The Terror & Thrill of Horn Playing

I think every horn player can identify with the sentiments my friend, Doug, recently shared with me in a spontaneous and unsolicited email.

Valerie,

Our Castle Rock Orchestra had a Christmas concert today. . . The concert was great fun, and if you recall, I was principal. What made that remarkable was that I stewed about it for several weeks. I practiced everything that mattered. I practiced fingerings, I thought about phrasing, dynamics, articulation, and intonation. And I psyched myself up, so determined to play as well as I could.

Today arrived, concert day. Yikes! I tried to avoid thinking about what it meant not to do this well, and I stayed just this side of being really nervous. I turned that wonderful corner where nerves turn into determination and concentration, and adrenalin is your friend. Of all the things I thought about, there was one thing I never thought about. The one thing that it most depends. I never gave a single thought to my chops.

After a year of BE, and weeks of practicing those parts, I never questioned whether or not I could slur up to a high A and hit it cleanly. I'm not saying I didn't chip any notes, but I hit all those high A's as clean as a whistle!

I had several thoughts occur to me as the concert went on. The first was, "What a fool I was to quit playing for all those years." The second was, "This is where I really belong, it doesn't get better than this." The third was about what a stretch it is for me to be playing these first part solos and that I had to bring everything I knew. And finally it cocurred to me that if you're lucky enough to be a horn player, then you're lucky enough.

I'm close to a year past discovering BE, corresponding with Jeff, and exchanging the first email with you. What a year of discovery it's been! I've never been bungee jumping, but I don't believe it could hold a candle to playing the horn, either for the terror or the thrill. I wouldn't trade any experience on earth for the thrill of playing the horn this afternoon. I don't think I have the words to describe it. It's that feeling deep down inside that something came into your life and made such a huge impact, that you wonder how you could have accomplished something so personally meaningful if you hadn't been touched in that way. . . I couldn't have risen to the challenge today without it.

Joyful Christmas to you and your family, and God bless you and yours for all that you do.

Doug
Doug's testimonial

"Horn Matters" Linked My Blog - Wow!

Dr. John Ericson has posted an article, "Joy on The Balanced Embouchure," featuring Andrew Joy. He's also linked my humble blog. And please note Lyle's excellent comments. http://hornmatters.com/2010/09/joy-on-the-balanced-embouchure/

It's thrilling to know that I'm part of a movement that's helping hornplayers get more satisfaction from playing their instruments. It is also thrilling to see BE recognized by a respected horn professor with a very popular blog. (Wow!)

Back in March of 2007, when I made my first awkward attempts to introduce BE to the horn world, I was met by a surprizing amount of opposition. I'm glad to see hornists from all over the globe embracing BE in spite of my awkward publicity efforts.

Congratulations to all of you who bravely went where few hornplayers had gone before! (I'm hearing the Star Trek them in my mind!) Thanks to Dr. John Ericson, Andrew Joy, Lyle Sanford, and Steve Park and all my BE friends for your contributions and continued support to the BE movement. But, most of all, my heart felt gratitude goes to Jeff Smiley for developing and publishing The Balanced Embouchure.

The progress of The Balanced Embouchure in the horn community demonstrates the power of the BE message.

Warm regards, Valerie Wells

Looks can Deceive

Here's a splendid example of why we should not try to look like someone else when we play the horn:

Hi Valerie,

When I play I have a RI (rolled in) feel and when I look in a mirror at my embouchure it is still significantly RO (rolled out) . . . and that is up to high F with a
strong sound up to high E! That is weird, but h--- it works ;-)

Guillaume

Comment from Jonathan West:

I've had discussions with Lyle Sanford that touch on this issue. In orchestra rehearsals, conductors talk about what they want from the strings in terms of tone. They describe the techniques to be used - heel or tip of the bow, pressure vs bow speed, start on or off the string. Likewise percussionists have a well-established vocabulary for their techniques - stick speed and weight, whereabouts on the surface to strike the drum, hardness of stick etc. But for wind players, there isn't that same vocabulary of techniques. The vocabulary is more about effects than techniques. This is because what goes on for a wind player is internal (air support, tonguing etc) or consists of minute outwardly imperceptible changes around the lips. And I rather suspect that everybody visualises what is going on internally and with the lips a bit differently - and almost all the visualisations are wrong to some degree. This is probably why, if BE works for you, you can't quite tell why or how. What you See more... think is going on is probably different from what is really going on. But that doesn't matter all that much. What matters is whether the visualisation involved works for you!
By Jonathan West on Looks can Deceive on 10/14/10

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

Flat Chin: Andrew Joy Sets the Record Straight!

Andrew wishes to set the record straight about his chin:

Hi Valerie, I was working in the orchestra this week and only now got around to reading your blog. I was surprised to read that I play with a flat chin. I don't know where that opinion comes from. It is definitely not mine. My former teacher in Cologne, Erich Penzel is really big on the flat chin (or was in my time with him). My limit, using his method, was a high B flat and on a good day, like when I won the Cologne audition, I could squeeze out a passable high C.

A couple of years later whilst preparing Daphnes and Chloe for a German tour with the orchestra, I stumbled on the roll in technique when ascending. Subsequent investigation revealed Barry Tuckwell (in the Farkas book) doing the same. Since I was a great fan of Barry's playing, I assumed I was onto something important.

Those days I didn't make the further connection of the tongue touching (and supporting) the bottom lip. I then got completely off track preparing and recording the Ligeti Trio and actually hurt my bottom lip. An injury thereafter, a blister in the middle of my bottom lip with a tiny hole in the middle of it, led me to talking with a trumpet colleague who introduced me to Jerome Callet. Which led to Jeff Smiley and BE.

Looks can be deceiving. I am acutely aware of the "FEELING" difference between a flat and a bunched chin. My "FEELING" when playing these days is definitely bunched.

Best wishes,
Andrew Joy

Thank you, my dear friend Andrew, and my sincerest apologies for misrepresenting your agile chin! Your point is well made and well taken.

Here are links to a couple interesting interviews with Andrew.

http://hornmatters.com/2010/09/joy-on-the-balanced-embouchure/

http://high-c.com/content/andrew-joy-horn-nerves-and-water-keys

Valerie Wells

The Notion of Unifying the Embouchure

The BE development system has exercises in two main categories: (1) the extreme roll-out which favors low notes, (2) the extreme roll-in which favors high notes. The exercises challenge the player to push the envelop of embouchure function by extending the range within the categories. The roll-out embouchure exercises start on double pedals and ascend as far as possible upwards with the roll-out set up. The roll-in exercises mirror image this by extending use of the roll-in embouchure into the lowest possible range.

The goal of BE is to use these and other exercises, plus specific tonguing and breathing techniques to give the brass player the technical skill to use a continuous flexing of the lips to navigate the full range of the instrument minimizing and ultimately eliminating awkward embouchure changes.

In the quote below, David G. aptly described this goal as "unifying the embouchure" in his memory of a past insight that embodies a key principle of the BE development system:

For some unknown reason . . . I remembered that years ago someone wrote to the horn list about having a break in embouchure somewhere in the midst of our tessitura - a point where he/she had to change embouchures. I wrote in to recommend practicing playing a simple scale from the bottom to see where the break occurred, then playing a scale from the top down to see where the break occurred, and assuming that there was overlap - there had to be - that it was worthwhile to extend those breakpoints as much as possible until it might happen that there would no longer be any break point. There was a bit of other advice, but the one that stood out in my mind was the one that pooh-poohed the notion of unifying the embouchure. Well, that's a chortle. I guess the idea was a very primitive first pass at BE.
David

Thanks for sharing, David.

Practicing BE

I just received an enthusiastic response and a great question from Ron Chao who started BE the last week of October. With his permission I'll share it below:

"hey valerie! just wanted to update you on my progress. The BE book is amazing and I am already seeing great improvements in my playing. Just a quick question about practicing. Even though Jeff has specific lesson plans outlined at the end of his book, is there any harm in playing through all the exercises in the book in one day or would I risk hurting my lips? thanks again for everything and have a merry christmas and happy new year too! ron"

RON! Thank you very much for the positive feedback. I'm very happy to hear you're doing well. If you feel ready to play through all the Roll-out/Roll-In exercises in a row, go for it. You'll soon figure out if it's too much for you! ;o) Plan to try this at a time when you don't have critical rehearsals or performances soon after.
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When you have the skill to play all the Roll-Out and Roll-In exercises, you may lack the endurance and efficiency to tolerate them all every day. If this is the case, you can rotate or abbreviate them to accommodate your needs. For example: you might try 2 repetitions (valve combinations) of each one every day. Or you may do Roll-Out's one day, and Roll-In's the next. The Advanced Lip Slurs can be approached in the same manner; just a few every day or as many as you can, all in a row once or twice a week.

One BE student, a busy mom with young children, is very limited in the time she has to practice. She has progressed very nicely focusing specifically on one Roll-Out and one Roll-In exercise a day. As your efficiency improves, you'll be able to develop a BE routine that best suits your needs. Personally, I do the basic eight BE exercises every day plus several selected Advanced Lip Slurs. When time permits, I like to do the Roll-Out/Roll-In plus the Advanced Lip Slurs all in a row. It's a handy and effective assessment tool to evaluate my progress.
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Below are a couple questions about practicing BE I've addressed in the past that may be helpful:
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Q: How much time should I be spending on BE each day?
A: For the very beginner one Lip Clamp and a few Lip Clamp Squeaks a day is plenty. After that, as one becomes more comfortable, 2 or 3 minutes on Roll-Out and 2 or 3 minutes on Roll-In may be best. Plan to gradually build up, but don't over do. Michael Camilleiri, a long time BE trumpeter, frequently reminds BE students that "BE is not boot camp!" Take it easy, build & grow gradually, and "BE patient."
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Q: How long does BE take to improve my embouchure?
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A: Unseen "internal" improvements will begin the moment you start working on your first Lip Clamp. But most BE students report obvious "external" improvements in their regular playing after 8 to 12 weeks, for others it may take longer.
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Valerie Wells
The BE book and BE exercises adapted for French horn are available directly from me. Email me for information: Wells123456 at Juno.com (If you live outside North and South America, I can connect you with a BE representative in your corner of the globe. My adapted exercises for horn are available free of charge to all horn players studying BE regardless of location.)

"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