- - Please visit: Legacy Horn Experience - -
Slurring can be a problem, even a major problem. The question you should be asking is this — is the problem you, or is it your horn?
Slurring fact: The issue may be your equipment
I do realize that to a point you just have to learn how to do things on the horn that you have. And most typically teachers (Farkas for example) frame the discussion of slurs around tips for better slurring. Airspeed, movements of the tongue, etc.
However, I’d like to start this discussion today from a completely different angle. Your equipment setup can hugely impact your ability to make slurs.
Equipment? How so?
You have to try a few horns/mouthpieces and listen carefully to other players quite a bit before you begin to see how the equipment enforces on you a way that your slurs will sound. There is a way that your horn/mouthpiece will allow you to go from note to note, baked into the design of your horn.
In short, the transitions from note to note have to be smooth enough or you will have rough slurs. Slow arpeggio figures should be easy, but if they are not, it’s a big warning sign about your setup.
Some slurred passages will show you that don’t have the right setup
Story time. I was recently recording the first three of the Arizona Regional Band etudes. The first two, no problem. Did both in two takes. The third one, maybe 20 takes in, I knew I needed to reevaluate things. A couple bars of slurred passages centering around middle C were really not happening. I ended up switching horn and mouthpiece for the recording, and since then I’ve had a multi week project to figure out what a better setup is for that one passage.
Changing mouthpiece helped a great deal. Sometimes you need this kind of very specific playing challenge like that to clarify your metrics.
(For more on the etude illustrated above, Maxime-Alphonse 4:12, read more here)
Teaching in lessons I often hear the same issues. I know the student is doing as well as they can with the setup they are using – and that they need to change some equipment things to reach their real potential.
What causes the slurring issue with some equipment?
A term used sometimes is “acoustical transients.” These issues, which arise from design issues such as tapers and bracing, manifest as bumps, clicks, things that get in your way. Sometimes a different mouthpiece will help a lot, but sometimes the issue has more to do with your horn and how it was made – no mouthpiece will really fix the issue and allow easy slurs. And easy music really should sound easy!
On various dynamics and ranges
Returning to the title of this article (a prompt from the Doug Hill book, as are all of the articles in this series), it may be simplistic on my part, but I think if slurs feel fine at lower dynamics in comfortable ranges on the horn, they should also be good at more vigorous dynamics and in more extended ranges. At least with practice. In my teaching I don’t tend to see problems of this type.
When the series continues the topic is tone quality
Continue reading the fundamentals series
