Linking the Ear and the Fingers
A post from the original HTML Horn Notes Blog from 1/1/05.
One way to start the year right is to have the goal of really linking up the ear and the fingers, that is, that the notes you hear can be mentally conceptualized and translated onto the horn quickly and accurately.
This connection is something that we routinely check in auditions at ASU with an ear training test. What it involves is one of the brass faculty (normally Mr. Pilafian on audition days) plays notes in the range of the horn on the piano and the applicant plays them back. For some players it seems to be incredibly easy. Most applicants can manage OK if they can play the horn decently, but for others it is quite a challenge, a challenge to the point that they can’t ever find the matching note. It is a good predictor of how far along you are and of your ear training skills, skills which, on the whole, are usually OK with a good horn player as if you can’t hear and feel what you are trying to play on the horn you will be all over the place note wise.
A weaker player with an excellent ear shows the ability to advance quickly. When I taught at the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam, we did a similar ear training test where we would have students sing back a set group of phrases. It was more of a music theory related test but it reflected the same basic skills.
How does one develop this linkage on the horn? Partially this comes with practice, especially of technical etudes and materials. Music theory classes certainly work on these skills, and improvising lines in appropriate musical situations is an enjoyable way to work on this skill as well.
I did not try to learn this technique in my studies but there was a point that I realized that when I heard music and specifically horn parts I could finger the pitches along with what I was hearing. The connection was there and I could use this to for example figure out the key of a symphony I was listening to just by fingering along. This was a useful skill for listening tests in music history classes. It is not perfect pitch but begins to border on it, something developed as much as anything by sheer repetition. How many times do you need to play written F in the staff before you begin to hear it and feel it in advance? The exact number of times probably varies from player to player but I am pretty convinced that every player can develop this skill.
A side point would be that the desire to develop this linkage speaks to the wisdom of fingering everything in your warm-up, in particular generally avoiding playing arpeggio passages on one fingering on the F horn. We want the ear and the fingers to really keep in sync, so that when you imagine a fast D-flat major arpeggio for example you can bring it all together in reality as well.
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