Achieving the Ultimate Articulation, Slur, and Tone Quality

Another article from the archive of the original HTML Horn Notes Blog, first posted on11/8/04.

This past year we have been honored to have IHS Honorary Member Gunther Schuller as distinguished visiting faculty at ASU. A former principal hornist of the Cincinnati Symphony and of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and author of a great little book titled Horn Technique, he is better known today as a composer and conductor but he still knows his horn, even though he has not performed on the horn since 1962. He gave his final master class with the horn studio last week and I am sure we are all going to aim for a higher level of performance pondering the points he made.

Prof. Schuller is certainly from the “old school.” He is very concerned about “bubbles” (attacks with sort of a mini-frack on the beginning), “clicks” (the bump in slurs), and having the ultimate, even tone quality with great control down to the softest possible dynamic. He presented clearly a very high standard for students to work to achieve in these areas.

“Bubbles” (his term) are a big concern for him, probably his biggest concern. Most players are not even aware of the somewhat uneven quality of attacks as they are just not really listening to them closely. We get used to how we sound. Open your ears! The cause of “bubbles” can be several things but in my opinion it boils down to two items. One is choice of mouthpiece and horn; some mouthpieces in particular will by nature produce an attack with a bubble. This is however compounded by choice of syllable for the articulation. We are taught so often to articulate a “TA” articulation, but in reality I rarely if ever really articulate “TA.” My normal articulation is something closer to “DA” or even “DUH,” and varies by range (very high is “DEE,” for example–”DUH” is more of a mid-range articulation). The best light articulations are made with a distinctly brushing stroke of the tongue to be sure. (Maybe someday I’ll expand this concept out into an article–a great title would be “Well Duh?!?”).

While bubbles can be addressed with careful practice, the “clicks” (his term–I would say “bumps”) in slurs are harder to remove. To a point they can be the result of valve changes but even without valve changes they are hard to not have. Blowing through the notes helps but even on a horn with leaky valves and a very deep mouthpiece I find that clicks are more or less inevitable. On a modern horn with an efficient mouthpiece it is very hard to not have clicks, especially if you are listening closely for them. At a distance, to a point, bubbles and clicks disappear (whew!).

As to tone, this again has as much as anything to do with awareness, that you focus in on this element to hear well what you are doing. No “twa-twa,” with a very even color of tone in all ranges. Tone is more than anything what separates the great from the near great. In a previous blog entry I noted more about tone production in Striving for tone (7/2/2004).[Note: not yet re-posted to Horn Matters]

Older school teachers would frequently spend a great deal of time perfecting these three elements before moving on to “real music.” They do need to be perfected and set as well as possible on a daily basis in the warm-up. These elements are extremely important but also these elements can in general be addressed while working on real music I feel. To do otherwise can really bog down a student.

It was an honor to have Prof. Schuller work with the studio this past year, I would recommend his book highly, and as you practice work for the ultimate articulation, slur, and tone quality.

The original post ended with this additional note.

UPDATE: The exercises at the beginning of Joseph Singer Embouchure Building are almost perfect for working on the types of things Prof. Schuller was concerned to hear.