The Amazing Steve Park!

Steve Park is an amazing guy. How does he find the time to teach full time, record you tube videos, play a million gigs a week AND generously share his work with others on line? Maybe there are two of him.  Anyway, here's a link to his latest. It's a website where you can download audio files of the recordings he has done. Thanks, Steve, for all you do. http://www.steveparkhornmusic.net/#Home%20Page

Tough to Squeak & Feedback from Dan

It's long been a mystery to me how the Roll Out exercises (RO) could improve the upper register.  It seems counter intuitive, but time and time again I get feedback of BE students claiming significant improvements in their upper register as well as the mid and low by practicing RO.  I've come to accept the idea that whatever improves the embouchure will improve every aspect of it's performance.  The following is an exchange I had with JB, a newbee to BE.  Following this, I received insightful feedback from Dan whose experience is typical for BE students.  

JP: The books and CD arrived safely. Roll out was easy - always had a pretty good low register.

Val:  This is typical for horn players.  RO is usually easy for most of us.  

JP: Have been doing lip clamps. So far no lengthy squeak!  Rats. If I get a squeak it lasts only two or three seconds, and definitely does not keep going if I put the horn to my lips - even gently. The sound I am getting in the horn sounds more like something dying.

Val:  LOL!  This is normal and expected.  Some people can squeak beautifully, others can't.  It doesn't matter.  What does matter is this:  first, you learn to roll your lips in and second, you learn to keep them rolled in while you blow air through them.  The sound is less important than the technique and motion you will learn from practicing the exercise.     

As you persist in this exercise, you will eventually learn how to keep your lips rolled in and produce a tone with the mouthpiece applied.  The first tones are never beautiful.  They oft times are messy with multiple buzz points.  That's okay.  It's only an exercise.  Even now, after doing BE for 5 1/2 years, some days my RI exercises don't sound clear.... but I remember to tell myself, it's only an exercise.  I have progressed very satisfactorily in spite of my not-so-pretty lip clamp squeaks and RI exercises.

JP:  Has anyone else experienced no results after two days?

Val:  Are you kidding?  People struggle with this for weeks and months and work for years to perfect it.  Don't worry.  You're right on schedule.

JP: I'm hoping lip clamps will eventually provide enough strength to get a good squeak going.

Val:  There's a little "strength" involved, but mostly executing the lip clamp squeak and the RI exercises is a matter of learning a technique that you will eventually be able to wrap your brain around.

   

JP: I majored in horn in college during the 50s, but could never develop the high register enough to consider a performance career. Did a career without playing horn, then, at age 72, took it up again after 50 years, bought an early Elkhart 8D, and now play in (location withheld). I like 4th horn just fine, but darn, I want endurance and a high register. I'm counting on BE.

Val: As you persist doing these exercises with extreme lip shapes, you will learn (both consciously and unconsciously) to "borrow" bits and pieces from these positions of RI and RO that can be applied to your regular playing to improve your range and endurance.  Trust me, it works!  :o)  BE will deliver, but it takes time, persistence and patience.  

Hang in there,  you will succeed!  

Warm regards,

Valerie Wells 

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Dan's Feed Back


Dear Valerie,


I would like to tell you of my experiences with BE.
I have been working my way very slowly through the exercises and have not progressed beyond RI and RO 3. I've worked on them intensively but sporadically for about 6 months but I can now say that I have noticed great improvements in the strength of my high register.
For some time I did not see any progress but I kept the faith and it seems to have paid off.  It may be of interest to some students that the exercises that made most of the difference were the ROLL OUTS! I had assumed that I needed to work on Roll Ins for my high register but this was not so.  For some reason the roll outs were much more effective for me. Of course I still do the Roll ins but it was the Roll Outs that enabled me to do the Roll Ins. [Italics added.]
Regards

Dan DeWitt 

Truth Passes Through Three Stages

Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher (1788 -- 1860), wrote:

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."  

I believe The Balanced Embouchure method is approaching stage three. I am glad I haven't been "violently opposed" as I've promoted BE, but anyone who has followed this little saga since the spring 2007 can not deny that I've been opposed with vigor and venom!  There remain only a few who openly ridicule me for what I do.  However, The Balanced Embouchure for horn is now used by over 237 French horn players on every continent, except perhaps Antarctica.  It's exciting and satisfying to be a part of this.  

Jeff Smiley is making a significant and positive contribution to brass pedagogy.  

(Update in 12/23/13:  I stopped counting a about a year ago when the number of French horn players using BE passed 320.)          

BE Update from Julia Rose

Julia Rose has written a BE Update on her blog.  Julia reports what I often hear from Balanced Embouchure students, that they return from a vacation with unexpectedly well functioning chops.  She also articulates the finer details of  how BE benefits her playing.  I've seen other horn players "catch on" to BE very quickly like Julia has, but I've never seen anyone articulate the message with the same comprehensive clarity.  

Here are a few excerpts that I found particularly impressive:       

Ironically, the weirdness of the different embouchure sensations allows me to tune out how things feel and instead focus on what I want to sound like. The vast differences between the RI and RO embouchures have fine tuned my regular embouchure, making it more streamlined, with no unnecessary movement.  The overall effect has been very freeing. 

The TOL exercises have been especially groundbreaking for me.  They have reminded me of the importance of tongue position in ease of range and tone color, along with articulation, and now I have another tool to work on those techniques.


Overall, I’ve been thrilled at the results I’m getting from BE, which I was not expecting at all.  The exercises are fun, challenging, efficient and mercifully brief, allowing me more time to work on what I really care about in my practice sessions.

Thank you, Julia Rose for sharing your BE experience.

Feedback From a Horn Teacher

Jane Swanson, a retired schoolteacher who teaches privately and plays horn in San Luis Obispo, contributed an article to the latest issue of  "The Horn Call."  She reports impressions of attending her first IHS horn symposium in June of this year.  Here is what Jane wrote regarding BE:

Steven Park's Roll Out

Steven Park's Roll In

Workshops:  BE:  The Balanced Embouchure Method, presented by Valerie Wells with Stephen Park.  This workshop presented an approach to embouchure development that was 100%  new to me.  Valerie and Stephen demonstrated the exercises up close and personal, which was essential because I had no idea it was legal or possible, let alone beneficial, to do such odd things with a face.  I had only two choices:  write them off as nuts or try it.  Given Valerie's stunning demonstrations of producing super high, pianissimo, pure pitches out of thin air, and given Stephen's gorgeous sound and security as a performer (search for Steve Park to find some lovely video performances), I chose the latter.  And sure enough, the BE exercises do not demand the dreaded "embouchure change" but do lead to embouchure improvement in all registers.  I recommend their website (beforhorn.blogspot.com) as a source of information for those not at the workshop.

Jane emailed me to add a little more information regarding her progress:

My own progress with BE is hmmm..... maybe modest is the word but maybe not. I still don't squeak well - can't do what you do with those high sounds without and with the horn. But I am pretty consistent with the basics of roll-out and roll-in. And my endurance is still a work in progress. But here are my pay-offs:

1. Even when I play to exhaustion I do NOT have swollen lips afterwards or the next day! So I can jump right back into action.

2. In the midst of challenging playing, same story - my chops recover if I give them a few seconds off. That was not the case previously.

I am combining BE work with a focus on using air better, meaning those things we KNOW but which can slip away over time if we take them for granted:

monitoring speed of air

using more of it

using that low gut support every second

For me the combination is paying off nicely, and I know that more progress lies in my future.

Thanks for the feedback, Jane.  This ability to recover more quickly is something I hear often from those who study BE.  See the discussion on Julia Rose's blog about this.

The Rule Breakers

Alexander Kienle recently shared a couple items that I find very interesting: 

Baborak bunches his chin up as he ascends for the last note of Don Juan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc-S02MX4mU
Interesting to watch!  And what a grand moment in classical music to savor.  Does it get any better than this?

Some of you may have already come across Froydis' article about "nevers": http://www.hornsociety.org/en/publications/horn-call/online-articles/194-never-say-never-again  As Alex pointed out, this is particularly relevant when discussing BE!

With examples like these, it's hard to see how some believe bunching the chin or puffing the cheeks is "bad" or even "damaging" to the embouchure.

More BE Analysis from Lou Denaro

I've tried for years to analyse & understand BE. I've just about given up. The embouchure is such a fluid thing, and so difficult to analyze, I've adopted this attitude: Just do BE because it works.  But..... Lou Denaro is different.  His analysis on BE fascinates me. Lou's also teaching me a thing or two about the mysterious world of mouthpieces.  Here's a discussion he recently initiated on my FaceBook wall. 

Lou: Latest BE observation: I've compared it to a "Lip Stretch" (ala Yoga). Now I believe that it's really about using the settings to harden our too soft lip tissues. Ultimately the player ends up covering both sides of Farkas' "oboe reed" aperture, build up the inner tissues in roll out to maintain the larger aperture and build up the outer tissues in the tighter roll in aperture and it's simply a matter of intuitively playing to your dual strengths rolling in and out across the registers and keeping things nice and smooth and beautiful. Amen.

Lou:  Also left out that this tonguing on the lips business is as basic/san artifice attack as most players can manage, it prompts the appropriate response in the appropriate tissues that should be engaged. All of my comments are not purely scientific, but I believe Jeff left it vague in order to let us explore for that reason.  

David:  Lou, great update. Question, given the increased strength of lip muscles due to rolling in, and out, have you found that the ID (inner diameter) of the mouthpiece is sufficient or have you switched, might switch to a larger or smaller id mouthpiece?

Lou: David, this is a put on right? It's almost too good that you're asking this question. I switched to a G&W 4.75 (the biggest cup in their lineup Inner Rim: .709 / Cup Depth: 1.040 / Throat: .184) 3 weeks ago. I also put a bigger rim ID on my Cantesanu piece (for the Paxman). I'm not proud of this. The thing is that Jeff's method is supposed to work with smaller IDs, but it got to the point that I was visibly overpowering the G&W 3.25 (modified Schmidt 10 copy) on my NiSi Schmidt last month. The 4.75 diffuses sax-player-playing-on-a-metal-reed effect that I was starting to get on the 3.25.  Not that matters any way, because I can still play on smaller rims (provided the horn can take it), but Schmidt's have lighter more penetrating sounds than most other horns out there and having more cup volume up front gives you something to back off from and in any case I'm glad I've got more choices up front on how to power up these beasts.

Valerie:  Lou wrote "but I believe Jeff left it vague in order to let us explore for that reason." Exactly! I think you've nailed the "universal principals" side of BE, Lou.  The "vague" part that Smiley left out are the exact details of how these principles apply to the individual. I believe it would be impossible for Jeff to describe exactly how each person's lips achieve balance... so it's best not to speak of such things. 

Valerie: I love the Yoga analogy! 

 Lou: I thought of it last month in Winter Harbor, I was up by myself doing BE on the seashore every morning crack of dawn, we had an Alexander Technique (efficient use of the body) class and participants shared that there was overlap between Yoga stretches and whatever exercise we were doing at 7:45am and then it hit me that I've been doing my own stretches since 6:00.

For more of Lou's insights see this.