A “crab canon” is a piece of music that can read forward and backward–at the same time. It’s called a crab canon, because crabs seem to walk backwards. The musical term for backward is “retrograde,” and, sometimes, if we practice our difficult passages backwards, we get better at them. Retrograde practice.
My friend, Ralph Dudgeon, retired trumpet professor at SUNY Cortland (having served for 27 years there and having established himself as one of our great trumpet researchers), likes to practice in retrograde. When he saw that I had re-imagined the Clarke Second Study in triplets, he wrote an email to me.
And then Etude II this way:
There are many more examples. You can see them all here in this PDF. Clarke Study #2 Dudgeon
Important! Let me know if you like these, so I can pass it on to Ralph!