Tag Archives: practice

Barry Tuckwell Institute – Arrival

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Last week I attended the Barry Tuckwell Institute held at The College of New Jersey. This was an amazing experience. In fact, I almost emailed my husband and said it was the best thing I ever did but then I decided that probably wasn’t the best message to send. I can say that it was the best horn experience I have ever had.

We all checked in on Tuesday afternoon, got our dorm room assignments, our schedule and our official t-shirts, and then had dinner where we were introduced to Barry. There were about 20 students, four horn teachers, Barry, and Karen – the person that made everything run smoothly. Boy did she do a great job. Everything ran flawlessly the entire time.

We had a nice mix of attendees. There were a few high school students, some college students and the rest of us were adult amateurs. I don’t think that I was the most inexperienced hornist there which was a big relief. I had been very worried that I would not be able to keep up with the other students. I needn’t have been concerned. One’s skill set was completely irrelevant. If all I could do was play a few easy tunes I think they would have figured out a way to include me in the playing events.

No Kopprasch

No Kopprasch

The t-shirts we received set the tone for the conference. I’m a big fan of this t-shirt! Those of you who have read some of my other posts know that although I practice the exercises in the Kopprasch book, I am not a fan. Barry joked that if anyone mentioned Kopprasch there would be a $500 fine. Although I brought my Kopprasch book expecting to do some practicing, I went and shoved it back in my car. What a relief. According to the BTI website, the whole idea of the institute is to experience the joy of playing the horn in a non-competitive environment. They accomplished that in spades. I never felt like I was being judged on my horn playing in any way.

Meeting Barry was one of those goose bump experiences. He has been my horn hero ever since I started playing the horn back in high school. (Which made me wonder who are the horn heros now?) What a nice guy. Totally unpretentious. He made everyone feel comfortable. He ate all meals with us, stayed in the dorms, and was easy to talk to. One of the first things I asked Karen was whether we would be able to talk to Barry while we were there. Well, no worries. Karen said that was one of the big benefits of attending. So true. Next post – day one.

BTI – Wednesday Morning –>

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… –>

Recovery

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If you read ‘Oops‘ you know that I didn’t play for almost a week while traveling back from the International Horn Symposium. Practice on Friday, when I finally got home, was a disaster. Lesson learned – never do that again. On Saturday I started practicing again with lots of long low notes and easy slurs to try to get some flexibility back. I played for about 20 minutes and took about an hour break. I practiced again for another 45 minutes, mostly scales and some etudes. I was missing lots of notes and the tone was very screechy so practicing anything like real music wasn’t worth the frustration.

Sunday was definitely better. I started with the same long low notes and slurs since my chops were still somewhat stiff. I always start practicing this way but I just did it for a whole lot longer before I worked into a higher range. What’s nice is that I actually noticed a real improvement in playing the arpeggios, not that I would suggest not playing for a week to get there. My tone was also noticeably better than Saturday but still not where I like it to be. I worked on some of the exercises in the Singer embouchure book and did some Kopprash (still not a fan). Since I still wasn’t really thrilled with my tone, I just played through some of the easier pieces I’ve played in the past rather than actually practicing something. I know this is not the right way to practice but my goal was just to get my chops back.

Monday was lesson day. Fortunately my chops were in pretty good shape by now. We started with low warmups and moved on to double octave arpeggios starting at low C. These went as well as they did yesterday and even Lynn, my teacher, said I had improved. Next up were the Singer and Kopprash exercises. One of the things Lynn pointed out was that I am not thinking about what I am going to play before I start and therefore tend to mess up the first several measures. She has mentioned this many times at past lessons but I tend to want to rush into things and forget. I need to take my time, feel the rhythm and hear what I want to play in my head first. It’s amazing how well this works when I actually do it. It really has to become a habit.

The best thing about Monday’s lesson was that we finally put Mozart 3 to bed. Lynn has been suggesting that it was time to move on for at least a month now and I had been resisting because I was still missing notes here and there. But the misses are never in the same places, they are due to a lapse in concentration or air support, one leading to the other. If I get my act together and relax and just play the piece musically, I can play it and be happy with the way I played it. So, on to new music. We picked “Canciones” by Paul Basler. We played through it and it is a really lovely piece and it should be fun to learn.

An interesting month –>

Oops

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I finally got home from my ‘forever’ trip from Macomb to Long Island. I left Monday morning and planned on getting home Tuesday in time for my band rehearsal. Originally I had plans to visit some friends but in the end that didn’t pan out so home I went. The trip is about 1100 miles – 16 hours. My plan was to drive as far as I could stand on Monday and wrap up the trip Tuesday. Well, the best laid plans….. Tuesday I started to get a pretty bad headache, bad enough that I decided to stop somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Oh well, so much for band rehearsal.

Wednesday the headache was worse. I managed to drive for an hour and a half. After driving over a curb and an entire sidewalk, it was definitely time to call it quits. Thank goodness I have an SUV. By the time I pulled into a hotel, I was feeling just awful. I have to give big kudos to the Holiday Inn Express in Bloomburg, PA. They were kind enough to actually take care of me – they brought food, orange juice, bottled water (all no charge) and checked on me during the day. Wow.

I was slightly better Thursday so I left this wonderful hotel around two and pushed onward. I managed around two and a half hours but stopped both due to the headache and the terrible weather – pouring rain, thunder, fog, you name it, I drove through it. Friday I actually got home. Geesh what a trip.

So, what’s the point of describing this miserable saga? I hadn’t played my horn since Sunday at the symposium! Hence the oops. I took out my horn yesterday having no idea what to expect. In the year that I have been playing, with the exception of the surgery I had in December, I had occasionally missed a day but nothing more. I was hoping that the rest would be helpful, but no, it was more like a disaster.

I started by just buzzing for a while and then moving on to long low tones. I did that (buzzing and long tones) for about 20 minutes and then took a break. I went back to it after an hour and continued with the long tones and then tried some slurs. That’s where the problems started. No flexibility. No range. Screechy tone. Ugh. I went back to long low tones and some low slurs and then quit after about half and hour. I sure hope today is better and that it doesn’t take too long to get back to where I was.

Blogging Question –>

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 –>

International Horn Symposium Day 1

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I have not had the best beginning at IHS. This morning I got up and went to get my first cup of coffee. Not being quite awake yet, I managed to trip and fall down part of the hotel stairs and badly sprain my ankle. I actually heard a snap. I got up and hobbled to the breakfast area (had to get the coffee) and then got back to my room and iced my ankle. 

Fortunately the symposium didn’t start until 11:00 AM so I had some time to keep my foot up before I had to leave. I got to my car (thank goodness this was my left foot so I could drive) without too much pain but the problems started once I found the parking lot we were supposed to park in. As is true of almost every college campus I have ever been on, there was no relationship between the parking lot and the building the symposium is in. 

Grimacing in pain I made it to registration and then was able to sit with my foot up for the opening session. The opening session was excellent. There were the usual welcome speeches but they were accompanied by some really excellent  performances setting the stage for the caliber of the rest of the symposium.

My next challenge was lunch. I bought the meal plan back when I signed up and discovered that lunch was in a completely different building and the we had to take buses to get to that building. Guess where the busses were? Yup, back at the parking lot. Well, that wasn’t happening and I went and got Burger King from the student union. That required navigating to the ground floor but at least I didn’t have to leave the building.   

I went to hear Lowell Shaw’s Deserts (single horn) Bipperies (two horns), Tripperies (three horns), Fripperies (four horns), and Quipperies (five horns) for the first session of the afternoon. My horn teacher and I have played a few of  the Bipperies and they are really fun. Lowell Shaw spoke about how he came to write these pieces and then about a dozen of them were played. Again the performances were outstanding.  

After this I got myself to some of the exhibits (barely) and had a few pros play my horn. The consensus is that it is sharp. (Look for another post about this by next week.) By now it was almost 4 PM and I gave up. I didn’t want to miss the rest of the sessions and the evening performances but I was in terrible pain by this time. If I had any hope of walking around tomorrow I had to get off my ankle so I slogged back to my car and went back to the hotel which is where I am now writing this with my feet up. On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the drugstore and got an ice pack and an ankle brace. I’m really hoping that tomorrow will be better.

International Horn Symposium Day 2

Traveling

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I’m on my way to the International Horn Symposium by car so I have several nights in hotels on my way. I’ve never used a practice mute before. I borrowed one (Yamaha silent brass mute without the electronics) and used it for the first time two days ago. It was weird. Very, very weird. The first thing – how to hold the horn. The mute takes up all the space in the bell. No room for a hand. This is pretty obvious but it didn’t occur to me until I stuck the mute into the bell. I tried holding on to the end of the mute, holding the edge of the bell, shoving my elbow against the mute – nothing really worked.

The second thing – really bad posture which is a consequence of the the hand problem. I found myself fairly hunched over once I found a somewhat comfortable place for my right hand.

Then there’s the sound or lack thereof. I was surprised how quiet the mute makes the horn. It’s hard to describe the sound. It’s not just softer, it’s got kind of an edge to it. I also found that if I wasn’t careful, I would play a ‘wa-wa’ sound similar to a trumpet with that kind of mute. I practiced for about a half hour  – mostly slurs and scales – and that was about all I could stand. Trying to play real music just didn’t work for me.

Yesterday the horn gods were looking favorably on me. I was originally planning to stop in Columbus, Ohio but when I got there I wasn’t very tired and I decided to push on. I went a little past Dayton and saw one of those exits with a bunch of hotels listed. One was a Hampton Inn and I like those so I decided to head there. I followed the signs and thought I had gotten lost. I had to follow this long, winding road (remember this is by an Interstate exit) up a hill. I had past the other hotels on the highway sign before following this road. I finally got to the hotel and at first I thought it wasn’t open. There was only one car in the parking lot. I checked in and asked how full the hotel was. Only 10 registered guests (Hmm – I wonder why?) I explained that I wanted to practice my horn and asked the desk clerk if she could put me far away from the other guests. “Yes – I can put you on the noisy side of the hotel by the highway. All the others are on the ‘quiet’ side.”  Two hours of practice – yes!

International Horn Symposium Day 1 –>