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SubCategory Archive (tags): ‘Breathing’

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Embouchure 101: A Video on Brass Embouchures

PUBLISHED: December 16, 2011, Bruce Hembd

David Wilken has put together a superb 50-minute video on embouchure basics that should be required watching for both teachers and players. The topic of embouchure can be a hot-button topic among horn players especially, one than can ignite passionate opinion. Mr. Wilken does an excellent job of myth-busting; he separates the fact from fiction [...]

Categories: Sub-categories:
Beginners, Brass players, Breathing, Tips

Hornmasters: Kaslow on Support and Compression

PUBLISHED: May 10, 2011, John Ericson

I have a lot more quotes lined up from classic publications, but one resource and topic that was passed by earlier in this series sticks out as one to go back to. By design I have not quoted much in this series from recent publications. I am a firm believer in actually reading books and [...]

Categories: Sub-categories:
Breathing

One Cause of Focal Dystonia in Brass Players

PUBLISHED: December 4, 2010, John Ericson

One of the most serious problems a brass player can face is that of an embouchure dystonia. Why it is such a hard problem to solve is in part because it is such a hard problem to pin down in terms of causes. Over in The Breathing Blog David Vining has a recent post titled [...]

Categories: Sub-categories:
Breathing, dystonia

Hornmasters on Inhalation

PUBLISHED: October 30, 2010, John Ericson

Inhalation is a big topic. Before turning to this installment of our series of articles of quotations from classic horn methods, I would like to point to a very recent article by David Wilken. In “A Culture of Ignorance?” he points out clearly one thing we really have to develop more in our brass community; [...]

From the Mailbag: How to Fix Lots of Problems

PUBLISHED: October 12, 2010, John Ericson

Some months back I had a message from a reader in Asia about actually a number of things that were problems in their playing. In short it boiled down to a bad tone quality, poor high and low ranges, controlling breathing, and finally a specific question about the focal point of the airstream. It is [...]

Hornmasters on Opening the Corners to Breathe

PUBLISHED: August 8, 2010, John Ericson

Another brief topic in the embouchure chapter for Farkas in The Art of French Horn Playing was that of breathing in relation to the corners. It is something that he realized that some students would have to practice to make completely comfortable. He notes “When we breathe while playing we properly keep the lips on [...]

Spinning Air and the Low C Video

PUBLISHED: April 13, 2010, Bruce Hembd
air-columnDNA

Shown below are images captured from the low C video. This series of stills illustrates a single sequence of lip movement within a larger 2-3 second cycle. The images to really focus are labeled sequentially as x, y and z. This sequence cycles in a loop for the duration of the note: the lip stretching [...]

John Ericson & Bruce Hembd
on the French horn, brass related topics, and the field of classical music.