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As we come out of this year of not great practice it is very important to have drones be part of your daily practice regimen. Using drones to improve your warmup and practice of etudes and excerpts is the topic of Episode 47 of the Hornnotes Podcast (direct link here), and the topic is also worth a look here in Horn Matters as well, with a bit of bonus content at the end of this post.
Warmup
In the podcast three specific examples are given. The first one is this exercise from my warmup publication (The French Horn Warmup Collection), simply titled “Exercise with Drones.”
This type of exercise early in your playing day is very important to do, as a central point is that you may find you need to reset how you play things. You may find that, while things feel OK without the tuner, with it you sag in the low range, or go sharp up high, or nothing seems in tune, etc. The drone provides a neutral frame of reference so that you can get yourself into the right groove.
Also, use normal fingerings! While often teachers recommend F horn in the warmup, in this case use your most standard fingering and focus on intonation.
[This also assumes your instrument is in tune with itself! I address that topic in the warmup publication as well.]
Etudes
Next on the podcast I play an etude from Rangesongs for Horn by Rose French. This summer I have come back to this publication and I’m finding many exercises that work well in it with a drone. Etudes also being much more fun to play than arpeggios!
Excerpts
The last work I look at in the podcast is the opening solo of the Brahms second piano concerto. This is but one example of an excerpt that can be very profitably practiced with a drone.
I cover all of this in more detail in the podcast.
Bonus
For anyone looking to study this topic more deeply, I think it very interesting that many of the methods for the natural horn have what could be called etudes with drones, where an instrument such as a cello was to perform a very simple accompaniment line. At one point I thought about developing an etude publication of this type, but I did not see much actual use for it in my teaching — as today we can turn on a drone from our phone or elsewhere virtually any time. We don’t need to rely on a friend to play actual drones. Make use of the advantages of modern technology and practice with drones.
