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This is another post from the archive, dated 7/12/2004, when I was performing Principal Horn and teaching at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina. Who likes to miss notes? I don’t.
Last night I performed first horn on the Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber by Paul Hindemith, the Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129 of Robert Schumann, and Scheherazade, Op. 35 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov with the Brevard Music Center Festival Orchestra. It went well, but working on this concert in particular I felt like I had to give special attention as I practiced to soft, first note attacks.
Not to give anyone who reads this unnecessary concern, but speaking generally, there are a lot of soft attacks in orchestral works and they can make or break performances.
This past year at ASU we had the opportunity to have a pair of horn master classes with Gunther Schuller, better known today as a conductor and composer but he was, earlier in his career, principal hornist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In his book Horn Techniques he describes his warm-up, which in a sense is a little extreme, but it consists mostly of repeated, soft attacks in the following pattern. To begin the pattern, on beat four you breathe in. On beats one and two you play a half note. On beat three you breathe out, followed by repeating the pattern. Play three or four half note patterns, then play a whole note, a whole rest, and continue on another pitch. The action of breathing in and starting the note is the focus, that nothing locks up, that everything happens in one motion. Use a metronome or tap your foot; you want the timing of the soft attack to be very secure.
Think of the music an operatic hornist plays–it is literally full of soft entrances. This may be why this routine was so important to Gunther Schuller. You want to play with style and dynamics and all but soft attacks are what set the best players apart. Schuller in his master class spoke of this type of routine in almost magical terms, that after a performance of say Wagner in the afternoon followed in the evening by Mozart, that this routine was “a balm, an elixir” for the lips.
A similar pattern may be found it the Singer book as well (Embouchure Building). I usually do this pattern going either up or down starting on F on the first space, but will vary the exact pattern of pitches (around the circle of fifths, etc.). The main new idea for me lately is to practice a pattern like this as soft as possible. I used to in the past do this type of routine daily as part of my warm-up, and this summer I am adding it back in and getting my students on to it as well.
The other thing I did on the concert yesterday was consciously apply a “trick” to feel the set of the embouchure before I played the most exposed notes. One of my more influential former teachers is Nicholas Smith at Wichita State University, who will be giving a master class at Brevard this summer. He has been working on a book on first note accuracy for some time and some of his preliminary writings on this topic may be found online at Don’t Miss: Some Random Ideas and Reminders for Improving Accuracy. In short, I was most interested this item:
If after a long rest, you must play a delicate or touchy entrance, put the mouthpiece up to your lips several bars before the entrance and try to approximate the amount of air and mouthpiece pressure you will need without actually playing the note. Give yourself just enough rest to feel fresh for the entrance, and then “set up” for the note as you normally would. By experimenting with this little “trick,” better first note attacks should be achieved. Also, during a long rest, put the mouthpiece up to the lips several times and approximate the needed pressure for that entrance in the distance. Keep blowing warm air into the horn. Don’t allow your horn to get cold and your concentration to lapse. Don’t let down!
It may be a mental thing to a point, but it works! Feel free to give it a try.
Don’t let accuracy concerns worry you too much, you want to just go for things, but, for specific spots where you don’t want to miss these are good ways to approach first note accuracy.
