Tag Archives: Music

Pain and some other stuff

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When hornists talk about pain it’s usually face, chops, fingers, shoulders, elbow or something related to muscle ache. I’ve developed a pain in my stomach just under my sternum. I have no idea if it’s related to horn playing though it seems to have started around the time I started playing off the leg. That’s a best guess time frame since it’s something I didn’t write down in my horn journal. I’m beginning to think that the start of everyday’s writings in my journal should include a general health check, including how I slept. I bet, at least for an older hornist, there will be some correlation between how one feels and how one plays.

Anyway, back to the pain problem. Have any of you experienced anything like this? It’s a dull ache that comes and goes, sometimes when I’m playing (worst time was at a rehearsal about two weeks ago) and sometimes not, and has been happening for around three months. It’s not a typical stomach type pain – no heartburn or any of the usual stomach gremlins. I have an appointment with the gastroenterologist late this afternoon so if there’s any insight out there please pass it along. I’ll report back after my appointment.

Tomorrow I leave for the Barry Tuckwell Institute in New Jersey. (Great timing.) It promises to be a jam packed five days of everything horn including a master class with Barry. It’s held at the College of New Jersey and we are all staying in the dorms at the school which was quite off-putting to me until I found out there are private baths in all the rooms. Ah- the small things in life. Of the 18 people signed up, it turns out that three of us are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th horns in my Riverhead Monday Night Band. I talked my friend Chris (2nd horn) into going but we both found out Jim (3rd horn) was going when we got the attendee list. We’ve been asked to bring lots of music so there should be plenty of opportunity to play in ensembles or horn and piano. I don’t know if I will have internet access while I’m there so I may not be posting again until Sunday.

Recently I read somewhere that someone played (I don’t know how well) Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro for all-state as a high school sophomore.  This is a piece that I love (I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea) and off in the far recesses of my mind I was thinking that maybe I would try to learn it. However, I have always heard that it is a very difficult piece and I had pretty much written it off as not doable for me yet – I’ve just about got Strauss 1 in good shape. What’s the general consensus for when a student should take on that work and have reasonable success with it?

I hope everyone here in the states had a great 4th of July. After months of rain here on Long Island, we had spectacular weather for this weekend. I actually got out on my bicycle, my other passion, and put in some solid mileage. I’m an endurance rider and by the middle of the summer I should be putting in around 50 miles per ride. You can see some of my experiences on long distance rides here.

Barry Tuckwell Institute – Arrival –>

An interesting month-part 2

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In An interesting month I talked about how my practice routine got all discombobulated when I went to IHS and then prepared for my daughter’s wedding. The first two days of practice after almost a week off during my trip back from IHS were terrible but then as I played more things slowly got better. Once I got back to my usual schedule (about 5 days ago) all of a sudden I played a lot better.

In fact, I’m still playing a lot better. Really. I’m even surprising myself. Exercises that I was stumbling through are going well. I had my monthly lesson with Scott Bacon and I nailed (well almost nailed) both exercise #4 in the Singer Embouchure book and the Kopprash #2 exercise. Scott said it was the best he ever heard me play. He was actually smiling. Not only did I get the notes right, I got the dynamics right, the articulation right, the rhythm dead on with the metronome, and I played the exercises musically. That’s the biggie.

At my lesson with Lynn two weeks ago we started working on Canciones by Paul Basler. I love this piece. At my lesson last Wednesday we cleaned up some rhythm issues I was having. I think Lynn will be surprised by how well it’s going at my lesson tomorrow. I’m learning it really quickly for me. I can play the first movement along with the CD nicely. I can actually start it and not stop and need to do it over again. Actually this is true for everything I’ve been working on this week. Just this alone is a big breakthrough for me. I am taking my time and thinking about what I am going to play, taking a breath along with the metronome before I start to play, and it works every time.

I’ve been working on Strauss 1 for months. This week I can play almost all of it and not butcher it along the way. Many of the 16th note passages that I couldn’t even play slowly a few weeks ago I can play now up to tempo. Sure there are still a few rough spots but only a few, not half the piece.

So what’s changed? I have to attribute this improvement to my month of mostly non-practice. Maybe I’m wrong and this is all a big coincidence but I can’t think of anything else that would cause such a big change. And I agree that not practicing wouldn’t be my first thought about how to get better (I think I got the double negatives right in that sentence.) I think I can say that what I would call a really good day a month ago is now what I would call a fairly bad day. Progress!

Pain and some other stuff –>

Bowling…..

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Okay. I know what you are thinking. What in the world does bowling have in common with playing the horn? Well, for the most part, nothing. But as I was bowling yesterday, I realized that it is not as dissimilar as one might think, at least when it comes to mental preparedness.

I’m an avid bowler. I usually bowl four times a week. I’m in three leagues and I practice at least once a week. I hadn’t bowled in about 4 weeks because of my trip out to IHS and preparations for my daughter’s wedding. I bowled pretty badly yesterday. Probably a bit better than my first practice session with my horn after IHS, but not a whole lot better. My body was stiff, my shoulder, forearm, and hand hurt and my timing was off. My teammates were telling me to slow down, to concentrate, to watch my posture, to pay attention to the little things. Sound familiar?

Let’s look at posture first. To bowl successfully, it’s important to stand correctly, be well balanced, and hold the ball comfortably with the proper hand position. Once you find the correct stance, it’s essential to repeat it consistently or the ball won’t go where you want it to. Proper posture for the horn is also essential. Both my horn teachers have worked with me on posture (Scott Bacon spent at least a half hour on it at one of my lessons) and I don’t play as well if I’m not sitting or standing correctly because my air support suffers among other things. There’s lots of discussion on the forums about playing on the leg or off and similarly, there’s lots of discussion about where it’s best to hold the bowling ball and how many steps to take on the approach. As an aside, I have switched from playing on the leg to off the leg and my tone has improved significantly.

Concentration is a biggie. When I step up to bowl, I set my posture and then think about what I need to do. I take my time. I visualize my stroke and release. I take a deep breath and then I throw the ball. This is pretty much exactly what my horn teacher was reminding me to do at my lesson the other day. The difference being feeling the beat and singing the music in my head before playing instead of visualizing.

Practicing is another area where there are similarities. We all know that playing through pieces is not the same as practicing. When we practice we break down the difficult passages to the smallest components and slow down the tempo until we get it right. The same is true for bowling. If you’re serious about actually practicing rather than just bowling a few games, you break down the components – approach, release, specific shots – into the smallest parts and slow down until you get it right. For one of my practice sessions I shot at the seven pin 50 times in a row. Boring I know, but I nail seven pins now.

Still seem a bit farfetched? Let me propose that it’s not just practicing bowling that is similar. There are many (most?) things that we do, if we want to do them well, that require following the same conceptual methodology to achieve success. On the sports side, golf comes to mind.

Of course the analogy between horn playing and bowling stops once the ball in thrown. Although there is skill required for bowling, it is nothing compared to the skill required for horn playing. Some bowling pros may disagree with this statement but if they do, they have never seriously tried to play a musical instrument. I’ve never heard of anyone getting a PhD in bowling performance, though it is true that most pro bowlers played on competitive bowling teams in college.

Right now I’m a better bowler than I am a horn player but I hope that will change. I am much more likely to bowl a perfect 300 game (though that really is highly unlikely) than I am to perform anything without any clams. If I had to choose between the two, the horn would win hands down even though it can be a lot more frustrating. Someday I may have to choose because I am left handed and I do experience some pain in my fingers when I bowl. Obviously having a working left hand is critical to horn playing.

One of the best things about writing a blog is that I can express my opinion and not necessarily be right or wrong – I guess that’s why it’s my opinion. Some of you may disagree with this analogy about horn playing and bowling and, hence, this is why we have comments.

An interesting month-part 2 –>

An interesting month

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It’s been almost a month since I left by car for IHS. Before the trip I was extremely diligent with my practicing. I don’t think I missed more than a day or two since mid-January. I built up my endurance so that I could practice around two hours everyday. Once I left for Macomb all of this changed.

During my drive I didn’t have time for two hours of practice and I found practicing in hotel rooms difficult. With the practice mute it was weird and very boring. Without the mute I felt uncomfortable because I don’t play very well yet and I didn’t want anyone to hear me. Consequently, my two hours of practicing went out the window.

Once I got to Macomb I did get a lot of playing in but not a lot of actual practicing in. I don’t really have the endurance yet to go to warm-up sessions and then the ensembles and try out horns and still practice. I wrote about my extended drive back home with no practicing in ‘Oops‘ and about the first several of days of practice after I got home in “Recovery.”

This brings us to the middle of last week and my daughter’s wedding this past Sunday. I did not have a lot of time for practicing. To say my life was hectic would be quite an understatement. All four of my kids were home, there were a million errands to run and I had to clean up the house for the after wedding barbeque that we were hosting. My horn got put away in it’s case (“Mom, can’t you put your stuff away now? (Notice the parent / child reversal)), music was put back into the piano bench, the stand relocated into the laundry room – out of site, out of mind. I did manage to get a bit of practicing done but nowhere near as much as I would have liked.

Obviously no practicing happened on the day of the wedding. The hairdressers showed up a 6 am at my house and my time was scheduled right up to leaving for the ceremony. My daughter actually created an excel spreadsheet for the schedule with times listed down to 5 minutes. (e.g. – Mom’s hair – 6 am; mom’s makeup 6:25 am; mom’s nails 6:35 am, maid-of-honor hair 6:20 am, and so on.) Fortunately the wedding was wonderful and there were no hiccups. For any of you that are interested the pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/abarkan283/sets/72157620369929574/. There’s a picture of me walking down the aisle with my oldest son here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/abarkan283/3653088529/in/set-72157620369929574/.

I didn’t practice Monday or Tuesday either because I had band rehearsals both nights. I’ve learned that I can’t practice anything more than warmups before two non-stop hours of rehearsals. Then Wednesday I had a lesson in the morning and I played duets with a friend for two hours in the afternoon. My lesson clearly reflected the fact that I hadn’t practiced much. Many of the exercises that we worked on the week before didn’t go as well yesterday. Plus, my brain was not engaged. I couldn’t transpose down an octave at all and this is something that I can usually do without any problems. It was so bad all I could do was laugh. Maybe it was because we had started working on Eb transposition first that caused the brain fog. The duets in the afternoon went better than my lesson but again, not as good as I have played previously. I did have a lot of fun though and that’s more important to me than missing notes.

Today I finally got to practice. It had been so long that I had to remind myself what my usual routine was. I had to go searching for the metronome (found it, darn) and my tuner. I started out with my usual warmups and then moved on to the Singer embouchure exercises and then Kopprash #2. The good news is that I played these really well, even the Kopprash and that’s a really rare event. I worked on Basler’s Conciones and Struass 1 and was surprised at how well I played them. I practiced for about an hour and 15 minutes in the morning and then again for another hour in the late afternoon. I didn’t have any problems with endurance so I had to make myself stop. It’s hard to do that when everything is clicking so nicely.

Tomorrow is another totally normal, uninteresting day (all the kids have left and peace and quiet has returned to the house) so I will practice again for my usual two hours. I really, really hope I have another good day.

Bowling… –>

International Horn Symposium Final Thoughts

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I’m very glad I went. It was total immersion in everything about horns for 6 days.

What I liked:

Performances all the time. From about 11 am you could attend concerts for the rest of the day and evening.

The opportunity to hear phenomenal hornists play great music. They had an excellent list of great artists.

Good selections of music. From baroque to contemporary to jazz, every type was covered including some world premieres.

A huge amount of lectures to attend covering many different subjects.

Master classes. I learned a lot attending these.

Many horn choir ensembles to choose from if you were a reasonable good hornist.

Tons of horns to test (though for the most part I was too intimidated to try many of them – too many really, really good players in the same room.)

What I didn’t like so much:

The evening performances were in a grand ballroom instead of the auditorium. This made it very difficult to see the performers, especially Annamia Larsson. She is so short that I think only the first row could see her. They had a makeshift stage for some of the performers but if a piano was used the soloist was on the floor.

Too many conflicting events. There were many times when I wanted to go to two different things at the same time. They should have repeated the lectures at a different time slot.

The exhibitors had mostly horns and sheet music and not too many gizmos. I like gizmos a lot but it’s completely understandable why the exhibitors concentrated on horns.

No opportunity to play in small ensembles – e.g. trios, quartets, quintets, etc.

No description about what the horn choirs were going to play and the level of difficulty. If I hadn’t had dinner with the conductor who did the Royal Fireworks I wouldn’t have gone to that ensemble because I would have thought it was too hard for me.

A slight overemphasis of contemporary music which really isn’t my thing.

Oops –>

International Horn Symposium Day 6

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Phew. Day 6 seemed endless, but in a good way. My day started with rehearsals for our performances at the final concert. We went over some troublesome spots and then did a run through in both ensembles. The conductor for the Royal Fireworks was very picky, as he should be, and he knew exactly how he wanted the piece played.

The next lecture I went to should have been called, “Name the Horn Player.” It was a wonderful session where we listened to old recordings – around 1925 through 1975 – of some major Strauss works and had to identify the hornist playing the solos. Mason Jones, Alan Civil, and Farkas were a few of them but I don’t remember the others.

Then I went to the luncheon banquet where we heard the usual thank you speeches and then more performances, some of them quite funny. e.g. playing garden hoses and conch shells. The food was good but no dessert. Odd for a banquet. (Not that I should be eating any of that.)

In the afternoon I went to a session featuring an excellent quintet and the topic was how did the principle horn play differently in a quintet compared to an orchestra. He said that he always has to listen carefully to what’s going on in the piece and blend appropriately regardless of the size of the group. He went on to say that he can’t play out as much in the quintet so that he doesn’t drown everyone else out. After the quintet session I went to an interesting session on the natural horn and the style of horns used beginning with the baroque period and moving forward.

The final concert began at 7 pm and didn’t end until 11 pm. Yikes. They really tried to cram too much in and by the time my two ensembles went on stage half the audience had left. The concert started out with the winners from the competitions held the other day. The fellow who one the solo horn competition played Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro very well. Numerous soloists followed, all excellent.

They had alphorns play four pieces that to me were completely indistinguishable from each other. I think two would have been plenty.  Then they did this thing called soundpainting. The players learn gestures which the conductor uses to get the players to make certain types of sound. No written music is used. Not my cup of tea. You know you’re in trouble when someone comes on stage with the horns in a leotard and bare feet.

Finally, after all this, the ensembles (I think 7 ensembles total) got to play. I didn’t hear any of them because we had to wait backstage for our turn. The ones I was in were third from last and last. I played pretty well considering it was well after 10 pm when we got started. I think both of the ensembles I was in played very well and my last ensemble (playing Royal Fireworks) got a standing ovation. Of course, it could be that the audience was just getting up to leave.

International Horn Symposium Final Thoughts –>

International Horn Symposium Day 5

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This morning I started the day by going to the adult amateur ensemble where we are rehearsing “Legend of Sleeping Bear” by Eric Ewazen for the final concert on Sunday evening. This work is coming along nicely. We rehearsed it and then played it through once. We have one more short rehearsal tomorrow morning. I think it will be fine.

I also went to another ensemble that will be playing “Music for the Royal Fireworks” by Handel. The horn choir arrangement of this is done so that anyone of any level of playing can manage one of the parts. The 1st horn part is hard and high, the 2nd is not quite so high but has a big range and also is hard. From there they progress so that by the 8th, 9th and 10th parts they are relatively easy. I got the 10th horn part – nice and easy. This will be the final piece played at the Sunday night finale. Everyone knows this work and I think it’s a great one to end the symposium with.

In both pieces there are parts, including the parts I am playing, with bass clef. There were quite a few participants that asked for parts without bass clef. I was surprised but happy that there was something I can actually do that other much more advanced players couldn’t. I can’t transpose worth a darn yet but I can read bass clef from my piano playing days.

One of the things I am really enjoying is getting experience with different conductors. Between the two that conduct the community bands I’m in and the two here I am getting exposure to four different styles. This is not something that I would be able to experience without attending these events. The conductor of the Handel piece spent about 5 minutes discussing tuning and how to do it right. You’d think that tuning would be demanded by every conductor but this ensemble is the only one where we actually tuned up. At my community bands someone plays a tuning note but no one seems to pay any attention to it.

The rest of the day was jam packed with performances as usual. Most of the performances were by winners of various competitions that have been going on during the week. There were new compositions by the winners of the IHS composition contests, solo horn competition winners, jazz solo competition finals and horn ensemble competition finals. It’s just incredible how much music one gets to hear at this symposium. Everyday there seems to be more and more. Almost all of it is truly outstanding.

I haven’t done much practicing this week – playing yes, practicing no – so it will be interesting to see where I am once I get home. I took it easy on the drive out here so I got to hotels well before dinner time and was able to practice in the late afternoon but I’m planning on pushing it to get home so I expect that I will have two full days of no playing. This could be very good or not – I’ll know on Wednesday.

International Horn Symposium Day 6 –>

International Horn Symposium Day 4

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I opted against going to the warm-ups this morning and it’s a good thing I did. I heard at the adult amateur ensemble session that the warm-ups were brutal. Full 4 octave range across all keys for starters. Most of the people that attended the warm-ups had some trouble playing in the ensemble. I always thought that the idea of warm-ups was to warm-up, not to kill the day before it even starts.

The amateur ensemble went well. The conductor upped the tempo to performance level and I still kept up and played well. Phew. We will be performing on Sunday evening. 

The rest of the day was loaded with performances, almost all of them fantastic. Jan Boen performed several excellent pieces by Jan Bach. He really played brilliantly. (See the description on this CD about the pieces Jan Boen played.) Jacek Muzyk performed the Suite for Cello in G Major by J. S. Bach.  Mr. Muzyk is technically excellent but I found the musicality a bit lacking. I felt his performance to be quite robotic. 

The evening concert began with The Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse quartet. They were a delight to listen to and they interjected a lot of humor into their performance which kept us laughing. Annamia Larsson (popularly known for her You Tube performance of the Siegfried Long Call) and Jeff Nelson were the featured artists for tonight’s concert. Both were amazing. Between the two of them they played for well over an hour individually and together. My chops hurt just watching them. IMHO, this was the best evening concert so far.

International Horn Symposium Day 5 –>

International Horn Symposium Day 3

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Today I got to the warm-ups right at 8 am. The session was packed so I ended up standing in the back of the room along with 20 other people. I think over 60 people showed up. I’m finding these warm-up classes really tough. I really don’t think my body wants to play the horn at 8 am. Actually, I know my body doesn’t want to play the horn at 8 am. Taking in tons of air and breathing properly is a big part of the warm-ups as it should be. However, first thing in the morning, the breathing makes me dizzy. Getting sound to emerge from my horn and getting my brain to remember the routine is close to impossible. I don’t think I’m going to go tomorrow. 

The adult amateur (also called the over 50) ensemble is wonderful for me. I can play all the music, something that I don’t think I could have done a few months ago. It’s very rewarding. 

David Amram led a jazz improvisation class that was just superb. We all brought our horns so we had this huge jazz horn choir with Richard Todd, no less, as one of the soloists along with Amram. I spent some time talking to David yesterday since I knew him from back in the day. He was one of my mother’s students. David’s a brilliant composer and a truly interesting guy. 

I went to two master classes this afternoon. William Klingelhoffer, co-principle horn with San Francisco’s Opera Orchestra, led an orchestral master class. He had two students play excerpts from Italian operas and then explained how to play them better by using vocal techniques on the horn.  

Jeff Nelson, Hornist, Canadian Brass, led a session on fearless horn playing. He talked about how there are three components to successful horn playing – musicality, technique, and performance – and that we don’t practice the performance side often enough. He talked about practicing walking out on stage, thinking only positively about your performance, staying in the ‘now’, and more. He’s a really good speaker and it was an excellent presentation.

The performances today were all excellent. John Ericson (Horn Notes Blog) gave a fabulous performance of Teleman’s Concerto for Horn in D. Richard Todd just blew everyone away with his jazz technique.  

All in all, it was a great day today.

Naughty Horn –>

International Horn Symposium Day 2

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My ankle is better thank goodness. I bought this special ankle brace from CVS yesterday and it is working wonders. I got to the 8 AM warm-ups and just got back to my hotel at 9:30 PM. It’s been a busy day. 

At the warm-ups I learned that deep breathing exercises at 8 AM are not the best idea. I got pretty dizzy which is not normal for me. I also learned that I don’t know my scales as well as I thought I did. We had a handout that included the C major and C# major keys for all the warm-ups and then we had to do the rest of each sequence without written music. I can play a straight scale in all of the keys but my brain just couldn’t compute thirds and fourths in many of the keys.

At 10 I went to the adult amateur ensemble. That was lots of fun. I didn’t have any problem sight reading the 7th horn part. I remember back in March going to the Northeast Horn Workshop and being totally intimidated. I didn’t even try to play in the horn choir.  I can really tell that I am improving and that’s a really nice feeling. 

I attended a lecture by Gregory Hustis next and that was very interesting. His talk was geared to students and how to get ahead in a career playing the horn. He is a really good speaker and he made his points effectively with an appropriate amount of humor tossed in.  Later in the day he held a master class on orchestral excerpts and he did a great job providing constructive criticism without terrifying the young students playing for him.

The rest of my day was comprised of checking out the exhibits and going to the afternoon and evening performances. Most of the performances were outstanding though there were a few hiccups along the way. One of the hornists who played in the afternoon was having a bad day and one of the horn choirs that played in the evening struggled through a few of their selections.

I found the exhibits a bit disappointing. Unless you wanted to buy a horn or sheet music, there wasn’t much else to see. There were some mutes, mouthpieces, cases and cds. Surely there is more stuff for horns than that. I’ll take another look tomorrow. Maybe I’ve missed something.

International Horn Symposium Day 3 –>