Horn Guild

I've often thought that there's a strain of the Renaissance guild mentality still present in modern musicians. There's the sharing and nurturing of special talents and skills. And sometimes there's a hint of being superior to non-members (the audience). The first part of this seems especially true for horn players. The horn is by far the most complicated instrument I've ever tried. (But never tried a double reed once an oboist friend at conservatory explained about the necessity of making your own reeds and the tools, labor and time involved).

For one thing, the usual double horn is really two different instruments sharing a mouthpiece. I've lately become convinced part of my difficulties stem from a lack of appreciation of the differences between the two, that I've never seen much talked about in the info I've found. You can get the same note on either side of the horn, but the lips feel a little different. Because of being the only horn in the community band and having to play high parts, I've never really developed a full feel for the F (the lower pitched horn). Currently I'm spending a lot more time with it, and feeling I'm broadening and strengthening my foundation as a player.

(As an aside - I'm also starting to think there's some subtle difference between the two horns besides simple length. You use the naturally occurring third of the F horn, but on the Bb side it's a second or third option. John Ericson (Horn Notes) just put up a post about curiosity, and I've been curious about this for a while, but can't find an answer to the question).

But back to the guild notion. Something else about the horn is the amazing choices of mouthpieces you can use, but as far as I can tell, there's no place you can go to find why the designs are different, other than the occasional mention of the different sound they might have. Have not once seen anything about how different shaped lips might interact with different designs. 

Back when I had the lip callus,  I switched away from the Farkas VDC to the one that came with the Yamaha horn that's more rounded and thicker where it's against the lips. Here lately went through all the mouthpieces again and realized the Farkas medium cup is the one for me to go with for now. Much better tone and thinner where it meets the lips than the Yamaha, but not as thin as the VDC. Long term I hope to get to where cousin Steve is on his trombone. He once said different mouthpieces were like different pairs of shoes and he switched around a lot.

My guess in that this is the sort of information that high level horn players know, but as with guilds, not made easily available to the public (most of whom wouldn't be interested anyway). It all reminds me of the passing comment Christopher Hogwood made in his book on the Handel Water Music & Music for the Royal Fireworks. Somewhere he says that there are no articulations or info on trills and such in the scores because Handel left such details to the horn players guild.

Right Brain & Audience

Jonathan West over at Horn Insights has been good enough to make a post that uses a comment of mine as a point of departure.

Keeping this blog is fun and helpful, but getting responses from other bloggers is even more helpful. I'd never gotten around to expressly thinking about the client's/audience's right brain before this exchange. Way back when, a post by Phil Ford (Dial M) on "authenticity" helped me figure out a way forward in making the Mantra Mountain CD. And Pliable (Overgrown Path) helped me see that CD in a new way. And on and on. Following these high level blogs has always seemed a cross between auditing graduate level courses and drifting through the faculty lounge. I can't imagine trying to develop the learning materials without this kind of milieu to trigger and test ideas.

Here's my comment on Joanthan's post:

"Very happy to have been a spark for this post! Very helpful and lots to think about. One detail I'd pull out for now is:

>>Even somebody wholly uneducated in music will sense that there is "something missing" in such a performance even though they can't express what that something is.<< 

Can't agree with you more on this. Whatever it is that connects an audience member with a performance is not just technique, and it's very difficult to talk about. As a therapist my aim is always to get some sort of musical "traction" with a client, and better technique is rarely the answer. It's usually being somehow more gestural or having a more felt rhythm that suits the client's (audience's) mood. Or as you put it, "phrasing and musicality". The audience's right brain is just as important as the performer's.

 Thanks also for the link."

Jeffrey Agrell

Jeffrey Agrell is the blogger talked about in the previous post. He clicked over to here from my comment on his post, and left a comment a number of posts down. I'm pasting it in here so it's easier to get to. My interests seem less tangential to his than to most of the other blogs I follow. He has what looks to be an interesting book on improv for classically trained folks, and a CD of improvs with a piano player. Plus he plays the banjo, so there you go.

Here's that comment he made on my "More Sandow" post:

>>I didn't know about your blog until your comment on mine today, and I'm enjoying reading your back posts very much. I think we may have a lot of common interests, including horn, Zen, banjo, and possibly improvisation. I played guitar for many years (folk, classical, and finally jazz), but haven't done much since I got tendinitis in the late 80's. I also played some 5 string banjo, mandolin, and e-bass. One thing that might interested you that is related to this post is my book, Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians. I agree with Greg Sandow that what classical music needs is a lot more people who are acquainted with music beyond listening to their iPods. But if you are traditionally trained and don't have a band or orchestra after school, what do you do? My book is a compilation of 5 years of my course in the subject at the University of Iowa, and gives any classical player the ways and means to begin improvisation without having to be a jazz player. The book is especially useful for music therapists, who have to relate musically to many clients (it makes a good complement to Tony Wigram's book on improv for therapists). It's published by GIA Music (www.giamusic.com).

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading more of your posts.<<

More on practice

Another new to me horn blog is Horn Insights by Jeffrey Agrell and his latest post has to do with how our ego issues can affect our playing and practice. Making music is a great laboratory for watching how we as individuals approach living our lives. It's also a great place to make improvements in how we do things in the hope of taking those improvements into other areas of endeavor.

Practice Technique

One of the blogs over on the "Regular Reads" list is Bruce Hembd's Horndog Blog. He has helpful things to say about playing the horn, and he's very generous about introducing other horn blogs he's found. The most recent of these is Jonathan West's Horn Thoughts, and his most recent post is a nice explanation of practice technique.

I agree with everything he's saying, and especially like the phrase, "Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent."  

In the context of the previous post, he's taking a very left brain approach to the issue, i.e. taking apart any passage that has a mistake, find the error, then play it as slowly as needed to get it right and then slowly bring it up to tempo. 

Something I would add to this, though, is to be very careful when choosing the first note of the problem passage. I've often found that a mistake in one measure has its inception in the previous measure. Sometimes we can play a passage well enough, but there's something about our technique that's not solid, which is setting us up for a mistake in what follows. 

So you need the left brain to find mistakes and clean them up in a logical and analytical fashion, but the right brain can be helpful as well, helping you see the whole, and better understanding where the mistake is coming from. For example, sometimes what initially appears to be a fingering issue might really be a rhythm issue.

Right Brain/Left Brain

As a follow on to the previous post, the left brain/right brain way of talking about how we interact with the world around us is something else I picked up going to college in the 60s and being a psychiatric attendant and group therapist in the 70s. There's a lot of overlap with the Jungian notion of four categories, but it is a simpler, and often handier, notion using just two categories.

The basic idea is that the left brain works very analytically and logically and you are very conscious of each step you take along the way. Its the way you think through how something works by looking at each part of the whole and then seeing how they all work together.

The right brain is meant to work in a more more holistic, or all at once sort of way. Sometime we just "get" how something works without having to examine every detail. The right brain way of knowing is down below conscious thought and we're not fully aware of how it is we know or do something.

Just as with the Jungian categories, each of us has our own particular mix of left and right brain processing, and that mix will change depending on what it is we're trying to do or think about. When someone seems to be "a natural" at a way of thinking or of doing something, there's more right brain activity than left.

The single thing that most excites me about Jeff Smiley's Balanced Embouchure method for trumpet and horn, and that I want to emulate, is his way laying out instructional materials so that there's plenty for both the right and left brain to work with, each at its own pace. That far increases the chances that any particular music maker will find what they need to make real progress. Along with everything else, this approach helps people understand that just as many solutions to problems can come from within themselves as from an instructor.

As a music therapist I want people to as fully involve themselves in the learning behavior as possible. How you go about learning to make music can be just as therapeutic as making the music.

Jungian Categories & The Horn

Child of the Sixties that I am, Carl Jung's ideas effervesced through my college education and the following decade or so. They were "in the air" and some of them became part of the mental tool kit I've been using ever since. Besides the "introvert/extrovert" spectrum of human personality, he talked about thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation as being four useful categories to use in talking about how we as individuals connect with the world around us.

Currently over on Horn Notes, John Ericson is doing a terrific series of posts looking various horn methods. Here's today's. Reading and thinking about them has helped me clarify this notion I've had that people learning various instruments can bring to them various mixes of thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation. For most instruments, I think you can have pretty much any mix and it can work. For the horn, though, seems there's the need for more than a simple minimal amount of both intuition and sensation.

The intuition is needed to know where the note is before you play it. Of all the instruments I've tried, none requires so much of being "in the flow" to just simply hit the right notes. One reason all the horn methods don't say the same thing is that it's very difficult to put into words exactly what it is you do to play it well. My sense is that that nonverbal aspect is a tip off to intuition being involved.

The sensation required for horn playing is the exquisite proprioception needed. Getting all the physical apparatus in the right place, particularly the infinitely adjustable embouchure, to make the right note with the tone you want goes far beyond the proprioception needed to play any other instrument I've tried.

Picnic in the Park: July Fourth

Every performance of the Kenwood Players has been a learning experience. Since I'm being much more a facilitator than a leader of the group, the direction the music takes grows out of the group's musical interactions. With any particular group of players and instruments there is a potential sound that can develop organically over time, and since schedules mean different groupings of the basic set of Kenwood Players for individual performances, that development doesn't go in a straight line.

This time we didn't have percussion, so I stuck exclusively with the banjo and had worked with the tubas to be more rhythmic and precise in their playing. So the tubas were more present in the mix and it makes for a nice effect. Also noticed the tuba solos caught the attention of the audience more than usual.

Bill B. has joined the group to take Gabby's place when she heads off to college next month. He plays tenor, alto and soprano sax. For this performance he played just the soprano at my request, mainly because we were outdoors and needed all the volume we could get. He and Dick (on trumpet) alternated solos with my vocals, and having the extra treble voice was a great addition to the sound. Bill has a natural feel for "tailgating", or filling in between the end of a vocal phrase and the start of the next, which made my singing a lot more fun.

The most pleasing aspect of this performance was our connection with the audience. On every number there were people moving with the music and/or singing along. After various solos there was applause that indicated some of the audience was following the music closely and liking it. Also saw various members of the Community Band listening with big happy grins, indicating they could tell how much fun we were having.

One of the aspects of music therapy that's nearly magical is that as long as everyone has musical tasks that are within their skill level, various skill levels can blend into great music. One thing that struck me forcibly going from the banjo with the Players, to the horn with the Community Band, and then back to the banjo for the Players' second set was what a world of difference playing within my skill level makes. Being the only horn I had a part in America the Beautiful that is beyond my current ability. Anxiety over that colored my entire time on the stage. Never again. From now on will do up those high parts in Finale for other instruments of the director's choice. Going the normal music educator's route simply sets me up to fail.

The schedule for the Players' performance kept shifting right up to the end, due to fitting in with the skydivers, the chorus and band, the fireworks, and the canine unit being unable to perform. We had way more material prepared than needed and were able to jump around the songbook to make up the sets as we went along. That flexibility was really helpful.

Music and Heart Rhythms

Here's a story on some research getting at little more detail on the connection between music and cardiovascular rhythms.

>>researchers found that healthy adults' heart rate, blood pressure and blood flow changed in response to musical crescendos and decrescendos<<

>>The phrases, from two pieces by Verdi, were about 10 seconds long, Bernardi's team notes, which is similar to the standard oscillations in blood pressure. In contrast, a more "intellectual" solo singing piece by Bach had relatively little effect on cardiovascular rhythms.<<

>>the cardiovascular responses were seen even in the absence of emotional responses to the music and altered breathing was not necessary to see cardiovascular effects.<<

Percussion

Here's part of a note I wrote to Judy, who can't make the Fourth performances, so hasn't been coming to rehearsals, explaining how the lack of percussion really makes a big difference:

>>It adds great energy to the music. One friend of mine I've known for 40 years and who is very musical, kept drumming and dancing his fingers in time to the Butterfly Music the entire time the CD played. Another old friend from Shenandoah talked about how "happy" that CD is. And when she first put on the Doris Music CDs, she says she got up and danced to them.

Having you take care of the rhythm allows everyone else to ease into the flow and be more musical in other ways. It makes the rhythm more solid, but it also allows it to be more complex as we all react to it in different ways. I want to say it's like framing a painting, but it's way more than that. More like the armature in clay.

Not having you here was a revelation that the tubas and baritone weren't getting their instruments to speak with good tone right at the instant of the downbeat, because with you there's no need as you've been filling that instant with various percussive sounds. They're picking up the slack nicely, and it's good practice for them, but with you, it's all much easier.<<

Grace & Gesture

Here's Terry Teachout's latest Almanac entry:

>>"When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace."

Anton Chekhov, letter to Maxim Gorky (Jan. 3, 1899)<<

I keep having the notion that gesture is a primal aspect of music making that's not often talked about. It seems to be the best way of talking about how emotional content is communicated from music maker to audience. This quote helps me think about how some music makers communicate better than others. No matter what emotion the gesture is meant to convey, the less extraneous motion, the better it will probably be conveyed to most audience members.

It also ties into the notion of authenticity.

Emotions & Musicians

Here's a post over on  Expressing the inexpressible...? that both the horn blogs I follow mentioned. In the post and comments, high end performers talk about how many bitter people they encounter in their world and cover the subject pretty thoroughly. There seems to be agreement that during the actual music making everything is copacetic, but that things can get fractious during all the down time.

My first thought was that some musicians have personalities that need a carapace of some kind to deal with the vulnerability expressing all those emotions on cue requires. That lead to remembering that quote Terry Teachout put up of Noël Coward's about actors not actually feeling all emotions every performance, or they wouldn't be "acting". 

There's probably a full range from fully feeling all the emotions of the music while making it, to mere, but effective simulation. There's that great quote (Sam Goldwyn?), "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made".

Lots to think about. Just wanted to save the link and jot down a few first impressions. This all ties into the Phil Ford posts on ego and being in the flow, as well as maestro trying to get us to play with audience stirring enthusiasm.

Players for the 4th

Here are the players for our 4th of July performances at the Picnic in the Park. Front row, that's Gabby on the left with her baritone and Bill C. on the right with "Boris" the tuba, with me and the banjo in the middle. Second row is Bill B. with soprano sax and Maggie with clarinet. Third row standing, on the left in his straw boater with his tuba is Crawford and Dick with his trumpet on the right.

Eventfulness

Here lately, Kyle Gann over at PostClassic has been putting up some of his best posts ever. This post in particular, where he talks about interviewing Robert Ashley, really helps me understand what the current new music folks are up to. Here's a quote from Ashley that, for me, is a very fresh take on the nature of music.

 >>I was never interested in eventfulness. I was only interested in sound. I mean, just literally, sound in the Morton Feldman sense.... There's a quality in music that is outside of time, that is not related to time. And that has always fascinated me... That's sort of what I'm all about, from the first until the most recent. A lot of people are back into eventfulness. But it's very boring. Eventfulness is really boring.<<

Audience Participation

One of the things those working to get more warm bodies attending classical concerts are suggesting is audience participation via Twittering during performances. A. C. Douglas over at Sounds & Fury is not in favor, to put it mildly. In this post he has a wonderful quote from Hilary Hahn on the subject, which I really like because it gets over into that ESP territory that music can induce. He found the quote in this post over on Life's a Pitch.

>>The problem is that acoustic performers rely on the audience's attention and focus and can tell when the audience isn't mentally present. Your listening is part of our interpretive process. If you're not really listening, we're not getting the feedback of energy from the hall, and then we might as well be practicing for a bunch of people peering in the window. It's just not as interesting when the cycle of interpretation is broken.<<

Sleep

Here's a story about how REM sleep can help solve problems, with Keith Richards and Mozart mentions, and this quote:

>>She theorizes that it's a time when the brain's neocortex, the part of its gray matter associated with thinking, is free to integrate fresh information and malleable ideas and memories into a new synthesis: a eureka moment. The process works especially well for musicians, scientists and artists whose challenges are analogous to the neocortex's, Mednick said. That is, to make new connections among bits and pieces of familiar elements.<<

Therapeutic Music

Here's a post over on Sounds & Fury touching on how little we understand how it is music can help us. In this case the music of a composer not usually liked does the trick.

Having Fun Unamplified

The Kenwood Players have recently done three performances that were well received, the latest being the fund raiser for Celebrate Orange. Not using amplification seems to let the audience enjoy themselves more than they would if they were having to talk over the amplified sound. We can play and sing loudly enough to be clearly heard while the audience can visit comfortably with one another. By not blasting the audience with amplified sound, we seem to be encouraging more actively engaged listening.

The other thing is the having fun part. I've always moved with the music when playing the guitar and banjo. It makes performing more fun for me, and it also was the way I "conducted" the music in my music therapy sessions. After Dixie performances I always get people saying how they get a kick out of watching me have fun making music. With the Kenwood Players I think there's more of that because we're in the Preservation Hall mode of improvising our way along, which is a really fun thing to do, but also is another way for attentive audience members to see how we're having fun trying different ways of playing the songs.

Recorded music changed performed music in lots of ways having to do with setting high expectations and the putting the focus on creating "definitive" interpretations of music. What a live performance can do better than recorded music is to transmit to the audience - through sound, gesture, attitude and general behavior - the fun and fellowship we're having making the music, which adds a therapeutic dimension to live music.

Simulation of Feeling

Terry Teachout's blog is full of great stuff, both in the regular postings and the collections in the side bar. One thing he does is a daily quote, and here's today's:

"I very much disapprove of the adage that you have to feel the performance completely every night on the stage. This is technically an impossibility, and really is the negation of the art of acting. The art of acting, after all, is not actual feeling but simulation of feeling, and it is impossible to feel a strong emotional part eight performances a week, including two matinées."
Noël Coward, "The Art of Acting" (The Listener, Oct. 12, 1961)

Music As Medicine

This link is to an MSNBC story that rounds up some of the current uses of music as medicine. One item in it I hadn't previously come across is:

>>But what surprised Conrad is that the patients also showed a 50 percent spike in pituitary growth hormone, which is known to stimulate healing.<<

Magister Ludi

The Herman Hesse book Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) was a great read for me several decades ago. The idea of game play being more than child's play has stuck with me. This post over on Musical Assumptions got me to thinking about it again and I made this comment:

>>Just before reading this post was practicing flute, working up a couple of Handel bourrées. Getting the rhythms and flourishes to flow naturally and feel danceably "right" is a sort of physical game play. When you play the flippers right on a pin ball machine, it lights up. Get a bourrée right and it jumps off the page and comes alive. Not exactly software, but your post reminded me of the feeling.<<

Gesture

The very first drafts of the music learning materials, which were done back in the early 90's, included a section on gesture, as it seems a key to better understanding music making. Dynamics and articulations and tone qualities and rhythms can all be felt as gestures made audible. It's always been mysterious to me that the work of Manfred Clynes, what he calls "sentics", has never been taken up by music therapists or educators.

In some recent posts there's talk of the false dualism of mind and body, and it seems gesture is such a seamless blend of the two it's a way of breaking out of the categories.

Here's a link to a post on Boing Boing that has the following quote:

Talking with your hands as you speak helps you get your point across to the people you're talking to. But new research suggests gesturing can help you think too. For example, students who gestured while discussing math problems were better at learning how to solve the problems.... Now, researchers from the University of Chicago and University of Iowa are trying to figure out the relationship between gestures and abstract mental processes.

Quantum Music

Here's the conclusion to this article in the Wall Street Journal about how quantum physics keeps proving out to be "spooky".

Based on quantum behavior, Dr. d'Espagnat's big idea is that science can only probe so far into what is real, and there's a "veiled reality" that will always elude us.

Many scientists disagree. While Dr. d'Espagnat concedes that he can't prove his theory, he argues that it's about the notion of mystery. "The emotions you get from listening to Mozart," he says, "are like the faint glimpses of ultimate reality we get" from quantum experiments. "I claim nothing more."

Music and the Brain

Here's a link to a long newspaper story about one of the main brain scientists looking at music and the brain, a man by the name of Petr Janata.

Here's one quote - "Research reveals that when people perform music together or listen to it, their bodies release oxytocin—a trust or bonding hormone".

And another -  “The more we like music, the more we move to it, and the more we move to it, the more pleasure we feel. Music stimulates the release of dopamine—the so-called feel-good hormone.”

Synesthetic Gesture

Just came across this over on Boing Boing, a post about a book on synesthesia has this quote form the author:

For example, sight, sound, and movement normally map to one another so closely that even bad ventriloquists convince us that whatever moves is doing the talking. Likewise, cinema convinces us that dialogue comes from the actors' mouths rather than the surrounding speakers. Dance is another example of cross-sensory mapping in which body rhythms imitate sound rhythms kinetically and visually. We so take these similarities for granted that we never question them the way we might doubt colored hearing.

Playing Outside

Yesterday the Players performed outside for the annual hospice butterfly release fund raiser, this year down at the Locust Grove campus of Germanna. The weather was sparkling clear and the temp right at 70 degrees, with a nice breeze that was an occasional bluster and clothes pins were needed to hold the music. Every so often there's low wind noise on the recording even though I'd put a foam cover over the mics.

Among the things learned was why Handel scored things so high in the ranges of the instruments in his outdoor music. The bourrée and minuet we did in the original keys went fairly well. Summer Is Icumin In and Dindirìn, dindirìn which I'd put in keys easy for the band instruments didn't go as well, mainly to my not being able to play the flute cleanly with good projecting tone. Indoors they sound fine, but outdoors the lower pitches just didn't carry. I also didn't figure out until halfway through the flute pieces that turning just a bit to one side kept the wind from interfering with my air stream.

I played horn on two minuets and two hymns and that went OK. We did four spirituals with me on banjo and they went very well. Playing with the Dixies, and the two recent sessions with Dave have all helped me refine the strumming. I was doing my regular moving with the music (only sit when playing the horn) and had a number of children dancing and a few adults swaying with the rhythms. Sang without amplification which reduced tonal nuance, but makes things a lot easier on the roadie side of things.

Loops

In all kinds of ways great and small, making music involves the interplay of what Jung categorized as the areas of thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation. Because of my working a lot with the horn here lately I've come to realize just how important proprioception is in creating the sounds you want. To get the right note on a horn, the required proprioception of the embouchure is extremely detailed, but on any instrument it's a vital component to good technique.

Here's a post by Phil Ford where he talks about our perceiving dualisms that aren't really there. In trying to explain to people how to go about developing their talents and skills as music makers, part of it is talking about things in isolation (fingering, dynamics, tone, intonation, etc.), but the deep coherence of well played music comes from an appreciation and manifestation of what back in the 60's was being called the gestalt. The feedback loops within and among the areas of thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation become so intertwined and complex our consciousness no longer needs or heeds the categories. And every so often the categories of the music maker and the music may fade as well.

Brain Wave Entrainment

A friend forwarded to me an except from a newsletter sent out by Dr. Andrew Weil. I've felt for years he's been one of best of the alternative medicine doctors, and have and use a number of books he's written. My 1990 edition of his Natural Health, Natural Medicine has a great section at the end called "A Treasury of Home Remedies for Common Ailments" where he lays out approaches to try before heading out to the doctor. 

Here's his well written summary of a recent study:

Study author Ulman Lindenberger of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and his co-investigators looked at electrical activity in the brains of eight pairs of guitarists. They monitored patterns of brain waves as the musicians played a short jazz-fusion melody together up to 60 times, and published their findings in the journal BMC Neuroscience.

The study reported that the frontal and central regions of the guitarists’ brains synchronized to a high degree. But, more surprisingly, the temporal and parietal regions also showed significant synchronization in more than half of the pairs. These regions may be involved in simply enjoying the music, researchers suggested.

To my mind, this study highlights one of the great joys of playing music, one voiced by many musicians: a sense of self-transcendence. Playing music together creates a rare chance to step outside of ourselves and our small concerns and join our minds wholeheartedly with others in creating something no individual could make alone. Seen in this light, creating beautiful music is simply a wonderful byproduct of a larger reward – connecting deeply with other human beings.

Here's the link for the study itself.

Mantra Mountain

Pliable at On An Overgrown Path recently put up this post on the CD I did with Lama Tashi and some friends couple of years back. He really understands what we were up to, has some very nice things to say about the project, and puts the CD in a context I hadn't fully appreciated before.

One of the aspects of music therapy I most enjoy is helping people use music for spiritual purposes, so making this CD was very satisfying. Pliable's coining the phrases "lean forward" and "lean back" to describe two kinds of music is very helpful. I think that for music to be successfully used in a spiritual way, on some level it needs to be "lean forward" music. For Mantra Mountain this is a subtle attribute, where when singing along with Just A Closer Walk it is much more evident.

Warming Up

Bruce over at Horndog blog was good enough to answer some questions I had about warming up on horn, down in the comments to this post of his.

All the instructional materials I've found talk about the warm up and how important it is, but none actually explain what is happening physiologically. They give all kinds of things to do, but don't talk about why or how those particular exercises work. I've essentially been starting over with the horn, and rethinking all the aspects of playing, and that led me to realizing how little I understand what warming up is actually is all about. And not being a natural player, the more I understand what I'm trying to do, the better chance I have of doing it.

I'd always thought starting with low and sustained notes was the way to go, but here lately starting in the middle and working out, with lots of tongued notes in the mix with all the slurs seems to be working a lot better. I've also noticed that practicing the flute first for 40 minutes or so takes care of about 80% of the horn warm up. 

Something else I've noticed is that having a balanced mix of sound from p to ff helps me keep things focused. Also, taking a few 20 to 30 second breaks early on seems to be helpful.

As to explaining what the warm up does, for now I'd say it involves increased blood flow, better proprioception and muscular control of the lips and embouchure, along with better proprioception and limbering up of all the physical elements involved playing the horn - diaphragm, throat and tongue, fingers on keys and hand in bell, etc. Playing music involves a lot of feedback loops, on both the conscious and
unconscious levels, and in and among the physical, mental, emotional and, sometimes, the spiritual levels. The warm up is getting all of that up and running in an orderly way.

Self & Ego

Here are two blog posts that I've been thinking about a lot here lately, and that I commented on when they first appeared.

Phil Ford has a post wondering about the self that performs.

Kyle Gann talks about ego involvement in talking vs. composing.

Between the two I have the notion there's a deep insight here to be grasped, that goes to the heart of what I think music therapy can be. Trungpa Rinpoche said somewhere in one of his books that if you really want to see your ego, look within at the moment someone falsely accuses you of wrongdoing. A big part of that reaction, at least for me, is a verbal explosion, an explaining of why the accusation is wrong. It's also the exact opposite of what Phil Ford is talking about when the self fades and the flow takes over when performing, and the mental verbal chatter ceases for a while.

Revisions

The 4/17 performance at the Gordon House (all eight players present) and then having Andy (cello & fretless bass), Bill (Eb tuba) and Dave (percussion) here for a session this past Saturday afternoon were both very helpful.

Some of what I'm thinking through:

When working in the closed classrooms in schools in San Antonio I never had a detailed lesson plan, but always more instruments than students and always more than enough material to work on for longer than an hour. That allowed for great flexibility in creating good sessions and increased the likelihood of my connecting with the students and helping them connect with each other. For Kenwood Players performances, having that sort of flexibility to adapt to how the audience is reacting is the way to go. Instead of a set program, we need to have an album of pieces we can play and then choose different pieces for different situations, and every performance is really a different situation. 

There's a need to get back to an early notion I'd gotten away from. Back as a therapist, I never wanted students having to just sit while others were playing, so usually everybody was doing something all the time. I'd unconsciously transferred this to the Players, so there was a wall of sound effect with everyone playing most of the time. At one point Saturday Andy played the melody to a Renaissance dance and Bill the bass line. With just the two playing, Bill never sounded better. In performances we should have solos, duets, trios, quartets and tuttis, both to allow different timbers to be heard and to let the audience experience some dynamic variety.

Up tempo stuff has a better chance of engaging an audience that slower pieces. Both are needed for variety, but in a performance, engaging the audience is more important that the players enjoying playing. 

Recording performances is terrifically helpful. The Sony PCM is nearly magical in ease of use, and the sound is getting better as I learn to use it. When running that audio to the Tascam to make CDs I have to listen closely, and hear entirely different things than I did while playing. Especially for anyone working mostly without a teacher, in this modern world of affordable technology, recording and listening back to music making is a wonderful learning mechanism.

All the physical labor of moving and setting up equipment should be done as much ahead of time as possible. At least for me, there's a need for a break between being a roadie and being a performer, both to physically relax a bit and to mentally change channels.

Dress rehearsals are important. Because Good Friday intervened, the Kenwood Players didn't have everyone together for a rehearsal in the two weeks before the Gordon House performance. It took longer to get the ESP connection going amongst us, and we never played anywhere near as well as we have on other occasions.  

New Horn Blog

Horndog blog linked to the Newhornist's Blog and I found this post about BE and made the following comment:

Hi. Just clicked over from Horndog. Just turning 60, picked up the horn 5 years ago having never played a brass instrument. No teachers, self taught using Farkas and Tuckwell books. Got the BE book back in January because I’d developed a lip callus, and the book really helped me better understand what embouchure is all about, callus now gone, and range and endurance better. Still waiting to see where tone will end up.

But I really understand your “meltdown”, because when I was between the old embouchure and the new, the bottom fell out of of my playing. I’d been asking some muscles to do too much, and others not enough. Reorganizing them using mostly the RO and TOL tools made things a little chaotic until a new equilibrium set in.

I’d decided if the callus didn’t go away I was giving up the horn. Took a month off completely and then very slowly started all over again, never forcing and always trying to be as aware as possible of just embouchure, not worrying about learning music that challenged it. As of now, feel I’ve come through the worst and looking forward to continuing the horn.

Horns (and mouthpieces) and horn players’ embouchures seem more idiosyncratic than most instruments and techniques. My thoroughly off the wall intuition is that if your initial embouchure is way different than the one BE will lead you to, some sort of meltdown during the change is inevitable. If your initial embouchure is something like the one BE will lead you to, then your sailing will be smoother.

Apologies for going on and on, but I’ve spent a LOT of time on this issue. Very happy to have found your blog.

Minnesota link

Via Pliable a link to the "music and psychology" tag on a Minnesota orchestral blog called Inside the Classics. They linked to Pliable's flux and flow post in a post of theirs, and I clicked on the "music and psychology" tag to get this link to that collection of their posts. Lots of really good stuff.

Playing Position

Bill, a friend who plays tenor sax in the community band got a guitar from his son for Christmas and has been trying to learn how to play it without much success. He came out one afternoon last week and I ran him through the basics I've picked up over the years teaching guitar.

His main problem was that he has short, thick fingers and was not sitting in the correct position, with the left foot on a footrest and the guitar on the left thigh and the left elbow low and forward, all of which puts the left hand in the best position for fretting chords. It was a treat to see him realize he really could play an instrument I think he'd about given up on. (The book he had didn't mention playing position. It gave C, F and G7 as the initial chords, which is often the case. (The chords in A, D and G are much easier.) 

So the guitar footrest was out and I saw this post over on the Horn Notes blog. There's a video there that mesmerized me for a while because it's a wonderful clinic on a lot of the articulations and dynamics of the horn. But the thing that kept grabbing my attention was the gizmo the guy has to support his horn. He's sitting with the horn held up mostly by a stand that rests on his right thigh. What I especially noticed was the way he could completely release the keys with a quick flick of the finger(s), which you can't do if that hand is also having to hold the horn up.

All of which reminded me I'd been using the guitar footrest to elevate the right leg and then rest the horn on that. I stopped when the callus showed up, thinking that might have been a contributing factor, but if it was it was trivial compared to bad embouchure technique. So I tried that setup again and it's a great way to play the horn. Between restringing the F/Bb trigger and having that playing position allowing my hands to focus on playing the horn rather than holding it up, everything is much easier. And my upper back is way less sore from all the horn holding.

This all brought to mind that so often beginning music makers don't fully realize how their basic playing position has a lot to do with overall success. There's an odd psych component at play here. I think somehow they feel sitting in the proper position makes them look like they're "putting on airs". As I told Bill, once you get going you can sit however you want, but while getting started, give yourself all the help you can.

Two Quotes

In this post by Pliable, in which he's really outdone himself, there are two great quotes on what music can do:

The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. - Gita Sarabhai

The power of music ... is one of the greatest practical and theoretical importance ... What we see, fundamentally, is the power of music to organise - and to do this efficaceously (as well as joyfully!), when abstract or scematic forms of organisations fail. - Oliver Sachs

Musical Assumptions

Here's a comment I made over on Musical Assumptions. And here's a link to the specific post:

Hi. Seems like this is a situation where your blog title comes into play. There's the music, and then there's each individual brain sensing and processing that music. I'd guess it's not just simple prejudice, but a more complex brew that might include that, but also everything else heard beforehand conditioning the response, as well as various differing ways individuals have of responding to music.

For a lay person not completely knowledgeable about the era and without all kinds of mental furniture to enable comparisons, notions of imitation and ranking of importance would probably not be as big an issue.

You begin the post talking about what "bothers" you is the assumption being made. What gets me is that so many academics and musicians seem to have a need to pin pieces down like butterflies in a case, where all is ordered and arranged - and dead.

Part of what you hear is what the brain is looking for, so if you're busy classifying and judging everything you might miss what the music is really about. Analysis is important, but not the only reason to listen to music.

I'm a music therapist, and often tell people it simply does not matter what someone else thinks of music you like. If it benefits you physically, mentally, emotionally and/or spiritually, that's the bottom line.

(Just found you back when "Sounds & Fury" linked that Gould video you had, and very glad I did.)

Double Horn

Working with the BE method, I've been rethinking approaches to the horn. One change was restringing the trigger so the horn is in Bb unless the trigger is depressed, which will switch it over to the other horn, the F. Since pretty much all of the music for the community band is in, for me, the high register, I use the shorter Bb horn to make getting those high notes easier. Restringing the trigger means my thumb is not not involved most of the time, removing one area of tension from the mix.

Previously I'd warmed up on the F horn and then switched over to the Bb as needed for higher notes. Now I warm up on, and do most all my playing, on the Bb horn. So when I started preparing the alto part of a Handel bourrée for the Gordon House performance, discovered I'd developed an embouchure that works well for the Bb horn, but on the F horn it's loose and the tone isn't focussed. 

I've seen where horn players with the luxury of other players in a section will specialize in either high or low ranges, and now it's more clear to me why that is. A corollary to this is understanding another reason I was having trouble with high notes before using BE and the lights came on.

Cousin Steve, a natural trombone player, said one time, "Warm up high if you're going to play high, or low if you're going to play low." So that makes more sense to me now. But the main thing is that I'd never really fully appreciated that there are two distinct instruments involved in the double horn, with an embouchure for each. I think if I'd really understood everything involved in learning the horn I wouldn't have been quite so cavalier about picking it up.

Pliable Post

Here's a comment I made over on a post On an Overgrown Path where Pliable talks about music using a Buddhist perspective:

This post has induced a number of memories and associations for me. Your using Buddhist thought to talk about music reminded me of my first encounter with Tibetan Buddhism, when I was struck by the frequent use of the phrase "spiritual practice". Up until then I'd largely associated the word "practice" with just musicians, athletic teams, doctors and lawyers. Ever since then the notions of practicing music and spiritual practice have been intertwined in my mind. With each you're using daily encounters with an essentially nonverbal experience, trying to better understand it and to use what it offers to better your life experience.

The point you make about music's being able to exist in the mind even when you're not actually listening to a live performance ties in with a lot of the new brain research. A lot of the same places in the brain light up in imaging studies both when you're hearing live music and when you're not, but just mentally listening to or performing a piece.

Since we all have brains that are wired differently because of both genetics and our individual past experiences, we all respond differently to various pieces of music, as well as to various performances of a single piece. So besides there being no permanence to a piece of music, there's no permanence in the minds making the comparisons, either from person to person, or the same person at different times in different moods.

That Steve Hagen quote is wonderful, and led me to the notion that maybe the deep reason music can have such great effect on us is that the flux and flow of one can connect with the flux and flow of the other, that there's a sharing of the ways of working between streams of music and our streams of consciousness.

More Sandow

Pasting in below a comment I made on Greg Sandow's blog on this post of his:

One way of putting the problem is that classical music is sometimes perceived as a top/down situation where the student/audience has only the supporting role of reverencing the canon, along with the performance practices of the moment. I'm a music therapist and for me it's the client that's the primary concern, so whatever type of music and performance style that works sets the direction.

If I read Greg correctly, he's trying to refresh the relationship between the audience and the music by reducing the top/down dynamic and introducing a more general equilibrium. I think music educators can do something similarly with their students ("at least loosen up a bit") by helping students broaden their relationship with music beyond the technical advancement that's usually the main focus.

Include a little improvisation in lessons. Find a key that suits the student's voice on a song or two and teach them the I, IV & V chords in that key. Get four hands going. In my experience there are lots of classically trained musicians for whom improvisation is terra incognita, and given the skill levels involved, that seems a shame.

Back in the old days before guitar tuners, one trick I'd show people tuning was to take the string way sharp or flat then work back to being in tune. Playing pieces in ways that are "wrong" can help you find what's "right". And if you're client centered, the "right" way for one person to play a piece will not be the "right" way for someone else.

Encourage a little composition. It's a great way to play with theory, and increases appreciation of well composed pieces.

Anything to augment all the solo playing. Find an instrumentalist who needs an accompanist for a couple of pieces. Maybe the local teachers organization could connect people for two (or more) piano pieces. Ensemble playing is a different way of learning how to play music that can round out a student's feel for music.

As a music therapist, one thing that never ceases to fascinate me is the myriad combinations of talents and abilities individuals bring to music making. The better we can understand just how it is a particular student is processing music and performing it, the better we can help him or her become a better musician, and to be less likely to burn out and give up music on down the road. And from Greg's perspective, I think they'll be more the kind of audience players and composers enjoy creating music for.

Muscled Music

 In yesterday's community band rehearsal, maestro had us read through some pieces and kept stopping us to remind us of the unforced, flowing, balanced sound we've sometimes achieved. He said even though we were just reading, there was no need to "muscle" through the music. He put his finger on something deeply significant about music making with that comment. 

 I knew immediately what he was talking about, but still had a hard time playing with musicality while struggling to get the right notes. As much as anything I'm guessing that so much brain function is being shifted to simple mechanics that there's nobody home in the part of the brain listening for higher order dimensions of the music. 

 Just about everything in music making requires balance, both in the sounds made and in the behaviors producing them.

Performance Acoustics

 Yesterday was the first community band rehearsal since the performances last weekend. Maestro just said we'd done well, specifically mentioned the final chord of the West Side Story piece, and then moved on to new material. The mistakes made in the second performance weren't mentioned. I understand not dwelling on the mistakes, but my curiosity as to how music making works, and doesn't work, would have liked a few comments on why the breakdowns. 

 The thing that always gets me playing in the high school is the distance from the audience and the unfriendly acoustics combined with the seating arrangement always being different from rehearsals, due to the different dimensions of the areas. This time that was worse than usual because the dress rehearsal was down at Lake of the Woods, so our performance at the high school was the first time we'd played there in a long time, and for me the pieces sounded totally different. Trying to play with the right amount of volume for good overall balance was strictly guesswork.

Slip Rhythms

As a hospice volunteer, since last fall I've been visiting a client in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. I go by his home every Wednesday and do 30 minutes of music with him. Like every hospice client I've worked with, he's taught me a lot about music and taken me in directions I'd never gone in before.

But today was extra special. Ideas that have been sort of on the periphery of my consciousness popped onto center stage. My client's wife says he's always had a great sense of rhythm, and he sometimes plays the maraca I gave him in perfect time, but I've never quite figured out how the best way to "get traction" with him. Sometimes my guitar playing and singing will engage him, and sometimes it won't. 

I'd always thought that maybe tempo was the key, but today realized that the rhythm itself is far more important. After a lackluster start to the session I did "Eliza Jane", really working that I-IV chord change between the first and second beat of some four beat measures. Because of the afternoon with Dave last week, I've really been able to get a "groove" on that rhythm. Every so often when it's really going well I get flashes of being caught up in Mardi Gras parades (Crewe of Zulu, maybe?) back when I lived in New Orleans. There's something sinuous and trance inducing about that slip time groove. (And I learned "Eliza Jane" going to Preservation Hall back then.)

When I hit on trying "Eliza Jane" today, my client just flipped channels and was totally engaged for a while. Went on to do "She Belongs To Me", "All Along the Watchtower", and "One More Cup of Coffee for the Road" - all Dylan favorites of mine I've done for years and have some slip rhythm type strumming, and he connected with them as well.

Of course, every day is different in situations like that, but I intuitively feel I've hit on something that could have great value.

Lip Callus

The blog is still getting hits from people searching "lip callus", and here lately, specifically from playing trombone and tuba. I play horn and had one last fall, and if you search for "callus" in the field up on the top left, you'll get all the mentions. 

Just this past weekend had a long dress rehearsal one night and the two performances on the subsequent nights, and the callus shows no signs of reappearing, so I think I've figured out what was happening. Don't know how tuba and trombone embouchures work, but for me on the horn the issue was using too much of the outer visible lip in my buzzing and not enough of the soft inner lip. Using the tools involved in the Balanced Embouchure method (BE) also made it clear I wasn't using the larger muscles around the lips in the most efficient and natural way to produce my embouchure, so the buzzing parts of the lips probably didn't have the best support. Still don't know if the good tone I sometimes had will return, but my playing is more reliable, and there's no callus.

Valerie Wells, the horn rep for BE mentioned in an e-mail that she'd had a horn teacher with a callus in the middle of her upper lip that didn't seem to bother her. Also, Gabby, who plays baritone in the Friday group, had one briefly that went away, from what I understand, with the application of an ointment and making sure the mouthpiece was perfectly clean all the time.

Professional Percussion

This past Monday Dave, who plays percussion in the community band and also in maestro's jazz quartet, came by and we ran through some songs with me on guitar/banjo and singing and with him playing my high hat, cymbal and blocks, along with a small snare and some other things he brought. He's far and away the best percussionist I've ever played with. A couple of years ago he filled in with the Dixies on the New Year's Eve performance and it was the best I've ever played with that group because of being able to bounce off his playing with my strumming.

We did some old Dylan faves of mine, along with things I'm developing for the learning materials. Playing with him was a real treat, but listening back while making a practice CD for Andy and maybe the Kenwood Players has been a revelation.

First, I've been amazed at the variety of sub rhythms he creates, along with a wealth of variety in timbres and articulations. His high skill level means he's got a huge range of possible licks to bring to bear, so his playing, while rock steady, is full of variety and surprise.

The other thing took longer for me to recognize has to do with my singing. I've always realized I play with strumming behind the beat, but had thought my singing was right on the beat. Listening back to the recording it dawned on me that I'm actually anticipating the beat with my singing, either somehow due to years of leading people or because in learning songs I tend to line up the accented syllables with or slightly before the beat. Either way it creates an off-putting edge that I'd always thought had to do with the timbre of my voice, when it's really a rhythm issue as much or more than anything else. 

Last night after coming to this realization, tried singing after the beat and it was really difficult, but when it worked it brought a whole new feel to songs I've been singing for over 30 years. 

One of the great things about making music is that there's never an end to how deeply into it you can go, and the learning and experiencing new dimensions recharges the whole endeavor. 

OPC Performance

This past Sunday the Kenwood Players provided some music for the Orange Presbyterian Church service and I think things went well. Dick was absent as he'd had to funeral back in South Dakota, but Maggie stayed. I set the little Sony up in the choir loft to record, but the audio is not as good as it could be. The distance from us down in front of the church meant that all the reverb of the acoustic of the church comes across as a sort of "boominess" and lack of focus to the sound. To work well, the recorder needs to be much closer to the sound. There's also some airy hiss to the sound, which might be from the distance, or could be because I hadn't set the recording level high enough.

A number of folks came up afterwards to compliment us on the music, and Steve heard much the same from his mother and her friends. We had a little sing along with the choir before the service on "Closer Walk". The prelude was "Under His Wings" followed by "The Old Rugged Cross". The anthem was "Were You There?".  The offertory was "Blest be The Tie That Binds". The postlude was "Down By The Riverside". A lot of the positive comments contained something about loving hearing the old hymns.

From a materials perspective, the blend of straight four part hymns vs. spirituals arranged for guitar and improvisation seems about right. Once some Christmas carols are added, that set of church music might be the first completed part of the materials.

We've got the Gordon House performance on 4/17, with just one rehearsal between now and then. This Friday is dress rehearsal for the community band concerts, and 4/10 is Good Friday. The next performance looks to be on Mother's Day at the Hospice of the Rapidan's annual butterfly release fund raiser, which is moving from the gardens at Montpelier to Germanna Community College, where there's a place to go if it rains.

Flute performance

This past Sunday I played a flute solo with the Presbyterian ensemble at the 11:00 a.m. service. I got through it with no major blunders, but half way through it I was asking myself why I thought I could do something like that. I had practiced the piece everyday for weeks, it didn't go above high B, and there were no sixteenths. But performing is different than practicing, especially as we hadn't rehearsed with the grand piano up in the church proper, so everything sounded different, which was disconcerting. 

The main thing, though, was trying to create enough sound with the flute to fill the acoustic space of the church. That took a lot more work than practicing had, so by the time the piece was over my lip was shot and just beginning that quivering that fatigue brings on when I was holding out the final tied whole notes.

The other thing was that while playing it dawned on me that my style was not what Al probably wanted. Charitably, you could say I was playing with a lot of heart and expression, whereas a bit more polish and command would probably have been more to Al's taste.

Lip Callus update

Had a milestone moment here in the past couple of days in that in Sunday's band rehearsal I played most of the high notes called for and was able to do so with the new embouchure formed by working with BE. Previously the days after a band rehearsal I could feel how that bit of lip, where the callus had been, wanted to harden up due to my slipping back into the old embouchure for the high notes. This time that didn't happen and it feels as though the callus is well and truly gone as long as I use the new embouchure. 

Where I'll end up with the new embouchure I don't know, as I'm still exploring how it all works using the BE tools, but being done with the callus is a terrific feeling. It's been a long five months dealing with it.

Know the Words

A couple of rehearsals ago, maestro mentioned he had once taught jazz, and that he'd always said, "know the words", of the melody you're playing. Given his emphasis on the details of the music, such as dynamics and articulation, that makes a lot of sense. It also, though, works on a more general level of having an idea of what the song is trying to say and then using that info to help decide what overall approach might work best for you and your instrument.

Just another of those obvious things that's so easy to forget.

Hymns & Spirituals

Here's a copy of a note I sent to Don, our liaison for music at the Presbyterian Church 3/22. 

Don -

Thought I'd give you sort of a menu of what the Kenwood Players can provide for the Presbyterian Church on the 22nd. There's one set where I play guitar and can lead singing, while the players have a generic accompaniment they can use as an improv base, to intersperse the singing with instrumental solos. Here's that set:

Down By The Riverside
Follow The Drinkin' Gourd
Higher Ground
Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho
Just A Closer Walk With Thee
Sweet By And By
Were You There?

There's also a set where I've taken four part hymns from the hymnal and put them lower and in flat keys to make them easy for band instruments to play as instrumentals. Here's that set:

Blest Be The Tie That Binds
Blessed Assurance
In The Garden
Love Lifted Me
The Church In The Wildwood
The Old Rugged Cross
Trust And Obey
Under His Wings

These hymns, along with Higher Ground and Sweet By And By in the previous set were all published before 1922 and are in the public domain. The spirituals are traditional tunes I've arranged for the group.

If there's nothing going on in the church in the hour before the service, I'd like to get there at 10:00 a.m. to have a nice relaxed set-up (if Judy's recovered by then, that will include some small percussion). Then, if any choir members would like to warm up with us in that wonderful acoustic space, we could do some sing alongs, say from 10:30 to 10:45. Then the choir could head to the loft and we could play some instrumentals to set the mood for the service.

Also, if it's OK, would like for the players just to remain seated in the same place before and during the service. That would simplify things for me logistically and feel less disruptive to any Lenten mood we might create with the music.

With my background as music therapist, my primary aim is to help you and Rev. Denise create the service you'd like, so please let me know however we can do that.

All the best,
Lyle