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As we continue with the letter F, a third elephant in the room is the whole topic of fundamentals, or the study of fundamentals as part of your practice routine. For some teachers, certainly, this is one of the primary methods they use to address the development of accuracy.
But it still could be your horn, etc.
This should be evident to readers of this series already, but it is worth repeating that many things influence accuracy. Keep that in mind! Because you may think for example that you don’t have a good high range and you need to hammer away at high range fundamentals every day — but, actually, your horn maybe just doesn’t have a good high range. Fundamentals are the answer to some problems, but for other issues the solutions are going to be found elsewhere.
Fundamentals – are they Exercise, or Training?
My own horn teachers did not present fundamentals as a type of practice. Working on this article has been an interesting one for me. I am very open to enhancing the study of fundamentals in my teaching, some of which are incorporated into my warmup book and my technique book. But are they exercise or training?
For a teacher I can see how working on fundamentals is a type of training, important work that leads to improvement. However, for students I can also see that working on fundamentals has more the feel of rote exercises. Maybe good for you to do! But not that pressing or interesting.
Working on fundamentals as a type of training for real music would be a good compromise mindset. It really depends on you and how you visualize things in the big picture of your horn playing and teaching.
Kopprasch?
I know for sure there are teachers that have you work on only Kopprasch until you can do all the fundamentals encountered there perfectly. This can be effective, certainly, as you will play everything better with better technique. But on the other hand, this seems like a boring way to practice and to teach.
A digression on practice
Which brings me to the point where I have to digress briefly. As hinted at earlier in this article, anyone who has studied with me could tell you I rarely directly talk about fundamentals at all. Not that I don’t cover them in my teaching, because I certainly do, just they are not a goal in itself. My own teachers basically never spoke in terms of working on fundamentals either. Fundamentals were more integrated with work on actual music – etudes, solos, excerpts. Even the classic scale book I used as a student, Pares Scales, is structured essentially as etudes.
I do like warming up I must say. Warmup I visualize as more like exercise, although fundamentals are incorporated. But the goal is to warmup, not develop skills.
I think where working on fundamentals as a goal loses me personally is I would rather treat practice as more the experience of being in training, as that relates more to the path to giving a recital, taking an audition, performing any concert really.
One possible method for practice – The rule of thirds
I have seen it suggested to divide your practice evenly between study of fundamentals, etudes, and repertoire. Morning practice might be only a fundamentals session, afternoon etudes, evening rep. This could be very effective, as it frames the fundamentals as something that leads toward playing real music better. But a gentle reminder, be sure your etude practice is not all Kopprasch!
A big topic every horn player needs to consider
This is a huge topic and one every horn player could do well to consider or reconsider. Myself, I’m approaching fundamentals differently in my current practice and I’m considering presenting the topic of fundamentals differently to my students next year. Do consider adding a few more structured and specific fundamentals exercises to your routine.
This is an installment of a series on accuracy, drawn from notes developed for a book on the same topic. The series starts here.
