When I started playing again last May I didn’t have any routine for practicing. I’d blow (I can’t call it buzzing yet) into the mouthpiece for a minute or so and then just try to play stuff. I tackled the C major scale, just one octave, and I bought the Rubank Soloist Folio book and started with Shenandoah.  My mother, who lives with me, is a well known composer and pianist and we’d just play what I could in the book. Nothing like having a built-in pianist who cheers me on even when I don’t get any notes right. On the other hand, she has perfect pitch. All of you hornists out there have to know what living with that must be like. (Voice from upstairs …. your A is flat… two minutes later….your F is sharp… and so it goes. Today she told me that my F was sharp but only a little bit – progress!)

After the initial weeks of just blow and try to play, I got out my Farkas book and added the first warm-ups he recommends but within the range I could play. At this point I managed about 20 minutes before my chops gave up. I was hoping that in addition to the technical improvement warm-ups would provide that my endurance would also increase. Alas, no such luck.

Over the next two months I did increase my practice time to about 40 minutes a day but only 20 minutes of it was decent. I was using some Farkas warm-ups, The First Practical Book of French Horn Studies and some of the pieces in the Rubank book. The Andante Cantable from the Tchaikovsky 5th was one of my favorites. Who doesn’t try to butcher that when they start playing? Occasionally I’d add some fun stuff from a Beatles book and a Phantom of the Opera book I bought.

After another month or two I felt like I wasn’t making any progress and I decided to get a teacher. My endurance was still at around 20 minutes (of decent playing) and I was still playing the same stuff maybe slightly better. I started taking lessons with Lynn at the end of August. My first two lessons are described in Time for a Teacher.

Around October I was practicing for about 40 to 45 minutes a day before I had to stop. I’d try to do another 15 – 20 minutes later in  the day but usually only managed 10 or less. I really wanted to do more. 70% of this time was spent on long tones, slurs, scales from the Peres book, and etudes from the Preparatory Melodies for Solo Work for Horn book that were relatively easy. I spent a bit of time on some of the easier works in the Mason Jones solo book and I started working on Franz Strauss’ Nocturno. I tried to maintain good air support, a big problem of mine, good tone, and intonation. But most of the time my air support was non-existent, my tone was fuzzy, and my intonation marginal at best. Once upon a time I had a good ear. Nice fairy tale.

By December I was really frustrated. I felt like I was stuck in a rut. No increase in chop time. No improvement in playing that I could detect. I was still working on most of the same etudes. I started blaming equipment instead of me. So I go and buy a new horn and a bunch of mouthpieces. Will this ever get better?

A lesson and practicing –>

A few days ago I posted about one really bad practice day and one mediocre practice day. Today’s Practice Session 😦 and Yesterday’s Practice – Part 2. In fact, the past week or two hasn’t been that good. Kind of plodding along practice days. You keep at it because you know you should but there’s no real sense of accomplishment and it gets discouraging. Fortunately yesterday and today were stellar.

I’ve always had problems with air. In the beginning I just didn’t have enough of it and I had to learn how to breathe properly. Now I have plenty of (hot?) air, I know how to breathe but I frequently forget to do it (horn breathing that is).

My teacher is always harping about air. During my lessons I get reminded frequently and then passages go better. Usually it’s ‘use faster air’. Yesterday I had a revelation. If you’ve read any of my previous posts that talk about my playing you’ll know that I have a problem with ‘gurgling’ between notes during slurs. It drives me crazy.

For some reason – one of those thoughts that just arrive and you don’t know why but are glad they did – yesterday I thought ‘push’ air instead of ‘faster’ air and lo and behold the gurgle in the measure I was working on went away. The notes didn’t get louder, just nice and clean. So as I played every time I had a gurgle I wrote ‘push’ above the notes. Guess what? All the gurgles went away. I still think ‘faster’ air if I want to play higher.

It’s times like this that make all the plodding along days worth it. The breakthroughs are few and far between but when they happen, oh boy is it a nice feeling.

April 18th, 2009: Yesterday afternoon’s practice session was better than the morning’s session. Not good yet, but better. Instead of working on my usual set of scales and etudes, I just played through some of the pieces I am working on. I also did some work on tonguing, something my teacher was harping on at yesterday’s lesson.

I didn’t play anything really high – nothing higher than Ab above the staff which is not a problem for me. I sometimes have problems with A and Bb. High C happens, but it’s rare except for my first set of scales for the day. My frustration is not with range but with poor attacks and sloppy slurs and in particular gurgly note to note slurs. Those drive me crazy because I know I can play them correctly. If I’m having a good day maybe I’ll gurgle a few notes here and there but most of what I play is clean. It’s the reverse on bad days. My interval slurs – thirds and up – are decent. If I miss one of those it’s more likely because I didn’t hear the interval correctly. I think my problem with note to note slurs is a lack of concentration causing a relaxation of air support. Just because you know what the issues are doesn’t mean that you can fix it right away. Aaargh.

I decided to record yesterday’s practice sessions. What a humbling experience that was. My teacher keeps saying that I’m better than I think I am. Well, that was not the case yesterday. I was definitely worse than I think I am. My ego took a beating. Maybe the morning was so bad because I was nervous. I knew that recorder was on. It shouldn’t bother me and I need to find a way to forget that the recorder is on.

I think recording pratice sessions is important. Not too often, maybe once a month. Between laptops and those handheld recorders it’s an easy thing to do. It is the only surefire way to track improvement. I probably should have stopped recording once I realized how badly I was playing. Yes, I know I just said I was nervous but I really do think it was more than that and the bad playing exacerbated the nervousness.

Today’s another day and I have to put the bad day behind me. It’s a busy day for me so putting in two hours is probably not in the cards. Maybe that’s a good thing – we’ll see.

TAFTO –>

How to recover from a day like my meltdown day? I tried to analyze what went wrong and went through the usual litany of horn problems – wrong mouthpiece, bad embouchure, bad warm-ups, bad posture, too much practice the day before, too much high register work, etc. I zeroed in on my recent work on my embouchure. (Amazing that I didn’t blame the mouthpiece, but of course I had to blame something.)

In my never ending quest to fix playing problems that can and will be fixed by practice, (If only I would listen to myself) I had been trying a new technique called the Balanced Embouchure (BE). It was originally developed for trumpet by Jeff Smiley and then adapted for horn as a collaboration between Jeff Smiley and Valerie Wells (valleriewells@msn.com.)

I’d been dutifully practicing BE  – I believe correctly – for a few weeks before the lesson meltdown. The specific targeted exercises for the embouchure use rolling in and rolling out techniques that are, to quote Jeff Smiley on his website, “a specific and practical method for developing a more efficient and successful trumpet embouchure.” He goes on to say in a separate interview, “I developed exercises designed to exaggerate the normal lips range of motion, thereby increasing the lip’s ability to form more complex combinations of opposing motions (shapes) which more effectively promote a continuous state of balance within the context of dynamic activity. In other words, through the repetition of relatively simple exercise targets, the lips become more intelligent, more able to move far enough and morph into more complex shapes to match the task at hand.” For more information please see Jeff’s website http://www.trumpetteacher.net.

Valerie Wells adds in a post on the Yahoo Horn Group, “If BE is used as designed, there are no ‘set backs’ or ‘trade offs’ but a solid and fairly rapid improvement in tone, range, and endurance.”  Hooked yet? Is this the magic elixir for horn players? At this point I have to say it’s not for me. I also have to add that although I don’t think this method is right for me at this point in time, this is not a pan of the technique. I believe that some hornists have greatly benefited from it. If you read the posts on the Yahoo Horn Group you will find very positive reviews about BE from some of the members of the forum.

At the time of my meltdown I felt very confused about BE. I wondered if BE wasn’t for me or if I started it too soon. Did working on it just finally culminate in the lesson disaster? I thought that it was a method where working on it wouldn’t hurt existing playing. It is promoted as such. Maybe the meltdown had nothing to do with BE and I was just having a really bad day. Maybe I’m jumping to a “BE isn’t for me” conclusion too quickly. But the ability to play double pedal notes and high C’s isn’t worth a darn if I can’t play in a normal range.

Here is a link to a demonstration of one part of the BE exercises for trumpet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7za4dPMk7U&feature=related. I think Jeff or Valerie should post a video demonstrating BE for horn especially since it is pretty impossible to find a teacher that will teach it at a private lesson.  Although I believed that I was practicing BE correctly, maybe I wasn’t. Is it possible that damage can be done to the chops if BE is practiced incorrectly or too frequently? I ran into lots of chop trouble very quickly after I started BE. I think some (most?) people will want to use BE as a panacea for embouchure problems instead of using it as a method to improve upon already mostly correct playing. Again this is my opinion based only on my experience.

I understand about over practicing and I know that there is a fine line between doing enough to get tired and doing too much and I’m sure there are days that I do too much. I am only questioning working with BE because that is the only significant change I have made to my practice routine in a long time.  Of course new horn, new mouthpiece, plus BE all in the same time frame was more likely the impetus to the meltdown. Kind of like the perfect storm.

My immediate problem was to fix what was wrong. I backed off BE and went back to my basic warm-up – low long tones, slurs, arpeggios, scales. Although I didn’t have another meltdown day I certainly wasn’t playing as well as I had been a few weeks before and I was very frustrated.

I decided to take a lesson with Scott Bacon (Siegfried’s Call), the fellow I bought my Hoyer from. When I bought my horn he spent a considerable amount of time on revamping the beginning of my warm-up – the first horn to face time of the day – and I felt very comfortable turning to him for help. (This is not to say that my teacher I see every week wasn’t helping. I was looking for a fresh opinion.)

My first comment as I walked in the door was “My embouchure is shot.” I played a bit for him and he said, “No it’s not.” He did acknowledge that I was having some significant problems since I couldn’t produce a note below the G below middle C. We worked on re-establishing my low range and after about half an hour it was getting better. My marching orders when I left were to spend at least fifteen minutes doing only low range work followed by slurs from low C. He gave me a lot more to work on which I will get to in another post. The really good news is that it took less than a week for me to make significant improvements. At the moment, BE is off the table. This doesn’t mean I won’t try it again sometime in the future.

All this meltdown stuff occured back in January. Today the best way to describe my progress is to relate what my regular teacher has said to me over the past few months. I started working on Mozart 3 in December 2008. She said, “I played this in 7th grade.” Translation – I play like a 7th grader. Hmm. Sometime in February she was talking about one of her other students in 10th grade. She said, “You and she are at about the same level.” Well you know what the translation is. Last week we were working on Strauss 1 and she said I was playing like a good college student! YES!

YouTube Symphony –>