Carmine Caruso, Mandelbrot sets, and me
I have been asked a number of times about how my approach to brass playing differs from Carmine Caruso’s and I usually say something like “Well, I took Carmine’s ideas and threw a grenade in them. Then I picked up the pieces and found that they all looked pretty much the same.”
The fact of the matter is that the deeper you go into this thing the more you find similarities. As the Sufi saying goes, “As above, so below.” Mathematical constructs like the Mandelbrot set give very similar results as those that I discovered as I pushed deeper into Carmine’s seemingly simple exercises. Below is an animated version of such a fractal.
As above, so below.
Yup.
Approach the horn the same way.
The subtitle of my book is A Universal Theory Of Brass Relativity. I have found that what works on say tenor trombone in the middle register also works in its highest and lower registers, and further that it works on higher and lower pitched instruments as well.
As above, so below.
Have fun.
I am.
Later…
S.
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