Archived under: Teaching
The Mystery of Breathing
A topic that has come up a lot for me teaching during this time in Asia has been breathing. What is interesting to me is while I would think that taking a full breath is an easy and natural 
process, many student horn players don’t breathe deeply enough and there are teachers out there who don’t help the situation by making breathing complicated. (“Expand your back” or whatever).
If you really want to get serious about breathing check out for example The Breathing Gym DVD and book. One of the beauties of The Breathing Gym is while the exercises are at times quite challenging, they are also very natural and develop a sense of how to breathe deeply, support the sound well, and articulate notes with a good sense of timing.
Always take a full breath! It is eventually as simple as that.
Related to this article
- A Note on Breath Attacks
A topic horn players don’t talk about much is that of breath attacks, which came up in a lesson today. For reasons that are not completely clear to me it is sort of a controversial topic, one that some teachers don’t teach at all. The observation... - Maxime Alphonse, International Man of Mystery
Probably every month during the school year I receive notes from horn students trying to research horn players of the past who are trying to find information on Maxime Alphonse. While he is the author of the widely used six volume set of horn etudes, believe...
Random Monday: The Last of 2009
Caruso Studies and the Horn
Hopping on the Columbus Bandwagon
My Best Article
How It’s Made, and the Conn-Selmer Strike
