Horn Notes Blog

Earlier this year I had a couple interactions with conductors (not in Arizona) that gave me pause. One conductor, on a work that was in a jazz idiom, asked several times for us to make it more “sleazy” or to play it in a more sleazy manner. What would that mean to you? Eventually I figured out that mostly meant louder.

Another younger conductor I spoke with had an undergraduate degree in conducting. No methods sequence was involved with this degree program at their school and the conductor was almost proud that they knew almost nothing about the horn. Their training focused on conducting. I have never seen this person conduct; they may conduct wonderfully and have great rehearsal technique. Still, it is a somewhat frightening fact that many conductors really know very little about the horn.

I thought about that as I recently read this quote from Gunther Schuller as related in his classic 1962 publication Horn Technique. Schuller addresses the topic of accuracy in this section from his chapter of notes for composers and conductors.

As for conductors, they are well advised to look the other way when a passage includes some delicately placed high notes. If the horn player ‘muffs’ a note, he is at least as sorry as the conductor: he has a lot more at stake. A look of surprise, disdain, or distemper on the conductor’s part will do very little to alleviate the situation. High notes are always a treacherous matter, and if a man misses one occasionally, the conductor should not take it as a personal affront. This is all too often the case, because some conductors have the quaint notion that the modern double-horn player need only to push down his thumb (Bb) valve, and out pop a series of perfect high notes. This actually happened to me quite a few years ago at the Metropolitan with a world-famous ‘maestro’. A few minutes of thought about the position of those notes in the harmonic series (even on the B flat horn) would have revealed to this conductor how eminently silly his remark was.

As noted in part II of this series, most horn and brass teachers that disagree with elements of the Farkas approach to the embouchure tend to dance around the topic a bit, at least in public. One of the few to just go at the topic directly is Jeff Smiley. People ask me about his book The Balanced Embouchure fairly often and I will say on the record that I find it to be quite interesting. It is a trumpet book but has developed a bit of a following among horn players. The approaches to tonguing and the high range are quite a bit different than those presented by Farkas and, while not completely unknown in materials published after The Art of French Horn Playing (if you look for them specifically), they are approaches that have remained somewhat hidden for a variety of reasons that should be more widely used and understood.

Getting at technical specifics of the book, an example the author gives in his own website is the following section on the flat chin. This is something most horn players/teachers accept almost as a religious doctrine. Farkas in The Art of Brass Playing describes it as an integral feature of “the brass player’s face.” But read the below, step back, think it over. The underlined passages are not my additions; they are all from the original source.

The Flat Chin

But even more confusing is the mystery of the flat chin.  It’s the most common embouchure used today.  And the primary cause of most frustration.

Here I want to pause and thank Jerome Callet for pointing out some of the problems with using a flat chin.  Jerry is a true pioneer whose discoveries have changed the trumpet world.  For more about him, click onto “Reviews.” [Here]

Look into a mirror while buzzing a mouthpiece.  Most of you will observe that your chin becomes flat and pointed.  Stop buzzing and focus on the mid point between your bottom lip and chin.  Start buzzing again.  Notice how your muscles go down, stretching away from the mouthpiece.

Now, stop and think for a second.  Trumpet playing involves a certain amount of mouthpiece pressure and closing of the lips to play higher.  Logically, what should help you play higher with more cushion -  muscles bunching towards the mouthpiece or stretching away from the mouthpiece?  If you answered “away from”, hopefully your mind will change when you finish the next section on Mechanics.

And yet, some players perform well with a flat chin.  The late Philip Farkas, former principle [sic] horn with the Chicago Symphony, even wrote a book extolling it’s virtues after noticing how many of his fellow professionals were “flat-chinners.”  The obvious question is, if so many good players use it, how bad can it be?

The answer is, it’s not bad; it’s inefficient.  It’s so difficult that only a small number of players are physically capable of pulling it off.

First Chair Johnny

The evidence is out in the open for everyone to see, in every teacher’s daily experience.  Flat chin trumpet teaching has always been a numbers game.  Given a hypothetical section of ten flat chin players, only one - Johnny, the first chair - will be outstanding.  The next two or three kids will be average to above average, and the rest will be frustrated.  For most teachers, this waste of human potential is considered normal and is perpetuated on all levels from teacher to student, generation after generation.

What keeps this wasteful cycle going?  Teachers fail to consider the idea that only 10% can make the flat chin work.  When students at the middle of the section complain about a lack of progress (or complain about how hard it is to flatten their chin - believe me, for some it’s pure torture), the teacher always points to first chair and says, “It works for Johnny.  You must not be trying hard enough.”

If pressed further, the instructor may fall back on the “not everybody is created equal” line, or use the infamous “Maybe your lip is not right.  Have you thought about switching to baritone?”

Now, that last one is a low blow - no pun intended - and an insult to baritones!

Wastefulness and humiliation aside, what it all comes down to is that flat chin embouchures are inefficient.  Can a player perform with an inefficient embouchure?  Of course.  Obviously, there are many different embouchure types, and some work better than others.  But most players, including professionals - the majority of them flat-chinned, ex-first chair Johnnys - never find the most efficient balance point.  Early on, they happen upon or are steered into a lip setting which gives them some (limited) success and stay locked there forever.  In concert they probably sound good, but the audience doesn’t know about their lifelong struggle with upper register, lack of chops confidence, and the outrageous long hours of practice required to keep the whole thing from falling apart.

Smiley does not hold back! He really does present some interesting and very intuitive ideas in this publication in his own, unique way.

Along the same lines, later in his website he offers some definite opinions about different types of brass teachers, also excerpted from The Balanced Embouchure. I gather that I would be viewed in his system as a cross between these two types below, based on having played full time in Nashville (third horn) but also having earned a Doctorate from Indiana University and teaching now full time at Arizona State.

The Symphony Guy Usually are good players, but not necessarily great.  Most have flat chin (Farkis) [sic] embouchures.  Most were first chair Johnnys in high school and are now good second chair players on the professional level, but still struggle with range.  They have an old school approach developed from years spent at colleges or music conservatories, so they favor big mouthpieces like a 1C.  Because of their background, they are put on a pedestal by most band directors and parents, irrespective of their teaching percentage success (which is often quite low).  The common misperception is, “He is a well-schooled player, so he must be a well-schooled teacher.”  However, players good at teaching the nuances of performance may know nothing about the underlying mechanics which power the machine.

The “Dr.” Many college teachers with advanced degrees insist that you call them “doctor,” which makes sense because they have about as much success teaching trumpet mechanics as medical doctors have in curing the common cold.    Universities tend to have feeder systems - graduate assistants who teach the lowly undergraduate students before the students can qualify to be taught be the self-important “doctor.”  This weeds out all of the people who have problems!  The doctor only gets the best players and everybody else gets shown the door.  If the doctor is the expert, shouldn’t he be teaching the players with the biggest problems?  Don’t they need his help the most?

He also describes the trumpet/brass teacher types “The Band Director,” “Joe High Note,” “The Scientist,” and “The Feeler.” In the case of the two examples quoted above (and the others in his book) I believe that he is laying out rather exaggerated caricatures as examples rather than describing any actual individuals. In terms of my teaching at Arizona State I always spend quite a bit of time with the younger students for the very reason that they do need help the most.

Anyway, there you have it; an example of someone clearly thinking outside the traditional approaches in his publications and teaching. As a commenter on the Facebook Horn Articles Online fan page pointed out there are literally dozens of topics presented by Farkas that could be examined in terms of technical specifics; the flat chin example above is just one. Periodically I will follow up with more examples.

I have begun a project that involves closely reading a number of horn method books this summer. While I don’t at this point want to get really specific it is very interesting, it is not hard to find examples of technical methods recommended by one horn teacher being the complete opposite of that of other teachers. One will say to never do one thing and then another will say to always do that same thing! At the same time, most of the writers are so PC that they don’t actually point out the fact that what they are saying is the complete opposite of what others say.

Thinking about this topic my mind wanders back to the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One running gag was he would try to do jokes about Abraham Lincoln. They would always fall flat; Lincoln was just too beloved a person to joke about.

In the same way, the horn world has certain beloved individuals that while they have passed on it seems as though we still need to agree with them, at least in public or in print. This is especially true in relation to the late Philip Farkas and The Art of French Horn Playing. It is “the Bible.” Much of what Farkas wrote in this book is very strongly ingrained in our horn culture. This was especially obvious to me on closely re-reading it again earlier this week; there are many things that Farkas explains in a very plausible way with his folksy examples that make sense and really seem correct. However, it would only take me a few minutes to find a number of examples of other horn teachers that must have totally disagreed with Farkas on certain technical points based on what they put in their books. But Farkas was such a gentleman and beloved figure that they did not go after him, they just present their different approach.

In a sense I like that most writers did avoid “attack mode” but on the other hand I wish more had explained why they took such opposite approaches on things such as the embouchure and tonguing so that we could understand the big picture better. Are they just alternate approaches or did Farkas really miss the mark? I had several lessons with Farkas and have seen him present several master classes; other than stating that he regretted putting in that photo of the horn on the shelf (the “exercise devised to lighten pressure”) I don’t recall any real revisions to what he presented in the book.

These days I have been catching myself saying things about general and technical aspects of playing the horn that I would have never said to a student even five years ago. My pedagogy has certainly changed as my eyes have opened up more to the alternate approaches presented by other teachers. It is really too much to describe in the blog but in short there are things that can and should respectfully be questioned in the Farkas book.

Derek Wright posted recently on something a teacher (not me!) said to him in a first lesson. The teacher asked him “do you have a backup plan?”

Like Derek I have taken lessons with quite a number of teachers and can remember things certain teachers said pretty specifically. Some communicate pretty differently than others for a variety of reasons. As to the specific quote Derek relayed, I know some teachers would state this type of thing as a motivator. One old school approach is to tell you that you can’t do something to which you are supposed to react “oh, you think I can’t do this, I’ll show you!”

Is that effective teaching? Maybe with some students but it can also only mean that they may not have any idea how to address the issues you need to work out. As I have stated in a prior post, not all teachers are effective teachers. Just over a year ago I wrote that

…not all famous/successful horn teachers are actually good teachers. I am not going to name names but the fact is I am convinced that there are very famous teachers that can’t teach, communicate their ideas poorly, grandstand excessively, or more or less only coach students, seeming to be more concerned with building up their own careers than those of their students. Big personal problems of various types are often a part of the mix, relationship issues, chemical dependencies, etc. There are teachers out there that I don’t believe would have had the success their record shows without having had a number of very talented and motivated students basically stumble into their studios that needed at that point in time very little actual teaching–students that would have won jobs having studied with virtually anyone.

That all said I have met people that did not like their studies with several teachers that I consider to have been among the best teachers I ever encountered in my studies. Why? The fact is that different people will mesh with different teachers. And some will only be happy if they study with a “famous” teacher. That is just the way it is.

Bruce Hembd also just posted two related notes on the “ego driven teacher.” It is a good topic to ponder.

One of the great things about teaching at a school such as Arizona State is the opportunity to work with talented students on interesting projects. One such student is Nathan Stark, who is nearing the completion of his DMA. For his project we decided to focus in on the topic of accuracy on the horn and specifically to base the project around an online survey. This has been an interesting process as we both (!) had to  take the National Institutes of Health (NIH) web-based training course “Protecting Human Research Participants” to have the project approved at ASU. I am considered to be the Principal Investigator. This past week Nathan sent the below message to approximately 200 horn professors in the United States.

Dear ___________,

I am a graduate student under the direction of Professor John Ericson in the School of Music at Arizona State University. I am recruiting individuals to fill-out an anonymous survey related to teaching and learning accuracy on the horn, and would very much value your contribution. The questionnaire will take approximately 10-15 minutes. Your participation in this study is voluntary. If you have any questions concerning the research study, please respond to this email, or contact John Ericson.

Thank you for your consideration,
Nathan Stark

Please click below to take the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2f4AhDcam0rtnrmAbd6aAtQ_3d_3d

We would welcome any reader to participate in this survey. Also, a note of thanks to Bruce Hembd of the Horndog Blog for plugging this survey as well, we look forward to a strong response. All data will remain anonymous and will aid in the completion of this valuable project.

Arizona State DMA trombone student Josh Bledsoe has an interesting link in his blog post on the topic of “Air” to a new publication by David Vining. Titled The Breathing Book, it looks like it will be a great companion to the Breathing Gym. I have blogged about the session I saw David Vining present at AMEA this past year, which I found very interesting, but what peaked my interest in his site now was that this new breathing publication, while currently only available for low brass, will be available soon in a version specifically for horn. This I will be very interested to see when it comes out.

Also check out the short video on his site where he talks briefly about his experience with and recovery from focal dystonia, which he describes more fully here. I am sure that his recovery has in the end impacted positively his teaching and playing; “natural” players are often not the best teachers. Certainly my two major embouchure changes as a student impact my teaching in many ways, and even now I am experimenting with some changes in how I approach playing the horn. Figuring out how to play better and smarter is a big part of how you make progress on the horn.

Catherine Roche-Wallace has posted to her blog about her session at the 2009 International Horn Symposium, “Valuing and Nurturing our Horn Students Through Keirsey’s Temperaments.” The slides for her presentation may be accessed in her post, and they give a pretty clear idea of the content of the session, which focused on “how to teach to each type in the horn studio.” She reports that “every seat was taken” for the 9 am Sunday session and “LOTS of lively discussion ensued!”

Those that follow horn blogs know that Bruce Hembd just went to Disneyland! Several of my students and ASU colleagues just performed this past week for an event at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and I too was in California this past week; I just got back from a brief family trip to San Diego and the Los Angeles area. Sea World was fun as always, and among other sights I very much enjoyed the model railroad museum and briefly visiting a relative in Riverside.

These past few weeks I have been able to experience quite a cross section of the United States. This photo is actually the location perhaps furthest removed from southern California that I visited; it is my mother standing in front of the rural country school she attended for the first to eight grades. Yes, an honest to God one room school, the Fairview school near Howard, Kansas. Her mother and grandmother went there too. I recall going inside as a youngster with my Grandparents for a card party.

I always find driving to southern California interesting. One thing I always find curious is parking at the average business there. We in the middle of the country get used to building codes and zoning that require good-sized parking lots with plenty of spaces. Much of California is built to different standards; the natives seem used to them. And the roads! There were many spots where they were so rough I thought I was having a flat tire. But I suspect the natives hardly notice, it just seems normal to bump along like that, just as to the Kansan the wide open spaces seem completely normal. Talking to friends, sure, the California weather is great, but I wonder how they can afford to live there. I am happy to be able to live and work in Arizona.

In terms of horn for me the travel was a great break and a great time to sort out some thoughts on a large writing project that I have just started. I’ll have more on that another day. On to the summer!

One interesting corner of The IHS Online, the website of the International Horn Society, is a section of tips of the month. I was recently asked to supply some new content for this area similar to some of the tips found in this site (for example my post on fingerings above high C). The first of these tips is now up, on the topic of fingerings in the low range, check it and the other tips in the IHS website out.

By the way, the other two tips in the menu for this area as it is now are good tips but not by me! My understanding is the author, a well-known horn teacher, wanted to remain anonymous. I will sign my tips as they are posted and will link from here as well.

With the horn symposium behind me I head into the summer with the hope of completing a large writing project. More on that another day, but this is a good time to pause and reflect in general.

One thing that was interesting for me at this symposium especially is I realize better the impact my site has had in the horn world. It is a little hard to categorize exactly but blogging in particular provides an outlet for news and information of a type that the horn world has never seen before. I began to become more aware of this after major blog updates in late 2007, as before then my stats were somewhat sketchy. At that point I learned that the blog was getting more than double the traffic of my main website, and now it is way over 4X the traffic of my main site every day. Still, parts of the world remain unreached; China for example blocks access to sites such as mine with blog and Twitter elements. When I was in China a couple summers ago my online work was more or less completely unknown, and I suspect it remains so to this day.

In our Internet age information has a life of its own. I know I have tried to tell everyone I can that Arizona State still has a MM program in horn performance, but the news release from ASU that said it was being dropped (which was technically true, a MM program in performance was dropped, but not one that horn majors would enroll in!) was picked up far and wide. It may take years to recover from that one fully. I was still asked about it at the symposium.

Recently it was brought to my attention by a well known hornist that something in my original HTML blog (pulled offline nearly two years ago in major updates to my site) had hurt them in terms of recruitment. Looking back at the post (no longer available online), I don’t think I said anything unfair, and I strongly suspect that it was hornlist chatter that did most of what damage there might be. We talked it out, I have apologized, and as a general call, if there is something bothering you that is in the blog let me know. I do try to keep things positive (and honest) in a musical world with many strong personalities.

Relating to that, Bruce Hembd yesterday had a very interesting link to an article by pianist Max Levinson titled “How does great music engender such bitter people?” This article and its comments are worth slowly reading over. Myself, I am not bitter! But I do understand a lot of what they are saying. It is a tough world with arts managers not always being the best and brightest. I remain generally optimistic about the arts, for sure a percentage of the “bad news about the arts and education” articles we see are written as worst case scenarios with the idea of trying to shake some more critical support out of donors. Things will sort out, and I certainly hope that arts managers and educators in the thick of fund raising efforts get the best advice they can as to how to make an effective case for the arts.

Overall I am very happy to be at Arizona State and look forward to the next school year. It is a great school and one of the most affordable of the high quality music schools in the United States; check it out if you are considering horn study in the next few years.