Air vs Embouchure and Other Things

Recently, John, a trombone player with some BE experience, told me that he has observed brass players obsessing too much over embouchure when they should be spending more time on air.  This was my reply:  

"I played French horn in college, but stopped for 33 years.  I came back to horn about 8 years ago and have observed just the opposite -- at least in the French horn world.  Embouchure talk seemed totally taboo in 2006, yet some French horn players seemed to obsess over air as if lips weren't even necessary for horn playing.  I listened intently and tried so hard to make it happen with air the way so many said it was supposed to work.  I was huffing & puffing blowing huge volumes of air through my horn to the point of hyperventilation but still couldn't come near the upper register.  And low notes were equally frustrating.  I couldn't hold a low register note for more than a few seconds before running out of air.  I thought I'd never be successful on horn because I assumed I just didn't have the lung capacity for it and my college experience had nearly convinced me that I didn't have the embouchure either.  When I finally found BE and was taught to manipulate my lips this way or that way, I suddenly could play notes in the upper range for the first time ever and could sustain low notes for much, much longer.

"When I informally introduced BE to the French horn community, huge efforts were made to correct the error of my ways.  I was ridiculed for using a trumpet method, especially one that blatantly taught the idea of rolling the lips in and out.  Shameful! Someone even scolded me for discussing the intimate subject of the embouchure in public, as if I were talking about bladder control! HA!  

"So.... My observation has been that only lately has it become "okay" to talk about chops again in the French horn world.

"I think the advancement of BE into the horn world has added a healthy weight and emphasis towards balancing air w/ embouchure.  Hundreds of horn players are now using BE and it's also being taught in private studios, high schools, middle schools and universities around the world.  Maybe the demands of the horn embouchure are more stringent than that of trombone, I don't know, but I see BE making a very positive improvement in horn pedagogy."   

I'm not certain my observations are accurate for the entire horn world.  What I observed may have simply been the dominant theme in the on-line discussion groups of the time (Memphis list and Yahoo Horn). But I believe it is most productive to emphasize both air and embouchure working in tandem as The Balanced Embouchure system does.

John responded,  

"Wow! That’s different from my experience but I surely believe you.  My take on BE is that, after a while, you’re not really rolling in and out so much anymore. Things stabilize and strengthen but the rolling in and out is natural while you’re building up.

"When I saw Claude Gordon and was rolling in and out for range changes he said go ahead, let the lips do whatever they want to do….and do the routine everyday! Sure enough, the lip motion started to become less and less. More efficient I would say.  I think it’s completely natural to do this. Who starts outs from day one with a strong, balanced embouchure?

"I'm really glad to hear that BE has been well received and is being used to success by so many players.  I think it has changed people’s lives for the better. So stressful to want to play well and not be able to get a handle on it. And some people make it look so easy!

"I’m sure horn is a lot tougher than trombone, chop wise. But every instrument has it’s own devil."   

I love John's observations.  BE uses exaggerated lip motions ("roll in" and "roll out") and breathing techniques ("snaps" and "zips") to awaken the student to movement and breathing possibilities they may not be aware of.  This awakening gives the student options for more productive, satisfying development. Here's an experience shared recently in an email:

"Hi Valerie,
"Well I've been pretty busy over Christmas with the band and two orchestras.  Like you I've followed the Farkas method religiously for 30 years. This will be my difficulty. To get out of pulling down the bottom lip. The Farkas method has failed me to an extent as I have a fairly fleshy top lip. As I said. The roll outs are no problem whatsoever. I can get the pedal E in Shostakovich 5 last movement no problem. Some of my students in band have said my lip was all over the place when I show them how to blow pedals. I said so be it if it aids in getting the extreme low notes. I can now reinforce my method to them when I show them Jeff's book. So I was right all along sort of thing. The roll ins will be more difficult after 30 years of puckering my lips. I have however started roll in exercises. I have to continually remind myself to roll in especially in the high register but it will be worth it. A small victory. We took out 633 Squadron at band the other night. Notable for it's many long unison top A's. It used to be about 7 out of 10 on the worry scale for pitching and endurance. I made myself use the roll in position and as the piece went on the worry scale became 2 out of 10. You and Jeff deserve top praise for helping all us trumpet and horn players throughout the globe.

          "Many thanks, Vincent McArdle."

I love what I do!

So why the picture of Steve Park playing a pedal tone?  Steve is the one who helped me see what BE really is when boiled down to it's simplest terms:
                                       Balancing air with embouchure.

For more about Steve Park, see these links:
http://beforhorn.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-steve-park-came-to-be.html http://beforhorn.blogspot.com/2011/05/be-in-san-francisco.html
http://beforhorn.blogspot.com/2011/10/feedback-from-horn-teacher.html
 http://www.steveparkhornmusic.net/#Home%20Page

Feed back From Alex Shuhan's Studio

Valerie,

Continuing to experience more and more revelations thanks to BE. Students are all responding very well, in fact, I've had more students offering to me their own self-awareness observations than I've ever experienced. Typical lesson is for students to come and wait for me to tell them something, and if I ask questions, they're usually uncomfortable and baffled! Now, it is not uncommon for the students to be offering up their own questions and observations of things they are suddenly noticing about their playing. This is huge and completely a result of BE.

Other thoughts, one-liners, etc.:

Compression ALLOWS for vibration. (I NEVER really understood what compression meant. For me now, it seems to be the MOST important thing to understand/experience and it has been revealed to me entirely thanks to BE).

If you've mastered range, tone, flexibility, intonation, articulation, dynamics and a general ease of production, BE is not for you. All others should consider opening the BE door to possibility.

BE allows for real understanding.

Anything that has changed in my playing as a result of BE has happened in a gentle, easy manner. The adjustments, improvements have all occurred in a way that makes the whole playing process better informed.

If you've been stuck, unable to affect change and/or improvement…BE!

Alex Shuhan, Assoc. Prof. of Horn
Ithaca College School of Music

BE can Revolutionize Teaching

Steve Park began studying BE 7 months ago. He related that Andrew Joy originally recommended he investigate it. Steve said he was intrigued by Jeff Smiley's website because it described the way he had been playing for years. Steve hoped to use BE to improve his students' embouchures. Below is a letter Steve recently wrote to a horn colleague about BE.

Just in case anyone reading this has never seen or heard Steve Park play, here are links to two of his outstanding youtube videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2J9cvNRs1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA-CIwRw6Qk

Hey M---, Last Monday I taught my first lessons of the new year at Utah State University. I have a new student who is a music major. She is on scholarship and plays really well. Her embouchure is set up a lot like yours. She sets the rim of the mouthpiece into her lower lip a little bit. Her high range tops out at around a G or A on a good day she said. I showed her the rolled in exercises and yesterday at her 2nd lesson she played several easy high C's. I was amazed that she figured it out so quickly and she was delighted. She said "this is fun!" She took lessons all through high school and no one ever showed her this stuff. I have another new student who also took lessons all through high school from Bruce Woodward, who is a good teacher. His low range was aweful. He could barely get the C below middle C and it was weak and
unstable. I showed him the rolled out exercises for low playing and at his lesson yesterday he played a pedal F. He said that he had never gotten anywhere near that note before. I think I said to you last Sunday that these strategies and exercises have revolutionized my teaching. I look forward to the lessons because I know how to help the students and every one of them is making great progress. I have 25 students and only one of them can't yet play a high C and a pedal F or lower. (I just started her on the exercises last week as well. I'm sure that she will be there in a few weeks or sooner.) Contact Valerie Wells and order the book and exercises. Then we can get together and I will show you what I have been doing with my students. You are about to become a high horn playing maniac!!!

Steve

Decisions, Decisions....

Several great questions came from a Doug, a three month BE’er:

"Is there some point in time or development where you're supposed to start moving from RO to RI as you ascend?"

Yes, as soon as you learn the RO and RI exercises you should begin practicing the Advanced Slip slurs to start the process of bridging the gap. The goal is a "continuous flex" as we ascend with no breaks. However, this goal comes from a trumpet player. Trumpet players strive for a no break, no reset embouchure and I believe they can achieve it more readily than a horn player. After all, when compared to horn players, trumpet players only have a mid and high range, no low register. Many horn players have a break, or a place where they must switch or shift their embouchure setting to accommodate the requirements of the range. Doug continues,

"I've been working on bringing the playable notes in RO up as high as I can. I think this is an area where I could use some face to face instruction."

I'd love to work with Doug face to face, but I'm not sure I have the answers he seeks.

At this point he has several directions he might move towards:
(1) switching from RO to RI seamlessly somewhere along the way up and vice versa
(2) developing some sort of RO-RI hybride to play the full range
(3) developing a RO that plays the full range
(4) developing a RI that plays the whole range
(5) developing a RI and a RO that significantly overlap to avoid resetting within phrases
and/or....
(6) doing something completely different that I can't even imagine!

The Advanced Lip Slurs are designed to extend the range upwards and downwards step by step so the player can use techniques learned in RO and RI exercises to discover movements to eliminate or minimize awkward "breaks." It's impossible to say where any one player will shift from RO to RI or if they will need to. It will depend on personal architecture as well as the embouchure they start with, playing needs, personal choices, practice habits, etc.

BE students are encouraged to experiment with the extremes of the exercises to help them discover lips shapes and movements to develop more efficient "chops." BE is not like other methods that prescribe mouthpiece placement and exactly what one must do with the lips, the tongue, the teeth, for regular playing. Because BE is based upon universal principles, BE exercises compliment other methods so the BE student is free to explore and investigate other methods. One never knows where an important piece of the embouchure puzzle will be found.

Below is an example of a bold move a fellow horn player on BE recently made to tackle a very challenging situation.

"I have been flirting with BE for over a year with few results--I still can't get a decent RI. When I work on BE, my regular playing suffers, particularly high and soft playing, though TOL has helped that. The problem with my accustomed embouchure is that it is "conditional," and I don't have good endurance. However, a week ago I was faced with a grueling concert last night preceded by a rehearsal. First horn on Gershwin's Cuban Overture, Rhapsody in Blue, and American in Paris, plus I'm rehearsing Tchaikovsky's fifth, which is a lot of high playing, and I'm trying out for the solo. So, a week ago I did what you shouldn't do: I switched to the smaller mouthpiece I use with BE and changed my embouchure to lips together and air pockets behind both lips. Result: I got through the rehearsal and concert with no endurance problems. I could have played another concert. I had more clams than usual--usually when the air pockets collapsed, but the high notes sailed out, as well as the low. Today my chops feel fine.

"This is not a 'BE embouchure,' if there is such a thing, but certainly was influenced by the BE practice.

"It looks like I'm committed. I would expect that BE practice will only help with this setup. Sometimes desperation helps."

I have to disagree that Henry did what he "shouldn't do." I also disagree with his conclusion that this isn't a "BE embouchure." If it worked, it’s correct. And if BE exercises influenced it, then it is a "BE embouchure," no matter what it looks like!

I’ve encouraged Henry to work on this set up & see what he can accomplish with it. If he can make it perform cleanly with a nice tone, why not use it? He can call it his personal BE embouchure! :o)

Through my experiences with BE, I’ve had the privilege of getting well acquainted with some super good horn players. Some use a rolled in setting for the high range and gradually transfer to a more rolled out setting for the low. A few use a rolled in setting for all of their playing, even the low register. Others use a hybride of both roll in and roll out in varying degrees depending on the range. It varies from player to player.

If anyone is dissatisfied with their embouchure, it is important to actively explore as many avenues as possible, even things that seem strange or radical, in our pursuit of one's personal "balanced embouchure."

"How I Came to BE"

When I was in high school, I played pretty well for a kid, so I decided to study horn in college. During my audition for the university brass faculty, the trumpet professor commented, “Nice tone, but you look like you’ve been playing trumpet.” When studies in the music school began, the horn professor immediately set me to work to transform my embouchure into the Philip Farkas ideal. At the end of my sophomore year, I hadn’t added a single note to my upper range, had poor endurance, felt frustrated and dropped out of music school. Later I married, became a registered nurse, reared a family, etc. Although I didn’t own or play horn for over three decades, I never stopped thinking of myself as a horn player.

In 2005 I attended a Northwest Sinfonietta performance and heard Kathleen Vaught Farner perform. “Wow!” I thought to myself, “I should be doing that.” (She made it look so easy. HAH!) Some months later I bought a horn, hired a private instructor and gradually worked up to practicing three hours a day. Thinking that I must have done something wrong in my college days, I redoubled my efforts to emulate Philip Farkas. After about 6 months, I was very pleased that I’d regained much of my previous playing abilities, yet disappointed that I had also regained my limited range and endurance. After one particularly frustrating horn lesson, I realized that if I didn’t soon find a remedy for my embouchure problem, I would not progress as desired.

I went home from that lesson feeling very discouraged and wondering if I would again give up on the horn. I might have, had it not been for a certain thought seizing my mind: “Since trumpet players know how to play high, a trumpet teacher could show me how.” I went to the internet and Googled “trumpet + embouchure.” As I’d found in my searches for horn embouchure development, most of the discussion about trumpet embouchure development seemed a rehash of the conventional methods that had already failed to help me. I continued to search, not knowing exactly what I was searching for.

Then, I opened a website that contained something different, specific, that boldly promised results. That something was Jeff Smiley’s discussion of The Balanced Embouchure. Jeff’s empathy for those who struggle with embouchure issues drew me in immediately. When I read his “mechanics” chapter where he wrote candidly of how rolling in or out helps the high or low notes speak, I was intrigued. This was a specific I had never heard before. Could this be what I was looking for? I immediately went to my practice room, picked up my horn, rolled in my lips and blew. To my surprise, I was suddenly playing and sustaining higher notes than I ever had with surprisingly little pressure and effort. The high notes I played that day were not beautiful, but I knew from this experiment that Jeff Smiley was onto something powerful and effective, and I wanted to know more, so I ordered the book.

I began working BE in June of 2006. Two weeks later at my next horn lesson, my tone, range and confidence already showed signs of improvement. My private instructor was favorably impressed and ordered the book for herself.

For the next 9 months I worked 15 to 30 minutes a day on the BE basics. My playing improved steadily.  I felt happy and confident that I’d found something that could benefit other amateur horn players. So in March of 2007, I decided to share my joyful success by introducing BE to “Horn,” an on-line discussion list for horn players. I entered my first posting entitled, “Stuck in RANGE LIMBO???” I wrote about my past embouchure failures and enthusiastically shared how I had recovered using a method developed by a trumpet teacher. I ended the post asking a rhetorical question: “What the heck’s wrong with horn pedagogy? Am I missing something out there or is horn instruction stuck somewhere the dark ages?!?”

Well ... that was the wrong approach for this group as I apparently offended several instructors on the list. I was shocked as a barrage of criticisms were hurled at Jeff Smiley, his method and me. I couldn’t understand how they could so quickly judge and dismiss a method they had never tried, especially a method I had found so helpful. While I remained secure in my personal convictions, defending my position seemed a losing battle as I debated with these more advanced players. But there was one prominent member of the list who kept an open mind, a cool head and encouraged the others to do the same. This was Wendell Rider, author of the excellent book, Real World Horn Playing. Instead of dismissing Smiley’s ideas, Wendell began to experiment with one of the techniques used in BE. After several months, Wendell reported to "Horn" that he found this single technique “valid and important” for horn players as it improved both range and tone in his students’ horn playing. Wendell then published an addendum to his book on his website dedicated to using this technique acknowledging Jeff Smiley and me for “inspiration.” I was very grateful for Wendell’s support. I felt as though I’d been exonerated to have a respected horn player/instructor embrace new ideas I had introduced to the horn community. That was a thrill for me, an obscure come-back amateur horn playing grandma!

Soon, a daring few other horn players from around the globe began confiding in me that they, too, began experiencing success using The Balanced Embouchure. By August of 2008, I knew about 15 horn players studying BE.  For fear of criticism, most were studying BE secretly. Some were asking how to adapt the BE exercises for horn. With Jeff Smiley’s permission, I wrote up my BE routine and began distributing it to horn players.

Also around this time, two professional horn players, Paul Sharp and Andrew Joy, shared that they also were very pleased with BE and gave me permission to mention their success on line. After posting about Paul Sharp and Andrew Joy on both horn lists, more horn players started ordering books from Jeff Smiley.

Jeff Smiley soon honored me with a request to sell his method with my horn adaptations. I began selling The Balanced Embouchure in October 2008. It’s been a joy ride to share BE with others and help them work through the program. Especially gratifying is getting feedback from horn players as BE removes stumbling blocks that had once kept them from achieving their goals. As of this writing in October 2009, I have a list of over 75 horn players working with BE.  (Update in January 2012:  230 horn players who have begun the program.)

BE has enabled me to confidently play the full range of the horn with a pretty darn decent tone. I am no longer afraid of high notes or running out of steam half way through a concert. I enjoy being able to play all horn parts within, of course, the limits of my technique and experience. I enjoy developing technique and acquiring experience unencumbered by my previous obstacles of poor range and endurance. Of course, I still have a long way to go to become the horn player of my dreams, but I believe hard work and BE will get me there.

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, I wish to reiterate the purpose of this blog is to share my enthusiasm for The Balanced Embouchure, not to brag about my horn playing. In most ways I'm like any other developing horn player; I have my weaknesses and challenges.  I'm not a stellar horn player, but I am definitely a happy horn player thanks to Jeff Smiley.

Valerie Wells, BE for Horn

The Balanced Embouchure Book with CD is $45.00.
The BE for French Horn booklet and/or PDF of horn adaptations is $3.00 (with book purchase).
Shipping & handling is $5.50 to $25.00 depending on location. (The quoted prices are in US dollars.)

Those who purchase The Balanced Embouchure with a Comfy Horn Strap, receive a $5.00 discount (as well as break on shipping).

To Order:

Step 1. Email me: ValerieW78 “at” Gmail “dot” com. Please tell me what instrument you play and the country you live in.

Step 2. I send you an invoice with payment options (credit card, PayPal, check or money order).

Step 3. You pay the invoice.

Step 4. I ship your BE book.

Happy horn playing!

Valerie Wells