says, Jake, this is Jake, you got to see this guy. He’s a good guy but I don’t know what to do with him.
I fly to Chicago, I basically camp out on Arnold Jacobs doorstep. I go and see him at Ravinia like three weeks in a row. I was like Mr. Jacobs could you teach me? He’s like see me next week. He put me off for three weeks. He said that was the test to see if I really wanted to study with him. Then finally he got me in the door and did some things and tweaked what I was doing and basically kind of got me thinking down another path. I was fine for a while.
Thomas Brown:
What was the issue? What did you guys do?
Phil Snedecor:
Well, how did I temporarily get out of it or how did I permanently get out of it? Temporarily I forgot about thinking about music and I was just thinking about all the mechanics of playing the trumpet. Jacobs is really good about getting you out of that. So, here’s what he did and I told this to a few other people recently and that is that he, he looked out the window and said see those guys down there playing on the street? He says you need to do something like that. I was like, what do you mean? He says you need to go play for somebody, not think about playing the trumpet. I was like well I’ve never done that in my life I was like what do you mean play on the street?
So, I’m walking out of his studio and I go down there and I kind of look at those guys and I’m listening to them they’re sounding pretty good, there’s a little brass quartet. They were called the Brass Factory Brass and so I listened to them for a while and they were sounding pretty good and after they got done I said, you guys do this every day? They said well we do it every other day but on Tuesday this guy’s not going to be there so, you got a trumpet on your back, do you want to play. Like yeah. So, Tuesday I show up with my trumpet and I start playing with these guys and man it was a completely different world. I just forgot about how to play the trumpet and remember why I play the trumpet. Because all these people rushing by, there not like judging me. There like, just listening. So, we’re playing The Barber of Seville Overture, we’re playing William Tell and we’re playing all these crazy transcriptions and I’m having fun and it kind of got me out of it, temporarily.
Thomas Brown:
This was the temporary fix?
Phil Snedecor:
That went on and on for years. You know I mean, I actually pretty much found my voice then and the way I played. But I think for a long time I played in a way that was detrimental to really going to the next level and recently, in the last five years I’ve really kind of figured out how I do what I do and how to do it more efficiently and I can teach that as well and I’ll just, I’ll give you an example. Tom Hooten actually touched on this in his interview with you guys and I want to explain that because Tom just said you know, he kept working and he kept working and he didn’t understand why he wasn’t any better and he kind of knew that the answer wasn’t in the standard pedagogy of just use more air all the time because he kind of intuitively knew that.
Five years ago, I also knew that and I kept thinking there’s got to be a different way because the old saying if you keep doing something the same way you’ll get the same results. At some point, I thought you know, there’s got to be a better way. So, I rebalanced my playing and now I use, I use air, but it’s constant supported air and it’s not blowing the crap out of the trumpet and you can’t possibly take this hole and stick it into this hole and blow the crap out of it and expect anything but massive back pressure right here and when I thought about that and I realized that that’s what Arnold Jacobs had been saying the whole time.
He did this thing called, he did this thing every time I went to his studio he said oh, do this, [blowing noise] he said that’s a lot of effort, not much air and then he’d say do this [breathing noise] he’d say that’s a lot of air, not much effort. You want as much like the second one as possible. So, I thought that meant go [blowing noise] into this small hole which actually created [blowing noise] this back pressure. Once I realized that since he’s a tuba player he could go [blowing noise] into his tuba mouthpiece and I can’t really do that in this hole and I rebalanced my air, everything’s so much easier.
Thomas Brown:
Now this five years ago, you’re talking about?
Phil Snedecor:
This is five years ago.
Thomas Brown:
This is recent history.
Phil Snedecor:
This is after I’ve had a lot of successes on the trumpet but still never really knowing what the hell was going on. You know some days it would feel great and other days it would be like what’s going on? Now I don’t really have that many crappy days because even if it’s a crappy day if I concentrate on everything feeling [blowing noise] by balancing out the blow into the trumpet, eventually it just becomes easy. It becomes no back pressure. So, I can play pretty much anything I want now and not feel that pounding against my chops.
Thomas Brown:
It’s efficient now?
Phil Snedecor:
It’s efficient, it’s much more efficient and that what players, these great players that we see on TV and we go hear them play. When we hear Maurice André and all these amazing players in our lives, that’s what they did the whole time but they wouldn’t always know how to explain it. Like I studied with Bud Herseth for a couple of years I was in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Herseth lessons, the sum total of Herseth’s lessons was me coming in and Mr. Herseth is it okay, I’m going to play for you and I’d play Petrushka and he’d go nah and he’d grab his mouthpiece and he’d grab my horn and stick his mouthpiece in my horn and he’d play it and he’d say do it like that. Throw my horn back to me and I’d try to play it for him.
His was all about thinking about what product you wanted and he was so stubborn he wasn’t going to accept anything less out of himself or his students. He didn’t really know how to teach. Okay you have to rebalance this and you have to do that. He wasn’t for that. He wanted to just have the product in his mind.
For me I needed some rebalancing and I would do that at various points in my career but I really feel like I understand it now. I’m working with my students on it. It’s been amazingly successful with my students. I recognize this in my students now and I’m able to explain it and we also do this focal thing where we’re singing in falsetto so that you’re inside oral cavity is more well positioned to do this blow rather than just going just [blowing noise] and everybody, most people play [trumpet playing]. That’s their general and they go up and down from there right. So, I want their blow to be [trumpet playing] so when I wake you up at two in the morning and I stick a trumpet in your hand [trumpet playing] is where you go.
Okay, so [singing] and if you sing that note [singing] that is where you want to play the trumpet. So, if I want to play [trumpet playing] I can play that much easier if my center of my face is [trumpet playing] right. As opposed to [trumpet playing] right, everybody spends all day there, right. All their warm up there. And I tell my students [trumpet playing] to warm up in that register and make that the center of your…
Thomas Brown:
That’s where the trumpets played.
Phil Snedecor:
That’s the money notes ladies and gentlemen. Nobody gives you money to go [trumpet playing] [laughter] I mean how many recording sessions do you show up and that’s on it? So, we’re spending all our time doing all that crap and we really need to get the money notes free and easy like Arnold Jacobs [blowing noise] and the only way to do that is not necessarily go [blowing noise] into the horn. Is this too technical for this interview?
Thomas Brown:
No this is all great.
Phil Snedecor:
So, I think this is what Tom Hooten was trying to say but he wasn’t comfortable necessarily going into it but I listen to him play now and I think wow. See he’s somebody that actually stepped up through playing ability and he’s amazing right now. I respect the hell out of him because he has solved all his own problems.
Thomas Brown:
Yeah, he said he couldn’t play a High C in the Marine Band.
Phil Snedecor:
That’s right and when he was in the DC area I hired him a few times and he was a great musician but you could tell he was working some things out on the trumpet, like I was. He kept at it and kept at it and he would practice and he would work hard and man, he really did it.
Thomas Brown:
What qualities do you ascribe to your best students?
Phil Snedecor:
Persistence.
Thomas Brown:
Oh really.
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, they just don’t quit and they take responsibility for their own playing. They do this. They sit in the practice room and they go okay Mr. Snedecor has given me X, Y and Z to do, I’ve got to figure this out, I got to figure out how to sound good on this, and they do that. That’s the best students. The ones that are in my career that I’ve had that I would describe as not my best students have said to themselves well he’s going to just teach me this and at the end of my study with him I’ll just be a good player and I think that doesn’t work out so well for them.
Thomas Brown:
Now we’ve already talked about this quite a bit but I’d like to ask the question anyways. If you could name two or three of the most important things the teachers in your life have told you? Trumpet teachers.
Phil Snedecor:
Well, starting with John Nelson always think music. Try to forget you are playing the trumpet and then I’ll expound on that and say always try to get your audience to forget that you’re playing the trumpet. Try to play music first and trumpet later so that it doesn’t matter what instrument’s in your hand you’re communicating with them through your instrument and the instrument’s just secondary because this is just a piece of plumbing. And so many people play trumpet first and then throw some music in there later and I think that’s too bad because you can have these note perfect performances and it’s not so hot. Because it doesn’t speak to anybody and if you can just play music first I think that’s the main goal of any teacher is to get your student to play music.
Thomas Brown:
Now what about Barbara and Charlie?
Phil Snedecor:
Oh, they were great. Charlie actually very much into music motivation and he would pick it up and just sound wonderful and he would, he was somewhat like Herseth in that he was always talking about the music, what the music should be doing. Not too much about how to play it which was great and then Barbara is a little more analytical. She’s of course, as far as I’m concerned both those guys are the dream team of trumpet players right now, trumpet teachers right now, as far as having the best students and the best orchestras and they have really got it down as to what these students need. She really thinks a lot about each individual as far as what they need either trumpet wise. She told me one time, if I need to be their biggest cheerleader I will. If I need to be an articulation Nazi I will. If I need to build them up one way and tear them down another way, she just knows how to deal with each individual student and I really respect that. I mean they both really are such a great team and I respect them.
Thomas Brown:
What about Bud? Did he give you any gems that you remember that, I mean you talk about that it was very difficult because he wasn’t the best teacher necessarily as far as pedagogical concepts, but did he say anything or do anything that really sticks with you that you were like, oh wow.
Phil Snedecor:
He said the most aggressive playing that he ever does is in piassen [ph 0:14:00] mode.
Thomas Brown:
What the hell does that mean?
Phil Snedecor:
It means that when you’re playing really soft you still have to have a lot of energy behind it and you can’t just go blah. He could play incredibly soft. There was that famous Song of the Nightingale recording with Reiner that is just some of the most beautiful trumpet playing in the world. He talked about that to me and he said I just had to really focus and be aggressive in that piano.
That makes a lot of sense because you can’t just let everything go to flab because it’s still got to be vibrant you know. He talked about loud far away. So, it’s like he’s playing loud [trumpet playing] so really loud, far away, so you’re hearing it from the next county but it’s still this vibrant energy and he demonstrated that for me. It’s amazing.
Thomas Brown:
So, he played the Nightingale for you?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, a little bit of it not the whole thing. It was quite an experience.
Thomas Brown:
Yeah. Well let’s switch gears for a second and talk about some of your writing. Particularly your Etude books. They’re pretty much required at a number of universities now and a number of places. I’ve been through them, Joel’s been through some of them.
Phil Snedecor:
Have you got Volume 2 yet?
Thomas Brown:
No.
Phil Snedecor:
We’ll have to fix that before you leave.
Thomas Brown:
My favorite is the Low Etudes. Low playing is one of my Achilles heals, it’s always been a problem of mine so I find it’s a really intelligently written book, it doesn’t just stay down the whole time and it really helps to put you in a positive frame of mind about low playing and I really like it. Let’s talk about all of your books because I don’t even know what all of your books are. How many books do you have out now?
Phil Snedecor:
Five or six. I’ve got a trombone book which is basically the first lyrical Etudes transcribed for trombone. But there’s Lyrical Trumpet Volume 1 and 2, there’s the Low Etudes for Tuba, there’s Low Etudes for Trumpet, those are the four main ones and then I’ve got another one in the works called Lyrical Orchestral Etudes. So, things on Moller Five [ph] like the lyrical solo from Moller Five I’ve written an entire etude on that. Shostakovich First Symphony [singing] I’ve got a whole etude written on that so there’s going to be one coming out for that.
I’ve got a lot of calls from tuba players wanting me to do the Low Etudes for Tuba Volume 2 so I really want to do that. But it’s fun to write these, I mean they’re just melodies. The cool thing is I don’t have to sit down and work out entire orchestral arrangements of these things or piano arrangements, I just write the melodies and in the end, that’s what we have fun doing as musicians, right. I always thought that etude books were way too technical. I mean with the obvious exceptions, and the ones that were the exceptions were the Longinotti and Shirla [ph] and things like that were fun to play and that’s why people played them year after year after year. I thought I want to write something like that so I guess I’ve done that, in that people are playing them.
Thomas Brown:
Absolutely. Yeah, they are a lot of fun to play that’s one of my go to books.
Phil Snedecor:
If you like playing it you’re going to learn more from it because you like playing it.
Thomas Brown:
Now you’ve done an amazing job. We’ve talked to several of our other brass chatters about freelancing. We just did Allan Dean last month and he talked about freelancing, we talked to Mark Gould about it in the state of the music world and lot of things like if you don’t get an orchestral job or a military band or something that gives you that pension and all that or a university job how do you forge a career? You’ve done quite a bit of freelancing throughout your life in just making a lot of different things work. What’s your advice to people looking to freelance and cobble together a career in music?
Phil Snedecor:
Well the first thing you got to realize is you have to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. The problem is there’s a gazillion musicians out there, people with music degrees out there and they’re all wanting people to call them. They are all sitting by their phone going why is my phone not ringing, and that’s part of the problem. Everybody wants jobs but nobody is willing to go out there and make the rain. See you got to go out and make a situation where musicians are employed. That starts with getting either yourself or your group out there playing and creating a job where there were no jobs before and that’s exactly what I did.
I was like well I’m just going to go start playing. Then somebody’s going to hear it and start hiring me or I’m going, so I would go…
Thomas Brown:
Seriously, that’s what you did?
Phil Snedecor:
Absolutely. You got to go make rain.
Thomas Brown:
Can you walk me through what you did, more detail?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, so let’s just take Washington Symphonic Brass for instance. Okay, so in 1993 we got together and we thought, well we want to play this concert and we’re just going to all do it for free because we want to play at Fanfare Liturgique and some of my arrangements and the Requiem for the End of Time and some other things and we’re just going to play this concert and nobody’s going to get any money and we’re going to invite a bunch of people and we did.
People loved it and we played the next one and then pretty soon people started taking notice and we actually started a concert series at Saint Luke where we had that first concert, they started putting some money into it, we started getting a following, we started getting brass quintet and quartet and dectet gigs off of that, paid. So pretty soon we were the official brass players for the National Cathedral and the Shrine at the Catholic University and Saint Matthews Cathedral and things like that where they’re not just hiring a bunch of freelancers they’re hiring the Washington Symphonic Brass Quintet or a group of players from the Washington Symphonic Brass or the whole 17 piece Washington Symphonic Brass to come play this and I can pay these people because this money’s freed up because they want us. That’s work that wasn’t really there before, this is not just Christmas and Easter, these are events and things that wouldn’t normally have brass players but they want us because they’ve heard us in X, Y and Z situation. So, I’m actually making work for players.
Thomas Brown:
That’s fascinating.
Phil Snedecor:
We also do a good job accompanying choirs. There are number of choirs in the DC area that would have us on either their Christmas shows or their other shows where we would accompany them, instead of hiring maybe an organ and a couple instruments, they’d hire the Washington Symphonic Brass to accompany them and I would do these arrangements that would work with them. That’s the other thing that worked, is that I could take basically any tune and say okay well we’ll make this work for the instruments we have. It was very successful that way and players would come to me and say, hey thanks for this, this is more work than has been in the area before and its enjoyable work.
Thomas Brown:
So, take a proactive approach and go out and get it.
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, go make some rain.
Thomas Brown:
Don’t just sit there by the phone, yeah.
Phil Snedecor:
Don’t sit by the phone.
Thomas Brown:
That’s great advice.
Phil Snedecor:
The other thing is if you’re a freelancer, you have a job. Your job is freelancing, it’s an eight hour a day job. If you sit and get up in the morning and turn on Netflix and start watching Netflix you’re not doing your job. Get your butt out of bed, go work eight hours doing something that’s going to further your freelancing career. Either practice, work on your website, make some phone calls, go out and play on the street, I don’t care what you do. Do it for eight hours, then you can have a beer.
Thomas Brown:
I’m so inspired right now. I just want to run out and do it. [laughter]
[non-interview conversation]
Phil Snedecor:
I don’t want to preach, but I mean so many people get out of school and they go, I got my degree, why isn’t the phone ringing. It’s like go out, get your butt out of bed, go do something. But you got to be excited about what you’re doing to do that, and so many people I think kind of like playing the music but don’t really love playing music and I think you’ve got to have that, you’ve got to find that in yourself and go out and sell your craft. You got to sell it to other people. If you don’t like it your audience isn’t going to like it. You’ve got to really love it and the audience is going to go, oh wow, why’s that guy like that so much, maybe there’s something in that.
Thomas Brown:
Interesting. Last question I have before the monster round. Could you please describe your greatest musical experience of your life, or one of them, I know it’s hard to pick one. First one that comes to mind.
Phil Snedecor:
Mahler 2, Yuri Temirkanov, Baltimore Symphony.
Thomas Brown:
Oh boy.
Phil Snedecor:
Yuri was, is an amazing musician and he has more expression with his eyebrows than most people have with their entire body. He doesn’t talk much. What I love about conductor is if you’re not speaking a lot, because music is not a verbal art form so you can’t conduct a little, put your hand out and go blah, blah, blah, blah at the orchestra and expect that to convey the message you want to convey. He puts his hands down, if he puts his hands down, most of the time he’s just doing different things with his body but he would stop and say, “Shelly, popia.” [ph] and then he’d start again and everybody knew exactly what the hell he was saying and he didn’t say anything and so that was just a great experience. That was a long time ago.
Thomas Brown:
That’s so much better than my Mahler 2 when I was in college. I was playing offstage and the singer stood up right in front of the camera, they had a camera feed for us offstage, the singer stands up right in front on the camera right before we’re going to play like oh no, what are we doing. I don’t know what happened.
Phil Snedecor:
I’ve got a great story about that though because at the same Mahler 2 I was playing onstage and offstage and so I was playing second offstage. Ed Hoffman was playing first offstage and he had to play that, “Bom bee” [singing] and then echo “Bom bee” [singing softly] so he wanted to play the second echo into a base case backstage and he wanted me to hold his music. So, this is all kind of done after the rehearsals are over he’s like can you come hold my music for blah, blah, blah. But then I have to go, “Bom, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba” [singing] after that and so there’s, I’m over there holding the music for the base case and that echo it dawns on me that oh shit, I have to go over here and play this solo and I can’t see the monitor, I don’t know where we are, so I give him his music back and I go over and I don’t know where we are and then Tim McConiff [ph] on the thing just starts going, he’s just waiting for me and then at some point I just go “Bom, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba” [singing] and he goes with me, right. My saving grace is Tim McConiff never knew who was playing what back there. So, he didn’t fire me but he probably should have.
Thomas Brown:
All right so this is the monster round. Are you ready for the monster round?
Phil Snedecor:
I’m ready.
Thomas Brown:
This is where we do short answers, rapid fire questions, first thing that comes to your mind.
Phil Snedecor:
I’m nervous.
Thomas Brown:
Phil Snedecor monster round. Here is it. Given the choice between a slingshot and a musket in a gladiator contest, what do you choose?
Phil Snedecor:
Slingshot.
Thomas Brown:
Ooh, why?
Phil Snedecor:
It worked for Davie. Right.
Thomas Brown:
Sure, sure. When your car gets stuck in the mud do you call AAA, your wife, the Coast Guard or go find some plywood and get her done?
Phil Snedecor:
Plywood.
Thomas Brown:
Okay. Favorite movie you don’t want to admit that you like.
Phil Snedecor:
Aladdin.
Thomas Brown:
You really like Aladdin?
Phil Snedecor:
Are you kidding? Robin Williams and that sound track, absolutely.
Thomas Brown:
Who was the trumpet player who made you come closest to quitting the trumpet?
Phil Snedecor:
Myself.
Thomas Brown:
Ooh, wow. Didn’t see that one calling. [non-interview conversation] Favorite concerto?
Phil Snedecor:
Demasi.
Thomas Brown:
Favorite jazz trumpet player after 1980?
Phil Snedecor:
Terrell Stafford.
Thomas Brown:
Ooh. Least favorite trumpet technique?
Phil Snedecor:
Pedal tones.
Thomas Brown:
Have you ever gone cow tipping or worn overalls for professional reasons?
Phil Snedecor:
No.
Thomas Brown:
Okay. Who is the best second trumpet player of all time?
Phil Snedecor:
Vincent Cichowicz.
Thomas Brown:
If every trumpet player in the world today had to copy one player, who should it be?
Phil Snedecor:
Maurice Andre.
Thomas Brown:
Favorite painting?
Phil Snedecor:
The Mona Lisa.
Thomas Brown:
What piece would you be glad to never see again? Piece of music?
Phil Snedecor:
Adam’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
Thomas Brown:
Gosh I hate that thing.
Phil Snedecor:
No offense to John, it’s just more fun to listen to than to play.
Thomas Brown:
Yes, it is, yes, it is. What’s the single biggest mistake you see young trumpet players making?
Phil Snedecor:
Thinking about the trumpet instead of music.
Thomas Brown:
Favorite musician joke?
Phil Snedecor:
What burns longer a trumpet or a trombone?
Thomas Brown:
What? [laughter] There is no answer, it’s just a question, okay. [laughing] Which trumpet player, living today, would you pay to go see, right now?
Phil Snedecor:
Oh, so many.
Thomas Brown:
I know, yeah, I didn’t ask that very well. Top three that you would pay to go see? First three you think of.
Phil Snedecor:
Jens Lindemann, Ryan Anthony and Wynton Marsalis.
Thomas Brown:
Besides family members and friends who has been the most influential person in your life?
Phil Snedecor:
I’ll say Arnold Jacobs.
Thomas Brown:
What would be the title of your autobiography?
Phil Snedecor:
Making Rain.
Thomas Brown:
Last question. What would you like your legacy to be?
Phil Snedecor:
That I was a good person.
Thomas Brown:
Phil Snedecor, Thanks so much for joining us. It was a lot of fun.
Phil Snedecor:
Thanks for having me.
Leave a comment and let us know what you liked or didn't like.
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By Monster Oil
4.6
2222 ratings
Monster skills: making lubes, long-distance milkshake consumption, wearing colorful pants, water-balloon popping, assembling egg tacos... the list goes on.
Monster shortcomings: manners.
We contact this big fancy famous musicians, con them into getting together with us ("Don't worry, it's just an interview, it'll just take a few minutes of your tiiiiime, we proooooomise!!"), then spring ridiculous ideas on them.
"DANCE!! TOOT YOUR HORN FOR US!!"
"INVITE US INTO YOUR HOME SO WE CAN DEMAND OUTRAGEOUS TASKS OF YOU!!"
"YOUR COFFEE IS TASTY!"
You'd think, with manners so egregiously poor, that we'd just never even get to the interview part. The lesson?... I guess there's really no lesson – just wanted to say all that crap because what happens afterwards is usually a nice round 30-45 minutes of musical-learning-magic.
Enter Phil Snedecor.
That story above was about him and we did that—and his interview really IS magic.
Having trouble getting motivated today? Were you already about to procrastinate for the next half-hour?
Perfect. Make this your procrastination and watch your productivity soar afterwards. Guaranteed or no money back!
Enjoy.
Oh yeah, hey, he's a great writer too and you won't be sorry for checking out his stuff. Links below the video!
Phil Snedecor sits down with the Monster Oil dudes in a Brass Chat for the ages. We talk Arnold Jacobs, Mahler Miscues, why you should be a musician first and a trumpet player second, and much more in this fabulous trumpet interview. Enjoy!
Resources
WATCH THE TEASER EPISODE - "'Trumpet Challenge' with Phil Snedecor" - https://youtu.be/gq6SsN56EzA
Purchase Phil’s Etude books - http://www.pasmusic.com/PAS_Music/Etude_Books.html
Download a visual of the “air balancing” technique described by Phil at time marking 6:16.
Listen to Phil playing several excerpts from his NEW “Lyrical Etudes for Trumpet, Volume 2”.
Find Phil online - personal website, Washington Symphonic Brass website, Twitter, Facebook, LInkedIn.
+ Transcript of our Interview with Phil Snedecor (Click to Expand)
Thomas Brown:
Hey everybody welcome back to Brass Chats once again. Today we’re sitting down with a gentleman who teaches at the Hart School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut and he has played with pretty much every kind of ensemble you can think of including the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony and the Washington Symphonic Brass. Mr. Phil Snedecor. Thanks so much for being with us.
Phil Snedecor:
Thanks for having me, appreciate it.
Thomas Brown:
Let’s get right down to brass tacks, my favorite question. How did you get good at trumpet?
Phil Snedecor:
Ha. [laughter]
Thomas Brown:
Yeah, it’s a loaded question but people think you’re an amazing trumpet player. We think you’re an amazing trumpet player, we want to know what you did, especially from a younger age, more as a student to get really good.
Phil Snedecor:
That’s an interesting question. I just didn’t quit. That’s the only thing I did to get good because eventually I was going to beat my head against the wall enough times to get good but I just had to keep doing it. I almost quit a hundred times, actually.
Thomas Brown:
Seriously?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, oh yeah.
Thomas Brown:
Tell me about it.
Phil Snedecor:
Well, you know I went to Eastman and I was alternating between being a star and not being able to play anything and toward the end of my time at Eastland I just had kind of overuse syndrome. I was playing in everything from the jazz ensemble to the graduate brass quintet to orchestra to everything. I played first trumpet on the Eastman Wind Ensemble, recording with Wynton Marsalis, the Carnival cd which was a huge highlight, still is, in my career and it was great to hang out with Wynton and perform with all these great other players, Jim Wilt was on that session and Doug Prosser, great section to Bob Feller and Jerry Keener, all these great players in that section and we all played C trumpets in the section and then went and played at Shepherd’s Creek Cornet, it was awesome.
I was playing well then, shortly thereafter I just kind of went back and forth between literally not being able to play anything and playing great.
Thomas Brown:
Who were you studying with at the time?
Phil Snedecor:
Barbara Butler and Charlie Geyer.
Thomas Brown:
Oh, so it’s like both, I don’t remember how that worked.
Phil Snedecor:
I studied with Charlie for four years and then for my last year there in grad school I studied with Barbara, which was great. They were great. They didn’t, neither of them really knew what to do with my chop breakdown and so I did a brief stent with the Dallas Brass which was great but it also magnified the fact that I really needed to go get my act together and so I went to see Arnold Jacobs in Chicago and I studied with him for four years.
Thomas Brown:
Seriously?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, oh yeah.
Thomas Brown:
So, weekly lessons.
Phil Snedecor:
Well no, not really. So, the story is this. In high school I studied with a trumpet player named Don Jacoby in Dallas off and on he was an old school, old style jazz player that used to play with Les Brown. Really great person and great teacher. I went back to him after Eastman and he’s like I don’t know what to do with you I don’t know. So, he says, and his nickname was Jake, so he says I’m going to call the other Jake and we’re going to set you up there. So, he calls him up and says, Jake, this is Jake, you got to see this guy. He’s a good guy but I don’t know what to do with him.
I fly to Chicago, I basically camp out on Arnold Jacobs doorstep. I go and see him at Ravinia like three weeks in a row. I was like Mr. Jacobs could you teach me? He’s like see me next week. He put me off for three weeks. He said that was the test to see if I really wanted to study with him. Then finally he got me in the door and did some things and tweaked what I was doing and basically kind of got me thinking down another path. I was fine for a while.
Thomas Brown:
What was the issue? What did you guys do?
Phil Snedecor:
Well, how did I temporarily get out of it or how did I permanently get out of it? Temporarily I forgot about thinking about music and I was just thinking about all the mechanics of playing the trumpet. Jacobs is really good about getting you out of that. So, here’s what he did and I told this to a few other people recently and that is that he, he looked out the window and said see those guys down there playing on the street? He says you need to do something like that. I was like, what do you mean? He says you need to go play for somebody, not think about playing the trumpet. I was like well I’ve never done that in my life I was like what do you mean play on the street?
So, I’m walking out of his studio and I go down there and I kind of look at those guys and I’m listening to them they’re sounding pretty good, there’s a little brass quartet. They were called the Brass Factory Brass and so I listened to them for a while and they were sounding pretty good and after they got done I said, you guys do this every day? They said well we do it every other day but on Tuesday this guy’s not going to be there so, you got a trumpet on your back, do you want to play. Like yeah. So, Tuesday I show up with my trumpet and I start playing with these guys and man it was a completely different world. I just forgot about how to play the trumpet and remember why I play the trumpet. Because all these people rushing by, there not like judging me. There like, just listening. So, we’re playing The Barber of Seville Overture, we’re playing William Tell and we’re playing all these crazy transcriptions and I’m having fun and it kind of got me out of it, temporarily.
Thomas Brown:
This was the temporary fix?
Phil Snedecor:
That went on and on for years. You know I mean, I actually pretty much found my voice then and the way I played. But I think for a long time I played in a way that was detrimental to really going to the next level and recently, in the last five years I’ve really kind of figured out how I do what I do and how to do it more efficiently and I can teach that as well and I’ll just, I’ll give you an example. Tom Hooten actually touched on this in his interview with you guys and I want to explain that because Tom just said you know, he kept working and he kept working and he didn’t understand why he wasn’t any better and he kind of knew that the answer wasn’t in the standard pedagogy of just use more air all the time because he kind of intuitively knew that.
Five years ago, I also knew that and I kept thinking there’s got to be a different way because the old saying if you keep doing something the same way you’ll get the same results. At some point, I thought you know, there’s got to be a better way. So, I rebalanced my playing and now I use, I use air, but it’s constant supported air and it’s not blowing the crap out of the trumpet and you can’t possibly take this hole and stick it into this hole and blow the crap out of it and expect anything but massive back pressure right here and when I thought about that and I realized that that’s what Arnold Jacobs had been saying the whole time.
He did this thing called, he did this thing every time I went to his studio he said oh, do this, [blowing noise] he said that’s a lot of effort, not much air and then he’d say do this [breathing noise] he’d say that’s a lot of air, not much effort. You want as much like the second one as possible. So, I thought that meant go [blowing noise] into this small hole which actually created [blowing noise] this back pressure. Once I realized that since he’s a tuba player he could go [blowing noise] into his tuba mouthpiece and I can’t really do that in this hole and I rebalanced my air, everything’s so much easier.
Thomas Brown:
Now this five years ago, you’re talking about?
Phil Snedecor:
This is five years ago.
Thomas Brown:
This is recent history.
Phil Snedecor:
This is after I’ve had a lot of successes on the trumpet but still never really knowing what the hell was going on. You know some days it would feel great and other days it would be like what’s going on? Now I don’t really have that many crappy days because even if it’s a crappy day if I concentrate on everything feeling [blowing noise] by balancing out the blow into the trumpet, eventually it just becomes easy. It becomes no back pressure. So, I can play pretty much anything I want now and not feel that pounding against my chops.
Thomas Brown:
It’s efficient now?
Phil Snedecor:
It’s efficient, it’s much more efficient and that what players, these great players that we see on TV and we go hear them play. When we hear Maurice André and all these amazing players in our lives, that’s what they did the whole time but they wouldn’t always know how to explain it. Like I studied with Bud Herseth for a couple of years I was in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Herseth lessons, the sum total of Herseth’s lessons was me coming in and Mr. Herseth is it okay, I’m going to play for you and I’d play Petrushka and he’d go nah and he’d grab his mouthpiece and he’d grab my horn and stick his mouthpiece in my horn and he’d play it and he’d say do it like that. Throw my horn back to me and I’d try to play it for him.
His was all about thinking about what product you wanted and he was so stubborn he wasn’t going to accept anything less out of himself or his students. He didn’t really know how to teach. Okay you have to rebalance this and you have to do that. He wasn’t for that. He wanted to just have the product in his mind.
For me I needed some rebalancing and I would do that at various points in my career but I really feel like I understand it now. I’m working with my students on it. It’s been amazingly successful with my students. I recognize this in my students now and I’m able to explain it and we also do this focal thing where we’re singing in falsetto so that you’re inside oral cavity is more well positioned to do this blow rather than just going just [blowing noise] and everybody, most people play [trumpet playing]. That’s their general and they go up and down from there right. So, I want their blow to be [trumpet playing] so when I wake you up at two in the morning and I stick a trumpet in your hand [trumpet playing] is where you go.
Okay, so [singing] and if you sing that note [singing] that is where you want to play the trumpet. So, if I want to play [trumpet playing] I can play that much easier if my center of my face is [trumpet playing] right. As opposed to [trumpet playing] right, everybody spends all day there, right. All their warm up there. And I tell my students [trumpet playing] to warm up in that register and make that the center of your…
Thomas Brown:
That’s where the trumpets played.
Phil Snedecor:
That’s the money notes ladies and gentlemen. Nobody gives you money to go [trumpet playing] [laughter] I mean how many recording sessions do you show up and that’s on it? So, we’re spending all our time doing all that crap and we really need to get the money notes free and easy like Arnold Jacobs [blowing noise] and the only way to do that is not necessarily go [blowing noise] into the horn. Is this too technical for this interview?
Thomas Brown:
No this is all great.
Phil Snedecor:
So, I think this is what Tom Hooten was trying to say but he wasn’t comfortable necessarily going into it but I listen to him play now and I think wow. See he’s somebody that actually stepped up through playing ability and he’s amazing right now. I respect the hell out of him because he has solved all his own problems.
Thomas Brown:
Yeah, he said he couldn’t play a High C in the Marine Band.
Phil Snedecor:
That’s right and when he was in the DC area I hired him a few times and he was a great musician but you could tell he was working some things out on the trumpet, like I was. He kept at it and kept at it and he would practice and he would work hard and man, he really did it.
Thomas Brown:
What qualities do you ascribe to your best students?
Phil Snedecor:
Persistence.
Thomas Brown:
Oh really.
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, they just don’t quit and they take responsibility for their own playing. They do this. They sit in the practice room and they go okay Mr. Snedecor has given me X, Y and Z to do, I’ve got to figure this out, I got to figure out how to sound good on this, and they do that. That’s the best students. The ones that are in my career that I’ve had that I would describe as not my best students have said to themselves well he’s going to just teach me this and at the end of my study with him I’ll just be a good player and I think that doesn’t work out so well for them.
Thomas Brown:
Now we’ve already talked about this quite a bit but I’d like to ask the question anyways. If you could name two or three of the most important things the teachers in your life have told you? Trumpet teachers.
Phil Snedecor:
Well, starting with John Nelson always think music. Try to forget you are playing the trumpet and then I’ll expound on that and say always try to get your audience to forget that you’re playing the trumpet. Try to play music first and trumpet later so that it doesn’t matter what instrument’s in your hand you’re communicating with them through your instrument and the instrument’s just secondary because this is just a piece of plumbing. And so many people play trumpet first and then throw some music in there later and I think that’s too bad because you can have these note perfect performances and it’s not so hot. Because it doesn’t speak to anybody and if you can just play music first I think that’s the main goal of any teacher is to get your student to play music.
Thomas Brown:
Now what about Barbara and Charlie?
Phil Snedecor:
Oh, they were great. Charlie actually very much into music motivation and he would pick it up and just sound wonderful and he would, he was somewhat like Herseth in that he was always talking about the music, what the music should be doing. Not too much about how to play it which was great and then Barbara is a little more analytical. She’s of course, as far as I’m concerned both those guys are the dream team of trumpet players right now, trumpet teachers right now, as far as having the best students and the best orchestras and they have really got it down as to what these students need. She really thinks a lot about each individual as far as what they need either trumpet wise. She told me one time, if I need to be their biggest cheerleader I will. If I need to be an articulation Nazi I will. If I need to build them up one way and tear them down another way, she just knows how to deal with each individual student and I really respect that. I mean they both really are such a great team and I respect them.
Thomas Brown:
What about Bud? Did he give you any gems that you remember that, I mean you talk about that it was very difficult because he wasn’t the best teacher necessarily as far as pedagogical concepts, but did he say anything or do anything that really sticks with you that you were like, oh wow.
Phil Snedecor:
He said the most aggressive playing that he ever does is in piassen [ph 0:14:00] mode.
Thomas Brown:
What the hell does that mean?
Phil Snedecor:
It means that when you’re playing really soft you still have to have a lot of energy behind it and you can’t just go blah. He could play incredibly soft. There was that famous Song of the Nightingale recording with Reiner that is just some of the most beautiful trumpet playing in the world. He talked about that to me and he said I just had to really focus and be aggressive in that piano.
That makes a lot of sense because you can’t just let everything go to flab because it’s still got to be vibrant you know. He talked about loud far away. So, it’s like he’s playing loud [trumpet playing] so really loud, far away, so you’re hearing it from the next county but it’s still this vibrant energy and he demonstrated that for me. It’s amazing.
Thomas Brown:
So, he played the Nightingale for you?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, a little bit of it not the whole thing. It was quite an experience.
Thomas Brown:
Yeah. Well let’s switch gears for a second and talk about some of your writing. Particularly your Etude books. They’re pretty much required at a number of universities now and a number of places. I’ve been through them, Joel’s been through some of them.
Phil Snedecor:
Have you got Volume 2 yet?
Thomas Brown:
No.
Phil Snedecor:
We’ll have to fix that before you leave.
Thomas Brown:
My favorite is the Low Etudes. Low playing is one of my Achilles heals, it’s always been a problem of mine so I find it’s a really intelligently written book, it doesn’t just stay down the whole time and it really helps to put you in a positive frame of mind about low playing and I really like it. Let’s talk about all of your books because I don’t even know what all of your books are. How many books do you have out now?
Phil Snedecor:
Five or six. I’ve got a trombone book which is basically the first lyrical Etudes transcribed for trombone. But there’s Lyrical Trumpet Volume 1 and 2, there’s the Low Etudes for Tuba, there’s Low Etudes for Trumpet, those are the four main ones and then I’ve got another one in the works called Lyrical Orchestral Etudes. So, things on Moller Five [ph] like the lyrical solo from Moller Five I’ve written an entire etude on that. Shostakovich First Symphony [singing] I’ve got a whole etude written on that so there’s going to be one coming out for that.
I’ve got a lot of calls from tuba players wanting me to do the Low Etudes for Tuba Volume 2 so I really want to do that. But it’s fun to write these, I mean they’re just melodies. The cool thing is I don’t have to sit down and work out entire orchestral arrangements of these things or piano arrangements, I just write the melodies and in the end, that’s what we have fun doing as musicians, right. I always thought that etude books were way too technical. I mean with the obvious exceptions, and the ones that were the exceptions were the Longinotti and Shirla [ph] and things like that were fun to play and that’s why people played them year after year after year. I thought I want to write something like that so I guess I’ve done that, in that people are playing them.
Thomas Brown:
Absolutely. Yeah, they are a lot of fun to play that’s one of my go to books.
Phil Snedecor:
If you like playing it you’re going to learn more from it because you like playing it.
Thomas Brown:
Now you’ve done an amazing job. We’ve talked to several of our other brass chatters about freelancing. We just did Allan Dean last month and he talked about freelancing, we talked to Mark Gould about it in the state of the music world and lot of things like if you don’t get an orchestral job or a military band or something that gives you that pension and all that or a university job how do you forge a career? You’ve done quite a bit of freelancing throughout your life in just making a lot of different things work. What’s your advice to people looking to freelance and cobble together a career in music?
Phil Snedecor:
Well the first thing you got to realize is you have to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. The problem is there’s a gazillion musicians out there, people with music degrees out there and they’re all wanting people to call them. They are all sitting by their phone going why is my phone not ringing, and that’s part of the problem. Everybody wants jobs but nobody is willing to go out there and make the rain. See you got to go out and make a situation where musicians are employed. That starts with getting either yourself or your group out there playing and creating a job where there were no jobs before and that’s exactly what I did.
I was like well I’m just going to go start playing. Then somebody’s going to hear it and start hiring me or I’m going, so I would go…
Thomas Brown:
Seriously, that’s what you did?
Phil Snedecor:
Absolutely. You got to go make rain.
Thomas Brown:
Can you walk me through what you did, more detail?
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, so let’s just take Washington Symphonic Brass for instance. Okay, so in 1993 we got together and we thought, well we want to play this concert and we’re just going to all do it for free because we want to play at Fanfare Liturgique and some of my arrangements and the Requiem for the End of Time and some other things and we’re just going to play this concert and nobody’s going to get any money and we’re going to invite a bunch of people and we did.
People loved it and we played the next one and then pretty soon people started taking notice and we actually started a concert series at Saint Luke where we had that first concert, they started putting some money into it, we started getting a following, we started getting brass quintet and quartet and dectet gigs off of that, paid. So pretty soon we were the official brass players for the National Cathedral and the Shrine at the Catholic University and Saint Matthews Cathedral and things like that where they’re not just hiring a bunch of freelancers they’re hiring the Washington Symphonic Brass Quintet or a group of players from the Washington Symphonic Brass or the whole 17 piece Washington Symphonic Brass to come play this and I can pay these people because this money’s freed up because they want us. That’s work that wasn’t really there before, this is not just Christmas and Easter, these are events and things that wouldn’t normally have brass players but they want us because they’ve heard us in X, Y and Z situation. So, I’m actually making work for players.
Thomas Brown:
That’s fascinating.
Phil Snedecor:
We also do a good job accompanying choirs. There are number of choirs in the DC area that would have us on either their Christmas shows or their other shows where we would accompany them, instead of hiring maybe an organ and a couple instruments, they’d hire the Washington Symphonic Brass to accompany them and I would do these arrangements that would work with them. That’s the other thing that worked, is that I could take basically any tune and say okay well we’ll make this work for the instruments we have. It was very successful that way and players would come to me and say, hey thanks for this, this is more work than has been in the area before and its enjoyable work.
Thomas Brown:
So, take a proactive approach and go out and get it.
Phil Snedecor:
Yeah, go make some rain.
Thomas Brown:
Don’t just sit there by the phone, yeah.
Phil Snedecor:
Don’t sit by the phone.
Thomas Brown:
That’s great advice.
Phil Snedecor:
The other thing is if you’re a freelancer, you have a job. Your job is freelancing, it’s an eight hour a day job. If you sit and get up in the morning and turn on Netflix and start watching Netflix you’re not doing your job. Get your butt out of bed, go work eight hours doing something that’s going to further your freelancing career. Either practice, work on your website, make some phone calls, go out and play on the street, I don’t care what you do. Do it for eight hours, then you can have a beer.
Thomas Brown:
I’m so inspired right now. I just want to run out and do it. [laughter]
[non-interview conversation]
Phil Snedecor:
I don’t want to preach, but I mean so many people get out of school and they go, I got my degree, why isn’t the phone ringing. It’s like go out, get your butt out of bed, go do something. But you got to be excited about what you’re doing to do that, and so many people I think kind of like playing the music but don’t really love playing music and I think you’ve got to have that, you’ve got to find that in yourself and go out and sell your craft. You got to sell it to other people. If you don’t like it your audience isn’t going to like it. You’ve got to really love it and the audience is going to go, oh wow, why’s that guy like that so much, maybe there’s something in that.
Thomas Brown:
Interesting. Last question I have before the monster round. Could you please describe your greatest musical experience of your life, or one of them, I know it’s hard to pick one. First one that comes to mind.
Phil Snedecor:
Mahler 2, Yuri Temirkanov, Baltimore Symphony.
Thomas Brown:
Oh boy.
Phil Snedecor:
Yuri was, is an amazing musician and he has more expression with his eyebrows than most people have with their entire body. He doesn’t talk much. What I love about conductor is if you’re not speaking a lot, because music is not a verbal art form so you can’t conduct a little, put your hand out and go blah, blah, blah, blah at the orchestra and expect that to convey the message you want to convey. He puts his hands down, if he puts his hands down, most of the time he’s just doing different things with his body but he would stop and say, “Shelly, popia.” [ph] and then he’d start again and everybody knew exactly what the hell he was saying and he didn’t say anything and so that was just a great experience. That was a long time ago.
Thomas Brown:
That’s so much better than my Mahler 2 when I was in college. I was playing offstage and the singer stood up right in front of the camera, they had a camera feed for us offstage, the singer stands up right in front on the camera right before we’re going to play like oh no, what are we doing. I don’t know what happened.
Phil Snedecor:
I’ve got a great story about that though because at the same Mahler 2 I was playing onstage and offstage and so I was playing second offstage. Ed Hoffman was playing first offstage and he had to play that, “Bom bee” [singing] and then echo “Bom bee” [singing softly] so he wanted to play the second echo into a base case backstage and he wanted me to hold his music. So, this is all kind of done after the rehearsals are over he’s like can you come hold my music for blah, blah, blah. But then I have to go, “Bom, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba” [singing] after that and so there’s, I’m over there holding the music for the base case and that echo it dawns on me that oh shit, I have to go over here and play this solo and I can’t see the monitor, I don’t know where we are, so I give him his music back and I go over and I don’t know where we are and then Tim McConiff [ph] on the thing just starts going, he’s just waiting for me and then at some point I just go “Bom, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba” [singing] and he goes with me, right. My saving grace is Tim McConiff never knew who was playing what back there. So, he didn’t fire me but he probably should have.
Thomas Brown:
All right so this is the monster round. Are you ready for the monster round?
Phil Snedecor:
I’m ready.
Thomas Brown:
This is where we do short answers, rapid fire questions, first thing that comes to your mind.
Phil Snedecor:
I’m nervous.
Thomas Brown:
Phil Snedecor monster round. Here is it. Given the choice between a slingshot and a musket in a gladiator contest, what do you choose?
Phil Snedecor:
Slingshot.
Thomas Brown:
Ooh, why?
Phil Snedecor:
It worked for Davie. Right.
Thomas Brown:
Sure, sure. When your car gets stuck in the mud do you call AAA, your wife, the Coast Guard or go find some plywood and get her done?
Phil Snedecor:
Plywood.
Thomas Brown:
Okay. Favorite movie you don’t want to admit that you like.
Phil Snedecor:
Aladdin.
Thomas Brown:
You really like Aladdin?
Phil Snedecor:
Are you kidding? Robin Williams and that sound track, absolutely.
Thomas Brown:
Who was the trumpet player who made you come closest to quitting the trumpet?
Phil Snedecor:
Myself.
Thomas Brown:
Ooh, wow. Didn’t see that one calling. [non-interview conversation] Favorite concerto?
Phil Snedecor:
Demasi.
Thomas Brown:
Favorite jazz trumpet player after 1980?
Phil Snedecor:
Terrell Stafford.
Thomas Brown:
Ooh. Least favorite trumpet technique?
Phil Snedecor:
Pedal tones.
Thomas Brown:
Have you ever gone cow tipping or worn overalls for professional reasons?
Phil Snedecor:
No.
Thomas Brown:
Okay. Who is the best second trumpet player of all time?
Phil Snedecor:
Vincent Cichowicz.
Thomas Brown:
If every trumpet player in the world today had to copy one player, who should it be?
Phil Snedecor:
Maurice Andre.
Thomas Brown:
Favorite painting?
Phil Snedecor:
The Mona Lisa.
Thomas Brown:
What piece would you be glad to never see again? Piece of music?
Phil Snedecor:
Adam’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
Thomas Brown:
Gosh I hate that thing.
Phil Snedecor:
No offense to John, it’s just more fun to listen to than to play.
Thomas Brown:
Yes, it is, yes, it is. What’s the single biggest mistake you see young trumpet players making?
Phil Snedecor:
Thinking about the trumpet instead of music.
Thomas Brown:
Favorite musician joke?
Phil Snedecor:
What burns longer a trumpet or a trombone?
Thomas Brown:
What? [laughter] There is no answer, it’s just a question, okay. [laughing] Which trumpet player, living today, would you pay to go see, right now?
Phil Snedecor:
Oh, so many.
Thomas Brown:
I know, yeah, I didn’t ask that very well. Top three that you would pay to go see? First three you think of.
Phil Snedecor:
Jens Lindemann, Ryan Anthony and Wynton Marsalis.
Thomas Brown:
Besides family members and friends who has been the most influential person in your life?
Phil Snedecor:
I’ll say Arnold Jacobs.
Thomas Brown:
What would be the title of your autobiography?
Phil Snedecor:
Making Rain.
Thomas Brown:
Last question. What would you like your legacy to be?
Phil Snedecor:
That I was a good person.
Thomas Brown:
Phil Snedecor, Thanks so much for joining us. It was a lot of fun.
Phil Snedecor:
Thanks for having me.
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