Category Archives: Learning the Horn

I’m playing better

Posted on by

I think I have finally turned the corner from my mouthpiece disaster and lower lip bite. Just under two weeks ago I settled on using the Laskey mouthpiece even though I didn’t really want to. I decided that I had to trust Scott Bacon who I bought my Otto horn from and who really wanted me to use the Laskey with this geyer wrap horn.

After about four days of pure misery, including numbness and pain on top of the awful playing and biting my lip three times on Friday and Saturday, last Sunday things started getting better. I had a band concert that afternoon and I played really well despite the lower lip bites and the changed mouthpiece. I couldn’t play at all Saturday but Sunday morning I warmed up and didn’t feel too bad. Then I did some flexibility exercises before the concert. We did a two hour program with a 20 minute intermission and I was okay, with some occasional pain, through the whole thing.

During this week I’ve had a few revelations as I struggled with the mouthpiece and the bites. One had nothing to do with the either of those. Our conductor brought in two extra college students for the concert bringing our horn section from five to seven. One doubled me on 4th and I asked her to sit to my left so she wouldn’t hear me and my inevitable mistakes and so I could hear her. I learned what playing the horn loud means. Now I understand why my teachers tell me I’m not playing loud when I think I am.

I also think that a large part of my mouthpiece struggle was due to endurance. A new mouthpiece uses, to some extent, different muscles. My first 20 minutes of warm ups were always fine. The awful playing started after about ten minutes into my second practice session and I really couldn’t play after about 45 minutes (this includes the first 20 minutes). That’s about where I was a year ago. Now I’m almost back to my usual two hours. On Thursday I made it through an hour and ten minutes of practice followed by an hour long lesson later that afternoon.

I noticed that once I start playing poorly my bottom teeth start digging into my lower lip. With the bite injury I have there it gets quite painful. When this happens I can barely get to middle C when I try to do a low C arpeggio. Usually I can get to 3rd space C easily and many times to the E above that. If I pay very close attention to how I set my horn on my face I can then play those arpeggios to 3rd space C and when I go back to what I was practicing my tone gets much better. So somewhere along the way as my endurance lags I must be subtly changing my embouchure in a bad way to cope with it.

I’ve had my share of lip injuries – tearing skin off with ice cubes, banging mouthpieces and water bottles into my lips, biting the inside of my lower lip – since I started playing again. Reading Julia Rose’s blog about her recent injury reminded me of them and how I deal with playing while hurt. Julia talks about first getting a more minor injury where she expected to play after a day or two followed by a significantly worse injury that demands a solid rest from horn playing. I always try to play through the pain, which I imagine is a bad idea, because I worry a lot about taking breaks from practicing. When I was sick back in June and didn’t play for close to a week it took a few days to recover from not playing. Plus I actually enjoy practicing and I don’t know what to do with myself when I have those extra hours. I’m retired and I play for fun and if I don’t play well the only person it effects is me. Concerns about injuries must be a lot worse for professionals.

I use Vitamin E and ChopSaver lip balm when I have an open wound on my lips. ChopSaver is the best lip balm I’ve ever used and my non brass playing family swears by it too. (I promise I don’t own stock in the company.) I’ve been putting ChopSaver directly on the wound in my lower lip and it is really helping. It should have gone away by now but I keep re-biting it. I did try Ambesol on it but it also got on my lips and I learned what feeling numb really feels like. I think I wasn’t as numb as I thought I was using the Laskey mouthpiece. I thought briefly about playing while the Ambesol was doing it’s thing but I’ve used up my being stupid quotient for the month.

Mouthpieces again –>

Bite me

Posted on by

I finally made a mouthpiece decision Tuesday to use the Laskey. After stupidly switching back and forth over the last few weeks I realized that I had to stop doing that and pick one and just deal with it. I picked the Laskey because I trust that Scott Bacon is right that it is the better mouthpiece for the Otto horn. I had trouble switching because I really liked my Moosewood mouthpiece. Of course that begs the question of why switch in the first place. When I was corresponding with Andrew Joy, who uses Otto horns exclusively, he told me to switch to a cup shaped mouthpiece for these horns. I mentioned this to Scott and he agreed that the Laskey mouthpiece was better for the Otto horn. The mistake that he and I both made was switching mouthpieces at the same time I got the horn. It would have been better to play the horn for a couple of months before making a mouthpiece change.

Using the Laskey this week has been frustrating. I’ve got this wonderful new horn and I can’t play it worth a damn. The first 20 minutes of practice goes quite well but then, even with a half hour break, my playing goes downhill fast. I lose my high range and notes get gurgly. I don’t just miss attacks, the entire note sounds bad. Why is it that when good things happen – e.g. my new horn – bad things always have to happen as well? And it isn’t limited to the mouthpiece change.

Yesterday while eating a sandwich I bit the inside of my lower lip. Ouch. I have a band concert tomorrow. Yikes. And then this morning while eating toast I did it again. Double ouch. I tested whether I could play earlier today and there’s no way. Not only did it hurt, I was concerned that if I tried to play through it I would inevitably change my embouchure to deal with the pain. I am really hoping that I can play tomorrow. I play 4th horn and rarely do I get to play a solo. I’ve got a nice one in Raiders of the Lost Ark. If my lip still hurts tomorrow I’m going to have to decide if I want to try to play or pass the solo off to the 3rd horn. Low notes are not hurting as much so the 4th horn off beats should not be a problem.

It seems that playing the horn is always two steps forward and one step back. At least it isn’t one step forward and two steps back though some days it sure seems like it.

I’m playing better –>

Slippery slope

Posted on by

I’m heading down one. Rapidly. Earlier in the week I wrote about my latest mouthpiece problems. Well, I’ve managed to make things a lot worse by doing what I knew I shouldn’t do and yet I couldn’t help myself. After two good weeks with the Laskey mouthpiece my chops crashed and burned and I went back to my Moosewood mouthpiece Sunday. Of course I played much better than usual. Band rehearsal on Monday evening was pretty good too. Band rehearsal on Tuesday not so much. In fact it was awful. I couldn’t play anything above a 4th line D and I couldn’t play much in the low range either. And, just like my problem with the Laskey, my upper lip got numb.

Wednesday I didn’t play. That helped. Thursday I practiced with the Moosewood for around an hour with good results. Today I had a lesson in the morning which also went well. Lynn (my horn teacher) and I decided that sticking with the Moosewood was the right approach. Then I emailed the local pro that has been helping me test horns and described my mouthpiece problem. She said that getting numb was never good and to stop using the Laskey. Okay that validated the decision that Lynn and I made. I should have stopped there but no, I had to email Scott Bacon and tell him what was going on. In retrospect this was something I should have done before I went back to the Moosewood mouthpiece. He spoke to Scott Laskey and they decided that I should stick with the Laskey mouthpiece (no surprise).  I bought my new Otto horn from Scott Bacon and I take lessons from him every month. He switched me to the Laskey mouthpiece because he believes that they, with their cup shape, are the best mouthpiece for Otto horns.

Scott Bacon’s instructions were to put the Moosewood mouthpiece away, use the Laskey and stop switching from one to the other. He said to double the amount of flexibility exercises I do when I warm up, take lots of short breaks, massage my face to keep blood flow going to my lips and to try to back off the pressure I use as I go up in range. Yesterday afternoon I practiced with the Laskey with mostly poor results. I gave up after half an hour. I haven’t decided what I am going to use this morning when I practice. I suppose that if the Laskey really is better with an Otto horn maybe I should stick with it and suffer through the mouthpiece blues. On the other hand I have a band concert on November 1st and I need to be in good shape for that. Oh dear, I’ve really messed up big time.

Bite me –>

Frustration

Posted on by

Frustration is nothing new for me as I learn to play again. I’ve had my share of bad days and bad weeks and I deal with them much better now than I used to handle them. These days I usually just shrug my shoulders and know that this too will pass. Early in my quest to learn this beast I would try different mouthpieces if I was having a bad day. I had four or five of them sitting on a table next to me and I would try one after another until I found one that helped just a tad. Then I’d use it for a couple of days until it didn’t help anymore and I’d go back and use the old one. Even when I was doing this I knew it was a bad idea and then when I had my first lesson with Scott Bacon early in 2009 he said no more changing mouthpieces. I’ve stuck with the same one, a Moosewood B12, until about three weeks ago.

One of the horns I was testing (and the one I bought last week) during my quest for a new horn was a Dieter Otto 180K. Andrew Joy plays on them professionally and I contacted him about the horn. He suggested that, for the Otto horns, I go to a mouthpiece with a cup shape rather than a cone shape that the Moosewood has. At my latest lesson with Scott Bacon he switched me to a Laskey 75G mouthpiece.

For the first week I played really, really well. My term for this is new mouthpiece euphoria. Then two weeks ago I went to an audition and although my warm-up right before the audition went fairly well, I played poorly at the audition. I was suspicious that my mouthpiece euphoria had ended but my playing improved again and didn’t really deteriorate until this past Thursday. Some of this is due to the new horn but I had this horn on loan for at least 6 weeks and generally played very well on it. I think that the stiffness in my chops, poor tone quality, and most likely my loss of endurance is due to the mouthpiece change. The other thing that I’m experiencing is some numbness in my upper lip and a touch of numbness in my lower lip after I warm up for about 20 minutes and right after I started using this mouthpiece I noticed that the feeling of my skin on my upper lip is smoother – almost like I lost a minute layer of skin – and I have two subtle ridges where the mouthpiece touches my lip. These ridges were more pronounced last week but the difference in the smoothness of the skin hasn’t changed.

So…..yesterday, being very frustrated, I tried my Moosewood mouthpiece again. I played a few phrases with it and then the same phrases with the Laskey and back and forth like that for about 15 minutes. The two things I detected were a subtle change in tone – the Moosewood sounded a tad brassier – and the Moosewood felt a little funny. It didn’t have that aah factor like when you put on your favorite comfy sweatshirt. For the rest of practice –  I toughed it out for about 45 minutes – I used the Laskey.

I’m not sure what to do. Visually the rims on the two mouthpieces look very similar. The shanks are different. Is it possible that the change in shank style could cause this change in my chops? I suspect that the culprit is the rim. My Moosewood has a screw on rim and the Laskey doesn’t. I don’t think Moosewood has a cup shaped mouthpiece. Are there manufacturers that have cup shaped mouthpieces that I can screw on my Moosewood rim? Should I stick with the Laskey I have and hope that my chops get better? I’m tempted to use the Moosewood today and see how it goes though it may just add to my problems.

Slippery slope –>

Horn decision

Posted on by

Well, I finally have my new horn. All of you who have been reading my blog from the beginning know that the new Hoyer that I purchased at the end of December 2008 played sharp. After months of aggravation I received a new tuning slide from Hoyer in August. The tuning slide solved the problem in that the pros that I took it to gave it a clean bill of health. I was still struggling playing the horn in tune and I had to decide what I wanted to do. I have to say that during these months of frustration with the Hoyer I really stopped liking the horn. Because of the intonation issue I played other horns at IHS and at the Barry Tuckwell Institute and got a feeling for what else was out there and there were definitely horns that I liked better.

I had several options:

1. Keep the Hoyer and deal with fixing my intonation problems and my general feelings about the horn.
2. Sell the Hoyer and go back to my Yamaha for a while.
3. Sell the Hoyer and my Yamaha and get a better horn.

Although keeping my Hoyer and learning to play it in tune probably would make me a better hornist I just was not enjoying playing it and that is the most important thing to me. 95% of the time I play by myself and it was just too frustrating dealing with it so about a month ago I left it with Scott Bacon, the dealer I bought it from, for him to sell it for me. I’m sure it’s a great horn for someone, just not me.

While I was going thru all this with the Hoyer I got my Yamaha 668 back into tip top shape. I spent some time playing both the Hoyer and the Yamaha and decided that I did make the right decision to buy the Hoyer. Although the intonation on the Yamaha is good, there were other things about it that made it harder than the Hoyer for me to play. So I brought the Yamaha up to Scott’s to sell before I left the Hoyer there.

When I dropped off the Yamaha Scott loaned me a gold brass Dieter Otto 180K horn to try for a few weeks. There was no question that I enjoyed playing this horn more than the Hoyer. For one thing, my intonation was pretty good. My articulation was better, notes were clean, I had fewer clams and I could play high Bb and C relatively easily. I could hardly ever get those notes on the Hoyer. Getting this Otto sounds like a no brainer but several pros cautioned me against buying it because it was gold brass, probably wouldn’t have as good a resale value as a yellow brass horn, the Otto brand wasn’t well known in the US and because the sound got harsher when the horn was really played loud.

I went back up to Scott’s three weeks later and tried a yellow brass Otto 180k and a yellow brass Otto 166. I wasn’t comfortable playing the 166 but the yellow brass Otto was very similar to the gold brass Otto. The biggest difference between the two was that the sound of the yellow brass Otto was a bit brighter. It may even have played slightly easier but not by much. I left the Hoyer at Scott’s and took both the gold and yellow brass Ottos home to try. I played both horns and liked the yellow brass Otto slightly better. During this time I thought it would be a good idea to go up to Ken Pope’s shop and try some of his horns. I didn’t ever end up going there because my mother ended up in the hospital and I just couldn’t squeeze in a trip to Boston.

I had the Ottos on loan when Scott got in a Lewis and Durk horn that I wanted to try so I headed up to Scotts again ( 3 hours one way) last Thursday and spent at least two hours trying the L & D horn and comparing it to the Ottos. I couldn’t come to a decision so I stayed in Fishkill, NY overnight and went back to Scotts in the morning and played the three of them again for another three hours. I finally decided that I really liked the Lewis and Durk horn. The intonation was flawless as was pretty much everything else. The tone was bright but had a lot of color. However it has more resistance than the Ottos and I was having some trouble centering notes. I liked the horn a lot and decided that I could deal with the learning curve so I wrote Scott a check and took my new horn home.

Saturday morning I took the horn out to practice and it was a disaster. In my music room, formerly our living room, I couldn’t get a nice tone quality from the horn even though it sounded great when I played it at Scott’s studio. My music room has great acoustics so this was very surprising and very frustrating. I clammed more notes than I got and generally had a miserable time. The same was true Saturday afternoon and Sunday. I didn’t sleep very well over the weekend. I was trying to convince myself that my chops were just dead and that it wasn’t the horn but I didn’t have another horn at home to test it against.

Monday morning I went up to Scott’s yet again and spent another three hours playing the three horns. Of course I played the L & D horn just fine up there. I also had Scott play the horns so I could hear the differences when someone who plays well played them. I was having a really hard time deciding which horn to pick when Scott asked me if I had to make an instant decision that was non-reversable what would I pick and I said an Otto immediately. Having had them as loaners for many weeks I knew how they were and there wasn’t any uncertainty about how I played on them.

The next step was to pick one of the two Ottos. I was leaning toward the yellow brass Otto when Scott put a gold brass hand hammered bell on the gold brass horn. Wow. The horn had a gorgeous rich sound even when played very loud which was one of it’s issues. One of the other issues was the resale value of the horn. I decided that I am buying a horn for my enjoyment and if I should ever decide to sell it whatever its value is will be okay with me. Now the choice between the yellow brass horn and the gold brass horn was easy so I am now the owner of a new gold brass Otto. At band last night the first hornist told me how good I sounded and that my intonation was excellent. Hallelujah.

Frustration –>

Audition

Posted on by

I had an audition Sunday for placement into an adult chamber music program at SUNY Stony Brook. This is the first audition that I have had since I started playing again. It’s a really good thing that this was only for placement – i.e. which ensemble I should be put in – rather than acceptance into the program itself.

Sunday morning I warmed up really carefully and then played thru my audition piece, Strauss’ Nocturno. My chops weren’t in the best shape but they were okay considering that I started on a new mouthpiece the week before. The audition was at 3 pm and I was able to warm up again for about 15 minutes before I had to play. I played really, really well during this warm up so I went in to the audition with a marginal amount of confidence.

Well, I couldn’t have played worse if I tried. It was absolutely awful. The funny thing was I didn’t feel very nervous but clearly I was. I played really badly. I’m going to have to find opportunities to play in front of people. Not only was this my first audition, it was the first time I played in front of anyone other than my horn teachers. I’m not counting playing in band or in the horn choirs I played in at IHS and the Barry Tuckwell Institute. I have no problem playing in band rehearsals or concerts even when I have an exposed part. I think being mostly invisible helps.

At the audition it didn’t help that the lady listening to me told me, before I started the audition, that my playing was ‘stunning.’ That is a term that I would save for the horn masters of the world. I guess she must have heard me out in the hall when I was warming up and was thinking ‘this is an adult amateur who is playing very well’. I know she’s heard hornists who play a thousand times better than I do because she was in an ensemble with Lynn, my horn teacher, last year. Anyway, if I was nervous before I walked into the room, this put me off the charts.

Every now and then, and only when I am alone, I actually play like I used to and I’m capable of putting together a musical phrase without any clams and with really nice tone. Definitely not stunning but decent. It doesn’t happen often but it’s what keeps me going. I know that if I can play really beautifully once eventually I will be able to do it more often.  And hopefully I will be able to do it in front of other people. I still can’t play well when I’m recording myself so I have a long way to go dealing with nerves. I guess the only remotely good thing about this audition is that I will probably be placed in a group that will be somewhat easy for me which will help with the nerves when we perform in January. The downside is that it will be less challenging.

Horn decision –>

Band rehearsal

Posted on by

I played very well at band rehearsal last night and this morning I am trying to figure out why. Not that I haven’t ever played well before but last night I played especially well. Within the first 10 minutes I realized that I was having a very good day and that just added to my confidence which then kept me playing a lot better than I usually do.

There were several things that were different last night so I’ll comment on each one.

1. The horns sat in the in the more traditional formation with 1st horn the farthest left which put me on the end and I could actually hear myself play. No trumpets blaring into my ears.

2. I used the loaner yellow brass Otto horn. This horn is so easy to play it’s amazing. I didn’t miss any attacks, the intonation was excellent and I got the high Bb, a whole note, easily in one of the pieces (4th horn part no less.) We were sight reading the music so I didn’t know this note was coming until right before it and I had no time to wonder if I was going to nail it or not. I just played it, nice and clear. It wasn’t until after I played the Bb that I actually comprehended that I played a Bb. I wonder how many times amateurs miss the high notes because we worry about them too much.

3. I used my new Laskey mouthpiece. Playing well can easily be attributed to new mouthpiece euphoria so if that did it, the crash next week won’t be fun.

4. I practiced very early in the morning to put as many hours as possible between practice and rehearsal.  Usually I practice around 10 am on rehearsal days. This time I practiced at 7 am. Hopefully this was not the reason I played so well because I won’t be able to practice that early in the morning on a regular basis.

5. A combination of some or all of the the above. I’ll know more when I practice today.

6. None of the above. It’s possible that I would have played equally well with my Hoyer and my other mouthpiece sitting in front of the trumpets and practicing at 10. If that’s the case, and it would be very nice if it is though I’ll never know for sure, I’m becoming a better horn player and that’s a really good thing.

Audition –>

Horn update

Posted on by

I’ve been writing about my issues with my Hoyer horn for quite some time. It played sharp when I got it and it took a while to get it fixed. It is possible to play the Hoyer in tune now that it has a new tuning slide though I still have considerable trouble with the intonation. While I was waiting to get it fixed I had opportunities to play other horns many of which I liked a lot better than my Hoyer. I’ve also had a Dieter Otto 180K in Rose Brass on loan for the past month. If I didn’t have problems with the Hoyer I wouldn’t have been fiddling around with other horns and I wouldn’t have discovered that there were others in my price range that I liked better. In fact, except for the intonation problem I thought the Hoyer was a great horn.

I’ve been playing the Hoyer, the Otto, and occasionally my old Yamaha 668 and inevitably if I start with the Hoyer I switch to the Otto within half an hour. If I start with the Yamaha I’ll switch to either of the other horns pretty quickly so I know I made the right decision to get a different horn back in December and to sell the Yamaha. I find the Otto easier to play than either the Hoyer or the Yamaha and I enjoy playing it more. Several pro hornists have cautioned me about buying the Otto because it is rose brass and because it is not a well known brand in the U.S. On the other hand, several pros have told me that the Otto is a great horn.

Originally I was supposed to make a decision about the Otto horn a few weeks ago but my mom ended up in the hospital and I couldn’t make the trip up to Scott Bacon’s shop (Siegfried’s Call) until yesterday. I was also going to travel to Ken Pope’s shop in Boston and try some of the horns he has for sale and I wasn’t able to go there either. At my lesson with Scott yesterday I played the rose brass Otto for most of the time and then switched to a yellow brass unlacquered Otto 180K. Scott also switched me to a Laskey mouthpiece at the recommendation of Andrew Joy who uses Otto horns exclusively and suggested that I use a cup shaped mouthpiece with the horn. Scott listened to me play both horns and he believes that the yellow brass Otto is the better horn for me.

I went back home with both Otto’s on loan so I now have another two weeks to decide about horns. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to keep the Hoyer. I’m getting more pleasure from playing the rose brass Otto and for me that’s most important. I haven’t had the yellow brass Otto long enough yet to know if it’s the right one and I keep wondering if there is something out there that I should try before I make a decision. That’s one big reason to try to get to Ken Pope’s shop in the next two weeks but with my mom in the hospital I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that. Scott Bacon is also getting a new Lewis and Durk geyer wrap horn in shortly and I want to try that horn before I make a final decision. That horn is expensive and really out of my affordability range but I have to try it so I don’t wonder forever if I should have picked it.

Band rehearsal –>

Travel with horn

Posted on by

Boy this has been a busy week. I picked up a consulting contract with a customer I worked with before I retired so I had to go to Atlanta for the initial meeting. Despite the fact that I traveled over 3 million miles during my 25 year marketing career I prefer driving to flying so I wanted to drive to Atlanta. My husband was also heading to the meeting since he is peripherally involved with the project so I convinced him to drive by adding a mini-vacation in Virginia Beach.

My challenge was fitting in practicing during the trip. It’s a 15 hour drive from Long Island to Atlanta so we headed out last Tuesday evening to avoid traffic. I practiced before we left so Tuesday was covered. Wednesday was the long haul of the drive but I still got about 45 minutes of practice in. I used my Best Brass mute for the first time. The Best Brass mute is similar to the Yamaha Silent Brass mute but it is smaller and self contained – no external amplification box. The horn sounded reasonable, much better than with just a plain practice mute. Using the mute was an interesting experience. I didn’t feel like I was giving my chops any kind of a workout. After 45 minutes I still felt fresh. I think it’s okay for practicing technical passages but not for endurance. I also had to hold the horn with my right forearm pressed against the mute to keep it from falling out of the horn.

On Thursday we got back to the hotel at a reasonable time and I asked the clerk at the front desk if there was somewhere I could play. She offered the hotel’s boardroom which was located behind the front desk but away from any rooms. I figured that anyone in the lobby was going to hear me play so I decided to just have some fun. I did do my usual warmup but I skipped scales and Kopprasch. (Great excuse.) I brought a lot of music with me so I just ran through it – Basler’s Canciones, Strauss’ Nocturno, Strauss 1, Lowell Shaw’s Just Desserts and some stuff from the Mason Jones solo book. Hopefully the inevitable clams weren’t that audible. The hotel clerk gave me a big thumbs up when I was done so I guess it wasn’t too bad.

Friday was another long haul driving day but this time I didn’t get any practicing in. By the time we got to the hotel, checked in and ate dinner – we were starving – it was late and I was exhausted. Saturday I took the horn out around 10 Am and played for a bit out on the balcony. It was oceanfront and I was hoping the noise from the ocean would drown out the horn. Well it didn’t. My husband was outside by the boardwalk and he could hear me. I decided that taking out the mute was probably a good idea. The other rooms around me didn’t really need an AM horn call.

The drive home on Sunday took forever. What should have been an eight hour drive turned into an eleven hour drive. Needless to say when I got home it was late and I was not in the mood to practice. So for a six day trip I missed two days. On the days I did practice I got somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour in. None of it was what I would call quality practice but at least I did play and kept my chops working.

With a day off on Sunday I was curious how Monday would go. I put in a solid hour of hard practice in the morning and played very well. Then I remembered that I had a two hour band rehearsal that evening. Surprisingly I didn’t have any endurance problems at the rehearsal until the very end. Yesterday I was extremely busy and only played at my other band’s rehearsal. I had lots of endurance problems and no upper register so I guess I paid for Monday on Tuesday. In the end I think I did pretty well keeping in shape. I did schedule my weekly lesson for Friday to give me some time to prepare for it.

Horn update –>

A very short break

Posted on by

I’m traveling this week – a combo business and pleasure trip – and I’ll be back Monday. I have my horn and I’m trying to fit in as much practicing as I can. Watch for an update early next week.