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Several sources have some specific tips on how to practice the horn.
Practice the extremes
An initial suggestion made by Farkas in The Art of French Horn Playing is to make a chart and plan your practice day. But the bigger picture is to practice what you need to practice to extremes.
Get in the habit of practicing “extremes”…. Practice that which is just beyond your ability and progress will soon be evident. By practicing “extremes” I mean the difficult phases of playing: extremely high or extremely low notes, extremely loud or extremely soft notes, very fast or very slow passages, etc.
Fred Fox has a similar thought as he introduces a “practicing routine” in Essentials of Brass Playing.
A well rounded practice routine should cover every note on the instrument from the highest to the lowest, playing each one of these notes from loud to soft, and in varied combinations. The routine should be so complete, so demanding, that after going through it, any written piece of music should be comparatively easier.
Cross-train for success
One interesting aspect of A Creative Approach to the French Horn by Harry Berv is he concludes many sections of his book with a list of recommended exercises, solos, and orchestral excerpts that relate to the topic just covered. To borrow more modern terminology, he advocates for a type of “cross-training” to learn technical skills well by means of practice of etudes, solos, and excerpts.
Instead of a warmup have a practice plan
While Barry Tuckwell in Playing the Horn was not in favor of a set warm-up routine, he was in favor of a “practice plan.”
My recommendations are to practise the following things—not necessarily in the order given:
1. Long notes.
2. Flexibility exercises.
3. Scales and arpeggios.
4. Lip trills.
5. Control exercises.These five main divisions cover the whole gamut of brass playing and each can be broken down into an infinite number of different exercises which, if pursued, could go on all day, leaving no time to practise études and solos. Therefore it is necessary to plan each day carefully, taking into consideration all the factors already referred to….
And even more quick tips
In more recent publications that we have from time to time featured in this series there are several with extended sections on how to practice well worth reading but with more content than can be quoted easily here. For example,
- Frøydis Ree Wekre proposes that there is a distinction between “studying” and “practising” in Thoughts on Playing the Horn Well
- For David Kaslow in Living Dangerously with the Horn a principal aspect of how to practice effectively was that of problem solving
- Verne Reynolds in The Horn Handbook suggests and describes a practice space (“seek practicing space in which it is possible to feel isolated,” to allow better concentration–and vary the space used) and
- Douglas Hill recommends long tones as an important exercise in Collected Thoughts on Teaching and Learning, Creativity, and Horn Performance.
On making long tones less boring
To close this installment of this series we will close with this quote from Hill on long tones.
There is no one single type of exercise that receives more praise from one group of players and more distain from the other than long tones. “Long tones are boring!” “Long tones solved all of my problems!” Extremes perhaps, but both are true to an extent.
To solve the boredom issue, I suggest that the player have a plan to follow that provides a maximum result from the minimum amount of time. Beyond that, the bored student should become more focused on the results of the exercise. Focus on the future results not the boredom of the moment.
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