Newhornist’s Blog

Learning the horn again!

Updates – School

I returned to school as a full time music student back in September. My plan had been to just take an ear training class and maybe a theory class but it turned out that our local community college required enrollment in all of their music classes. It was not possible to just take one class so I dove in and signed up as a full time music student.

In order to get into the music program I first had to take a music fundamentals class over the summer. I had the option to pass a test but since I didn’t have any formal music training I opted to take the class. It’s a good thing I did because I would not have passed the test. After the first week everything was new to me. Before I took this class I didn’t know how much I didn’t know.

I passed that class easily and started the full music program in the fall. This is a two year school so I need four semesters each of theory, aural skills, and applied music and two semesters each of piano and music history. The first six weeks of theory was basically a recap of the fundamentals class and then we got into new material and school got a lot harder.

I’ve discovered that it takes me much longer to do anything compared to the rest of the students in the class. Our professor will put a problem on the board or ask us to complete a set of questions in the workbook and expect that we will finish in a few minutes. Everyone does except me. He will give us homework that ‘should take half an hour’ and I spend several hours doing it. Tests are extremely challenging. I totally understand the material but I have to rush through the tests and I end up making really stupid mistakes.

I have different issues with aural skills. I used to have a really good ear. Since I started playing the horn again I’ve had problems with intonation and that was one of the reasons that I started thinking about taking an ear training class. Well I’ve learned that my good ear is not so good anymore. One of my problems is that I am having lots of trouble hearing harmonic intervals. In the first semester we got up to 5ths and sometimes I can recognize the interval instantly and other times I miss them by a mile. The farther I get from my vocal range, the harder it becomes for me to recognize the interval. Fortunately I do better with melodic intervals and therefore do reasonably well with dictation and sight singing.

Piano class was easy last semester but is much harder this semester. I have a different professor and her requirements are actually more stringent than those for our major instrument. I’m supposed to spend more time practicing the piano than I am practicing the horn. I don’t because the horn will not come in second to piano but I have to put in enough time to keep up an A grade.

Getting along with the other kids in the classes has been remarkably easy. I didn’t really know what to expect and considered ‘ugh, who’s that old lady in our class’ as a possibility. I’m very outgoing so I started to talk to them right away and fortunately after about three weeks they started to open up and talk to me and I think now that I’m thought of as just another ‘kid’ in the class except when they start cursing and then, amazingly, they apologize. My response is to thank them and point out that I have four kids and have ‘heard it all’ before.

So far I’m very happy with my decision to go back to school. I love the challenge and I’m doing well. I also have more playing opportunities than I would ever have without school. My horn lessons are going well and I’m improving slowly but steadily.

February 21, 2011 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , | 2 Comments

Updates – Nerves

I haven’t posted in about 5 months because I have been insanely busy with school and then the holidays and then school again. I’ll cover what’s been happening in the next few posts starting with performance anxiety.

I have a bad case of nerves and I can’t seem to play for people anywhere close to what I can do in the practice room. I’ve been working on this issue starting by attending ‘FAT’ camp run by Jeff Nelson at Indiana University back in August. ‘FAT’ stands for Fearless Auditioning Training. The week consists of some lectures and tools to help with nerves and lots and lots of playing for judges and for the other people in the class. The first time I had to play I was a basket case but as the week went on I did get more used to playing and had less anxiety. The last day was the ‘final’ mock audition which seemed to be more important than the previous ones. For me, this change brought back all the anxiety in spades.

I also think I shot myself in the foot by choosing music and excerpts that were a bit of a stretch for me. I think the biggest reason that I get nervous playing in front of people is that I don’t trust myself, I don’t trust that the correct note will come out of the horn, and I don’t have the confidence that I know the music well enough to play it decently. I don’t think having an audience is the problem. I can get up and speak in front of a thousand people, and I have done that during my former career, and have absolutely no nerves at all. I should have selected music that I knew inside and out. I think that would have shown me that I can play something I know without too many nerves.

I am getting better playing in front of my teachers. With my first teacher, Lynn Steeves, it took me many lessons to get calm. With Scott Bacon it took me months to get calmer and I only recently have gotten completely comfortable. When I met Debbie Schmidt when she was checking my horn she had me play for her and I was terrified. When I worked with Debbie for the FAT camp it took me a few lessons to put some form of decent playing together. With my latest teacher it took about three lessons for me to get calm and play the way I do when I’m alone.

When I got back from FAT camp I went to see a therapist to work on my nerves. These sessions helped quite a bit. She had me bring my horn and one of the things we worked on was picking up the horn and getting good imagery into my head. I had an audition for the college orchestra and for most of it I did okay. I think I played Strauss’ Nocturno reasonably well, the fast section at the end of Strauss 1 sort of okay, but then an A major scale was a disaster. I have discovered that I get more nervous instead of less nervous as I keep going.

I’ve had three more opportunities to play for people at school. Every time I play I get ever so slightly less nervous. By the time I got to my jury exam I played my three pieces decently and wasn’t too shaky. However, I completely blew an A flat major scale at the end. I need to keep finding opportunities to play which is hard to do.

My biggest accomplishment was playing Laudatio by Krol at my mother’s memorial concert a few weeks ago at the Manhattan School of Music. I managed to get up on stage in front of a room full of professional musicians and play decently. I was nervous but I managed to control it well enough. Last week I had an audition for band and I wasn’t very nervous. I didn’t play very well but that was because of stiff chops and not nerves. All in all I’m making progress.

February 5, 2011 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Summer 2010

I’ve been incredibly busy this summer hence the lack of posts. It seems I’ve been saying that since the spring and I guess I’ve just been gradually getting busier and busier.

In June I went to the International Women’s Brass Conference in Toronto and then straight to the Barry Tuckwell Institute (BTI). The brass conference was very good. Fergus McWilliam, hornist in the Berlin Philharmonic, led the best master class I ever went to. It’s hard to describe how but he managed to get 4 students to play about ten times better than they started out at the class. On top of that he was funny and a really nice guy. It was so good that after the hour and a half no one wanted to leave and they found another room for him so he could continue with more students. One of his rules is that he says to sing the piece, part or whatever until the intonation is spot on. Then whistle or ‘whoosh’ again with solid intonation, then buzz the mouthpiece again with solid intonation and then play the horn. The horn doesn’t go on the face until the intonation is perfect. Then he went on to talk about phrasing and to make the horn sing. I’m not really doing justice to what he said. I did try to follow his advice when I got home and discovered that I’m a really terrible singer.

I met Julie Landsman at the conference and in the small world category, my husband and Julie went to high school together. I found this out when I emailed him that I was about to go to her lecture and he said find out if that’s the Julie Landsman who played French Horn in my high school. So I asked her and she said she remembered him. Then at her lecture she announced to the entire audience that she “went to high school with Tina Barkan’s husband.” That was somewhat embarrassing. Her lecture was about how she managed to stay at the top of her game while getting older and finding the physical aspects of horn playing harder and harder to deal with. Those of us who are her age or older know exactly what she’s talking about.

On the second day of the conference I dropped my bell after trying to screw the bell on for at least 15 minutes. It fell about 1 foot onto carpeting but that was enough to have the screw ring go out of round and not screw on the horn. Of course I brought the good bell and not the stock bell. Fortunately one of the pros there loaned me an Alex 103 and I used it for the rest of the conference. Very different horn than my Otto. So I spent the rest of the conference texting Scott Bacon, who I bought my horn from, and making arrangements to get my horn fixed or borrow a horn since I was going straight from Toronto to Tuckwell and definitely not stopping at my house for my other bell. As it turned out Scott managed to get my bell on my horn, loaned me a fixed bell case, and said don’t take the bell off. I’m headed up to his shop on the 12th to get it fixed properly.

I enjoyed attending my second BTI. There was a lot of opportunity to play but the biggest thing to me was how much I have improved since I went last year. I had no trouble with the music the horn choir played or with the music in the quartet I was in. It was really nice to be able to play these pieces with the confidence that I could do it. Barry Tuckwell led a warm-up class where basically he said just warm up enough to be able to play. This is something that my new horn teacher is saying and I’ve been doing this with some success. The one thing that was quite disappointing was the master class that Barry held. I actually felt sorry for the students playing in the class. One student who did a nice job with a Mozart Concerto learned that she shouldn’t have water in her horn (there were one or two water pops.) Although this is true, I don’t think it was the learning experience she was hoping for.

Once I got home from these events I started taking a music fundamentals class at our local community college. (My July schedule was class, homework, exams, practice, duets, rehearsals, concerts, plus all the usual house stuff.) This class ended yesterday. Some of you may wonder why I would sign up for this class but I didn’t take any music classes in college so there are big gaps in my musical education. I mentioned in one of my posts from many months ago that I was thinking about going back to school for music. I needed to take this class in order to enroll in the music program at this school which I have done and I start classes on August 30th. I’m going to a community college in order to see if I really want to go back to school which is a major lifestyle change for me. They have an excellent music program and are less expensive than a four year school.

As if all this isn’t enough, before I start classes I am attending Jeff Nelson’s Fearless Camp at Indiana University. I have a really bad case of nerves when I play in front of anyone, even my teachers, and even when I have my recorder on to record my practices. I’m hoping that this class will help me overcome my nervousness. I’m leaving on the 12th and get home around August 24th – I’m driving to Indiana so the dates are iffy. School starts 6 days later. I think that’s enough for one summer.

August 6, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Train wreck

Well it’s happened. I completely blew an opening seven bar solo at a quartet performance at the beginning of June. My first note was extremely sharp, though I didn’t realize that at the time, and I felt like I started on the wrong note and every note after that sounded off to me. With that running in my head, I just couldn’t recover; in fact, I had no idea how to recover, and the whole solo was a fiasco.

I knew how to play the solo and I had just played it forty minutes earlier in a practice room without any problems including hitting the first note in tune. I know I do have problems with intonation but not usually to the extreme of this first note. So I’ve been asking myself what happened that made this first note so bad and one of the reasons goes back to the last rehearsal. I played horribly at the last rehearsal. Everything was off. Intonation, tonguing, fingering, rhythm, you name it, I blew it.

The only excuse I have for this is that we changed the seating because I asked (and boy do I regret that request) not to sit on the outside during the performance. This put me next to someone on my left. During the rehearsal I couldn’t hear what I was playing and that completely messed me up. I only figured this out on my way home or I would have asked to move back to my usual spot. I realized that I have never played with another horn directly on my left. In one of the bands I’m in I sit where the 1st horn would typically sit and I have a sax next to me. In the other band I sit on the end of the horn section but I am slightly curved toward the clarinets so the 3rd horn’s bell is not that close to me. With such a bad rehearsal as the last rehearsal before the recital, my confidence that I could play anything was shot. I was mentally in a really bad place. I didn’t have a positive experience to remember and rely on, just a horrible one.

Another reason is that I was nervous. There’s not much I can do about that except play more in public. Today I had a performance with a small brass ensemble and I had a four bar solo which was fine however it was in the middle of the piece. This leads to yet another reason why I messed up the solo. I have figured out that I have first-note-itis. I played 1st horn in the college orchestra back in the early seventies and the 1st chairs were invited to play with the local pro orchestra. We were doing Tchaik 5 and I had to play the famous solo. I chipped the first note. The fact that I remember this and almost nothing else about college orchestra I think is significant. What I realized is that I only think about that first note even though the rest of the solo was fine. And I always think of that note. So even almost 40 years later I worry excessively about first notes. Now I have to figure out how to get it out of my head.

Summer 2010 –>

June 20, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , | 5 Comments

Brahms Horn Trio

Last Sunday I performed the first movement of the Brahms Horn Trio at the adult chamber music recital at SUNY Stony Brook. This was a huge deal for me since it was my first performance for an audience, other than band concerts, since 1972. I signed up for this adult chamber music class run by Stony Brook last fall and this is the piece that I was assigned for the spring semester. I auditioned for this group for placement only and I thought I had really botched the audition. I guess not. A friend of mine also auditioned and she was placed into a wind quintet with much easier pieces. I always thought that she was a better player than me so it seemed odd to me that I was assigned the Brahms.

The first thing I did when I found out what I was playing was to call my horn teacher and ask if she thought there was any hope for me to play it successfully. I was very skeptical but she said that if I worked hard at it I could do it. To say that I have lived and breathed the Brahms for the past eight weeks would be an understatement. I played the Lowell Greer CD in my car endlessly, I studied the score, and I practiced it for hours each day.

My first rehearsal was pretty bad. I was nervous and I had a lot of trouble getting notes out of my horn. It was quite embarrassing. Fortunately our coach, the violinist, and the pianist were sympathetic and I did get better at each rehearsal. Up until the very last dress rehearsal I was having trouble with some of the rhythm in the 9/8 sections but I finally got it. I think I really tested our coach’s patience as I tried over and over again to get the rhythm right. I had no problem with it if I sang the part, it was just when I put the horn on my face that I kept missing it.

I think the performance was successful. My horn teacher said I should feel that the performance was successful if I played it at least 90% as good as the best I played it practicing. I think I did at least that. I felt good about it when we were done and several people came up to me and said it went well. I managed to get past my nervousness after the first few notes and I don’t think I missed many notes. I’ll know for sure when I hear the CD.

Next up is a performance on June 4th with the horn quartet that I am in. We are playing a Telemann piece, six pieces by Tscherepnine, and an excerpt from Der Freischutz. I am playing first horn for the 5th Tscherepnine piece so I have an opening seven bar solo. Sometimes in rehearsal I play this really well and other times it’s a disaster. Our last rehearsal is this Tuesday June 1st and I hope that I can nail the solo more than once so that I have at least some confidence at the performance.

Train wreck –>

May 28, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Recap – Part 2

Endurance:

I lasted about 20 minutes when I first picked up the horn. Then I spent months lasting only about 45 minutes until I got a tip to play for 20 minutes then rest for 20 minutes, play for 20, rest for 20 and play for 20 to push to an hour of practice daily. I did this for many months ultimately doing this on / off strategy for two practice sessions in the morning and again in the afternoon. On the days when I had band rehearsals or a lesson I could only warm up in the morning if I wanted any chops later in the day. Now I practice two hours daily, morning and afternoon, but without the 20 minute breaks. I also practice for a full hour in the morning before rehearsals or lessons. I occasionally put in three hours in a day though I do pay for that with poor endurance and/or sound quality about two days later.

I’m heading to the Barry Tuckwell Institute (BTI) again this June and we will be playing for 3 to 4 hours everyday. Last year I really, really struggled getting through all the playing and by the last day my chops were totally shot. So my plan is to try to build up to 3 hours a day, with breaks, so that I can do better at BTI.

Consistency:

For a long time I would have some good days followed by numerous bad days. I consider a ‘good’ day to be a day when I miss fewer notes and play with a decent sound quality. Really bad days are when I just can’t play anything right. I’ve learned that these really bad days occur when I don’t concentrate and use air properly. About six months ago I got to the point where I had about the same number of good days and bad days and they seemed to come in cycles. Three or four good days followed by three or four bad days.  Over time the bad days are getting less bad. When I changed my mouthpiece to the Moosewood AW11 I started having numerous good days and only an occasional bad day. I’ve just started using a Moosewood C8 (no rim change) and so far I’m not having any problems. Practicing is much more rewarding when the good days are so frequent.

Laziness:

For about six months I was very diligent about taking notes during both my practice sessions and my lessons. Then I stopped taking notes altogether. I even went through the effort of designing a practice log. I only used that for a week or two. I think the reason I stopped taking notes was that I was always writing the same things which got boring. I didn’t really have a good way of capturing small increments of progress. I was also recording myself occasionally and I stopped doing that as well.

I also get lazy and don’t really woodshed the problems. I know how to practice but playing something from start to finish is more fun. I don’t spend a lot of time with scales even though I know it’s really important. I think a lot of this comes from not having a specific goal of finishing something by a certain date. Recently I got into a quartet with a recital on June 4th and I’m also doing Brahms Trio on May 23rd. I have been much more diligent about how I practice now that I have a goal. This also makes me wonder why assignments from my teachers don’t have the same effect.

Brahms Horn Trio –>

May 4, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Recap – Part 1

It’s been two years since I started playing the horn again and one year since I started this blog. I’ve definitely improved and I’ve been thinking about all the things that I’ve changed or worked on and what has been the most help and the least help. I’ll start with equipment which, when I started playing, I was convinced would make a big difference in how well I played. I know now that equipment has much less impact compared to perseverance and practice.

Horns:

I started playing again using my old Yamaha 668. It was pretty clear quite early on that it wasn’t the best horn for me to be learning on. I had lots of trouble pushing air through it. I went on a search for a new horn and bought a Hoyer 6801 PMAL. This horn was easier for me to play and I really liked it but it had a manufacturing problem that made it play sharp. It took about six months but Hoyer finally provided a new tuning slide which solved the problem. However, by the time I got the new slide I was emotionally done with the horn. I bought a Dieter Otto 180K in gold brass and I love it.

Of course I have two years of playing under my belt now so how much is me just playing better and how much the actual horn contributes is unknown. I still have (unfortunately) both the Yamaha and the Hoyer so I could give them a try and see if I play them better than I used to.

Mouthpieces:

I started with the Yamaha mouthpiece that came with the Yamaha horn. Then I found my old Bach mouthpiece and I used that for a while. At my teacher’s recommendation I switched to a Farkas MC and then I went to a Moosewood B12. Each one these changes convinced me that the mouthpiece I was trying out was “the one” for about two weeks. Then inevitably I would deteriorate to playing worse than I was with the previous mouthpiece I was using. When I bought my Otto horn I switched to a Laskey mouthpiece because I had heard that a geyer wrap horn played better with a bowl shaped mouthpiece. This mouthpiece was a disaster and probably the worst mouthpiece switch I’ve made. After the Laskey I went back to my Moosewood B12 and about 6 weeks ago I switched to a Moosewood annealed Megamoose AW11. With this mouthpiece I was missing a lot fewer notes and everything seemed to be easier however it makes the horn sound too bright. A few days ago I switched again to a Moosewood C8. This mouthpiece seems to have the same ease of playing characteristics as the AW11 but with a much nicer, darker sound. I haven’t changed rims, just the shank and I when I keep the same rim I don’t seem to run into the mouthpiece crash problem.

Gizmos:

I’ve bought a Dennis Wick mouthpiece weight, a Moosewood stem weight and a device, which I’ve forgotten the name of, that is supposed to improve the flow of air through the horn by placing it in the tuning slide. With each one, for a week or so, I felt that they helped. In the end, they made no difference whatsoever.

I lean towards finding a mechanical solution to problems with my playing but the chances are pretty high that if I hadn’t made any of these equipment changes I would  be at a similar level of playing ability as I am with the changes.

Recap – Part 2 –>

May 3, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Blogging consistency

I’ve been crazy busy for the past two months and I’ve let my blogging fall behind. Between two community bands with concerts coming up now, a chamber music group and a quartet plus lessons, two hours of practice each day and the rest of life it’s been chaotic to say the least. Fortunately things are calming down and I’ll get back to posting at least weekly.

Recap – Part 1 –>

May 2, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , | Leave a Comment

Improvement

The weekend before last I went to the Northeast Horn Workshop at the University of Delaware. Compared to the one in Ithaca a year ago where I felt totally out of place, at this one I felt quite at ease. Another year of playing really made a difference. For the most part I was able to keep up during the ensemble readings and I could really tell that I have improved a lot. I also learned a lot more from the lectures and master classes than I did the year before.

I’ve also made another mouthpiece change which, so far, has made a big change for the better with my playing. I’d been thinking about changing the stem of my mouthpiece for a while because the one I’ve been using was made fatter to try to compensate for my former Hoyer horn and it’s sharpness problem.  At the workshop I chatted with Scott Bacon about this and he suggested that I try a Moosewood AW11 Megamoose. This stem is heavier and has a deeper cup than the Moosewood B12 that I was using. I was under the impression, as it turns out incorrectly, that I would play better with a smaller cup and smaller bore so I’m very surprised at  how well I play with this stem. Among other things, I’m missing a whole lot fewer notes, slurs are better, my range has stayed the same and playing just seems easier. Plus my endurance is better. I didn’t change my rim so I don’t think I’m going to go through one of the new mouthpiece disasters that I have in the past.

In addition to the two bands that I’m in, I’m playing in a horn quartet this spring as well as a chamber music group. Learning the new music doesn’t seem as hard as it used to be. In the chamber music group I’ve been assigned the 1st movement of the Brahms Horn Trio. As I’m working on the music, and forcing myself to learn Eb transposition, I’ve managed to go from being completely terrified to thinking that maybe I can actually play it. I’m also starting to feel better about playing 16th notes. A couple of months ago I just couldn’t seem to get my fingers and my brain to sync up for really fast passages. I still can’t get quite up to the tempo the passages should be played at but I’m a lot closer than I used to be. In the horn quartet we are working on a Telemann piece that I’m feeling quite positive about. As recently as last week I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to play it. I think that for the first time since I started playing again I actually believe that I have gotten measurably better and it’s a nice feeling.

Blogging consistency –>

March 24, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Rehearsal Etiquette Update

Last night’s band rehearsal was with the ‘serious’ band. Again it was poorly attended though more people showed up than at the last few rehearsals. I guess the concert this coming Sunday made some folks feel some responsibility. Well, I think all the repressed annoyance broke out and mostly not in a good way.

Chatter and noodling were constant. No fun stuff just disrespectful nonsense. What’s interesting is that the conductor didn’t make any attempt to stop it verbally. He just calmly said, “from the top” and whoever was listening started playing. This new tactic by the conductor worked better than the no talking berating we usually get from him.

After band a few of the members and I talked about what’s going wrong with the band. We all agreed that it wasn’t fun anymore and that most were going because the band has been around forever and they will just weather the storm. Then we talked about why the band wasn’t fun anymore. The obvious annoyance by the conductor when things go awry is one thing. He will call out a section for missing notes or playing something wrong but not in a positive ‘this is how to fix this’ way. Then he yells at people for not practicing. Most members of the band don’t want to get yelled at and most of them don’t have much time, if any, to practice. I don’t think he realizes that his comments are perceived as negatively as they are. In fairness, he does praise sections when they do really well.

But the bigger problem is his method of recruitment to get new people in the band. He has an extensive network of doctoral performance graduates, and semi and pro musicians who he has convinced to play with the band on a regular basis. So far this is not a bad thing; it’s what he says to the band about why he’s recruited them that’s the problem. Basically he says, ‘I’ve got these guys here so you older folks don’t have to play so often. You can sit back and rest and just play the easier stuff.’ This translates to you older folks aren’t good enough for me.

At last night’s rehearsal he did less yelling and more praising so maybe he’s beginning to figure out why folks don’t show up anymore. We have a one week break after the concert and it will be really interesting to see how many people show up at the next rehearsal.

Improvement –>

March 2, 2010 Posted by | Learning the Horn | , , , , , | 1 Comment

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