hello trombonist teachers parents educators my name is Gerard Corelli some of my students have asked me from time to time how do I clean my trombone and I thought I'd put together a quick video and give you some tips and some things that I've learned over the years first question of course is how do I know it's time to clean my trombone well if you if you can't remember the last time you cleaned it or if you've ever have cleaned it then it's time to clean your trombone another way is to look inside the horn to see how dirty is so take the horn apart take the mouthpiece off in the Bell section and open up your slide straight up and down very carefully look down the pipe that you are playing into where your mouthpiece goes into may be closed one I get into a bright area if you see any kind of rough spots along the inside of that tube then it's definitely time to clean it if it's clean and shiny and smooth and you're okay so let's get some things ready before we start to clean the horn okay number one this is a trombone brush that will go inside the horn I've had this thing for several years and it's really one of the best products I've found it has a very hard plastic ball on the end here and a brush on the other end and this is what you're going to feed through the horn to clean it you're also going to need a good sized thick towel something soft and absorbent to wipe the horn down after you've cleaned it maybe a sponge like this for some of the outside surfaces and a mouthpiece brush this is going to go inside the mouth page to clean it and you're going to need basically some liquid dish soap all right I'm in the bathroom because we're gonna use the bathtub so I'll show you what we're going to do next in the bathtub I like to put either the soft rubber bath mat or a big towel down like this and then I'm going to fill up the bathtub with lukewarm water not very hot and I'm going to add to it a small amount of that dis detergent all right so I'm going to add about this might be too much maybe half of this into the warm water and again make sure that the water is not hot all right so walnuts up is filling up I'm taking my horn apart very carefully we don't want to offend or bang these these types at all we want to lay these down very carefully on the bottom of the tub and a slide same thing submerge them I'm going to put the mouthpiece in here as well and of their whole part the top part the turning slide you can take that off the horns completely apart very carefully not to bang anything we're gonna submerge all four five parts alright the horns been soaking for about 15 minutes in lukewarm water then reach in and grab that inner slide be very careful not to bang it bend it in anyway you're gonna take the end of this cleaner and just fish it through inside the trombone once you've got it through there pull it through you can get this brush a little bit wet too that'll help and do the other end same thing through the tube out the other end and pull it through careful not to bang anything into anything that's why we use the towel on the bottom this is your first time it might be a little tricky at first and pull it through and you let it soak again rinse it out and look down in there if it's still dirty maybe run it through a second time alright then we're going to take the slide section it's full of water probably at this point and we're going to fish this snake this through all the way through I usually go in the side that has the spit valve first and you have to just feed it through and like again you'll get good at this if you do it enough and you got your mouthpiece this is really not a mouthpiece brush but it will do the job right now just take that and push that through a couple of times this way you'll dislodge anything that might be in there and then you're gonna rinse it out so we're gonna rinse out part mouth I've got a towel on my table over here I'm gonna cut that down the slide with a nice clean brush like this or a sponge make sure that you hold the side that you're cleaning just gently wipe it down and give a little race I bet the water running through the shoes out the other end the feature you had all the stuff while liver cool technique I've got hanging right here on the door very carefully so nobody's around and it just hangs nice and safe slide section clean the outside a little bit if you like run a little water through there rinse the outer slides what you can do with them with a big bow on the bottom you can glow air through hit that'll get some of the other soapy water out of there another way to rinse it would be just to use a measuring cup like this and you can pour this right into the slide both in till it's filled up and that's going up do that a couple of times you okay so we've got our parts nice and clean you should be able to see a difference looking down the end of this pipe looking down the inner slide so you can get a shot of that should be a lot cleaner than it was before okay so now I'm going to dry the various parts of the horn just gently you don't want to bend these pipes you don't want it bang into it and you're going to take your parts it's okay if there's still a little wet in the inside of course because they're going to get lubricated and we're going to put the slide back together I always put the slide together from the top with the matching you don't want to bend it do it sideways and just put that in there lock that okay I'm going to hang this here nobody's around and I'm going to put my dry off the bail section the tuning slide forget one side of the tuning slide needs to be lubricated as I wipe that down and put just a tiny little bit of Vaseline on the end of that to help it to go in and then a little bit up here too and that should fit together really well it's a little tricky at first you may want to just push that in and push this one in make sure it's lubricated not too lubricated and then match these up usually one side is going to go in first and then it will meet the other side mouthpiece should be nice and clean you should get the outside of it too along the rim but if you look down through there should be pretty clean mouthpiece on connect the Bell and everybody has a lubricant they like I particularly like this Yamaha trombone slide lubricant I'll put links down so you'll see that as well shake that up somewhere around the middle of the slide a little bit of that when I lubricate the slide a little like that and then also you could do this this will spread the lubricant on the inside of the tubes up and up and down but do it very gently straight up and down don't apply any pressure on the tubes and you'll be good to go you got to have a spray bottle give it a little spray and you should be in shape and that's how you clean a trombone keep it clean keep practicing