Horn Diary

Yesterday was a red letter day in my horn career. The band played for the veterans in the town park and I got a number of compliments on my playing from band members afterwards. I hit all the exposed little solos and flourishes well, and did a creditable job hitting all the off beats. We did three Sousa marches, a medley of God Bless America and America The Beautiful, a medley of all the service songs strung together, and The Star Spangled Banner. Except for dropping down to 2nd horn parts for the off beats in the service medley I played all 1st horn. 

Using a phrase of Jeff Smiley's, last piece of the puzzle to fall into place for me has been holding the horn up off the leg to play it instead of letting it rest on the leg. The middle of my back between the shoulder blades and up to the bottom of my neck is sore, but it's worth it for the way the horn vibrates so much better giving a better tone (and more volume as I'm still the only horn), combined with my having more delicate control of how much pressure I'm exerting on the mouthpiece because of the flexibility getting it up off the leg allows. I also get to move my torso more, which makes everything more fun and less rigid physically and mentally.

All that work this summer on the F horn has a lot to do with this, along with our new band director getting off the sight reading wagon earlier than others have and giving us a set list to be responsible for several weeks before the concert, which really helps remedial players such as myself have a chance to focus on a few pieces to clean up.

The other thing that made yesterday special was a number of veterans coming up to me afterwards, giving me a firm handshake, looking me in the eye, and saying very emotionally how much they appreciated the band's coming out to play. These events are emotive transactions more than performances and that kind of response still sort of amazes me.

In the two year's of blogging post I thanked all the regular reads, and here I want to thank the Regular Reads: Horn again. In the five years I've been playing horn I've not had a single formal lesson. I've picked the brain of brass players and band directors at every chance and used the Farkas book and the Smiley book. But it was the horn bloggers giving so freely of their expertise on those blogs that helped put all that in context and make choices amongst the various ways of approaching the various issues. And it was through blogging I found the Smiley book, which was the single thing that kept me from giving up about a year ago.

Picnic in the Park 2010

Here's a shot of the Kenwood Players at the Picnic in the Park this past Monday. The temperature was nearly 100 degrees and the heat index was higher. We played an early set from 5:30 until 6:15, then the A Touch of Dixie group (me on banjo and a vocal) played from 6:45 until 7:15, then the community band played the national anthem at 7:30, the community chorus sang, and then the band played from 8:15 until 9:00. The Kenwood Players then did a short set between 9:00 and the fireworks at 9:30.

We all played well, and the crowd was nicely appreciative of all the bands and the chorus. I want to do a few separate posts on various things, this one being to give context. This event was the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people, and for me it was a testing ground for lots of things I've been trying to accomplish, and overall there's a solid sense of success. Here's a snip from an email Charles Torian, the conductor of the community band, sent out.

Please allow me to thank you for the fine season we have enjoyed together. Monday's performance 'took the cake' in terms of your playing especially well in severely adverse conditions. It's been a long time since I've had to work in those temperatures, but you met the challenge with grace, an uncomplaining demeanor, and a real excellence in your pitch, which could have been a major disaster if you hadn't maintained the control you exhibited. I was proud to be able to accept, on your behalf, the applause of the audience as it increased during your program.

Maestro Charles sat right behind the Kenwood Players during our first set, the first time he'd heard us. He was very complimentary of the little arrangement I'd done for the group that strings together "Yankee Doodle", "Shortenin' Bread", and "Oh! Susanna." He also really liked the way the tubas were amplified, and suggested that in the future we might try that for the community band. 

Besides being our first director who has committed to the long term leadership of the band, Charles is a fine arranger. He's working on translating some brass band music from the Civil War era into something the band can play. Also, Orange is the home of President Zachary Taylor as well as James Madison, and a Taylor family member has asked the community band to play over at Montpelier in November at an event celebrating President Taylor. Charles, with his knowledge of historical music troves down in Richmond, has found some piano music written in honor of Zachary Taylor and is working out some arrangements for the band to play. All the historical stuff is great, but having music created just for our little group is terrific.

Horn Diary

Our community band concert was earlier this evening, and to my ear we've never played better. The intonation seemed good, the balance was great, and there was very good rhythmic cohesion. As mentioned in a previous post, our director has had us work on bits and sections in the lead up, and we didn't play through whole pieces much until the final rehearsal and tonight. And tonight to warm up we went through the transitions that were still troublesome. That approach paid off wonderfully. There were no spell breaking misplayings. 

The other thing that made the concert such a success was having the C'ville horn section, four wonderful players, sitting in for the concert. For me it was amazingly easier and way more fun having all that horn sound around me rather than being on my lonesome. Rather than trying to establish my pitch in the band sound as a whole, I felt as though I were merely filling obvious tonal slots. And being able to rest my lips for a beat or two whenever I wanted seemed positively decadent. 

But beyond making my life much easier, having that horn section gave real solidity to our sound as a band as a whole. It gave the trumpets something to blend into and took a little of the edge off of their sound and did that amazing thing the horn sound can do of filling out the woodwind sound. And detached notes in rhythmic patterns with five of us playing really complemented the percussion section.

This was Mr. Torian's last concert with us. He, very understandably, got tired of driving all the way down here for rehearsals and finding so many empty chairs. That probably means the horns won't be coming again either, as it was as a favor to him that they came. Which is a real drag because I'm now officially spoiled.

One other thing that he did which was tremendously helpful to me was having prepared a script for brief comments on the pieces as we played them. The info relayed was top notch and very interesting, but the nice break between the pieces gave me a chance to get the last one out of my mind and start mentally preparing for the next. I don't remember having that much time before in previous concerts, but I do remember sometimes still having the previous piece whirling in my head when starting the next.

New Maestro

After two years as band director, Bob Hamrick has moved on and our new director is Charles Torian. He's an oboe player from the Tidewater area of Virginia (with the musical drawl to prove it) now living in the Charlottesville area and has lots of experience directing and arranging music for bands. I'm going to continue to use the "maestro" tag for playing tips from the podium. Those preceding this post are from Bob Hamrick and this one and the ones that follow are from Charles Torian. These are not direct quotes, but my memory of what was said.

One thing he said yesterday was that on the final note of a piece, imagine projecting it to the back of the hall. When he had us do that there was a much better feel of finality to the final chord. He also said that mind games like this can be helpful, but that you can get too deep into them as well.

Something else he said was that if your triplets aren't even, try slightly emphasizing the second note, that paying it that attention will tend to slow it and even it out.

At a rehearsal a week or so ago we came to a passage where a lot of people stopped on the third beat and others had a pick-up on the fourth. He asked those stopping on the third beat to not tongue the note we stopped on to make for a more gentle release. That made a remarkable difference. Before, the music seemed to stop then start again, but when we did that it flowed right on through that measure.

What's the music about?

Jonathan West's post on musicality keeps drawing me back because it's so unusual for a high level musician to go into the subject in such depth. Every rereading triggers all sorts of musings about the nature of music making. 

One thing that fascinates me is that he makes a number of wonderful points about how to play with more expression, and how to avoid breaking the spell the music is casting, without going into the nature of the expression or the spell. As he grew up in a musical family making music since early childhood, the reason for making the music seems deep below the verbal, conscious level. What a Mozart rondo is meant to express is simply part of his mental furniture. His post tells how to make pieces of music express their content, but not how to ascertain the nature of that content.

High level players are expected to play any piece put before them well and musically and with whatever spin a conductor wants to put on it. I guess the assumption is that when played coherently and correctly, any piece will convey the content the composer intended.

One of the things our previous band director would do from time to time was to give us a mental image of when, where, and why a piece of music might be played. That was an immense help to me in understanding why he (or the arranger) wanted particular articulations, phrasings, or whatever. For me, without a sense what that particular piece of music was about, all the details were simply that, details. With that explanatory image, the details would fall into meaningful place.

Knowing what a piece of music is about and what you want to convey to an audience by playing it is a key to success. If you're a "natural", then your right brain will probably supply that to you below the verbal level. If you're not a natural, giving thought to this issue will probably help your music making. For me, outside playing the banjo, reflecting a moment on the nature of the music I'm trying to play really helps.

photo - from John & Kate's

More Jung/Gesture

In response to the groundswell of interest from our Vermont readership in the Jung post here's another. Two other things that Jung talked about that are part of my mental toolbox are archetypes and the collective unconscious. The basic notion seems to be that though we are all fully individual, there's a universal mental space we all share as members of the human race.

The Oxford dictionary on my iBook says an archetype is," a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious."

The same source gives the first meaning of "gesture" to be, "a movement of part of the body, esp. a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning". The second definition given is, "an action performed to convey one's feelings or intentions".

I think that gestures have meaning because they are archetypal and we all immediately grasp their emotional content. I think one of the ways music can exert such influence over our emotions is that it can simulate physical gestures in sound. And if you're at a live performance, you can see the gestures that create their sonic avatars. 

Maestro often talked about conveying more emotion, and more variety of feeling, by emphasizing the importance of "style". You can think of style as, at least in part, a gestural archetype.

This is all very much right brain stuff, so a way of engaging your right brain when learning a piece is to spend a bit of time thinking about the gestural/feeling component of the music, and how you want to convey that to your audience. As maestro often said, don't just play the notes.

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.

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.

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.

BE Round-Up

Now that I've been working with the Balanced Embouchure method for a while, I think I can say it's the answer to my lip callus problem. Basically, I think my previous poor technique was asking that bit of skin to do too much of the work, while other parts of the embouchure weren't doing enough. Everything was fine until I really started to push for stamina and the high notes I'm expected to play in band. The extra stress precipitated the callus. For now, the callus is gone as long as I don't fall back into the old embouchure. If I use the old embouchure for high notes the skin will show signs of wanting to callus up again.

While endurance and the general feel of the embouchure are improved, at this stage while I'm rebuilding my embouchure, the range and tone are not what I'd like them to be. Only time will tell, but I feel confident the range will come. Not sure where the tone will end up. My guess is that the better understanding of embouchure will allow for a wider palette of tone colors.

Working with BE has given me an experiential feel for a number of things I'd heard or read about playing the horn, but either hadn't really understood or fully appreciated. Here are a few of those:

*Angle of the horn - I'd noticed on photos that most horn players hold it so that the lead pipe has a slightly downward angle from the lips, whereas I held it more straight out. With the BE, that downward angle just happens on its own.

*Cousin Steve, a "natural" trombone player always talks about "the air", and maestro says things like, "Let the air do the work." With the BE, I can now feel what they are talking about, whereas before it just didn't register.

*My tone is much "brassier". Andy says he can hear more overtones, and the sounding board (an old spinet with action removed and all strings tuned to the Bb scale) resonates more quickly and with more volume to the new tone. And I also now understand that when maestro was asking for more volume, what I really needed was a fuller tone, which my previous embouchure couldn't give me. (I hope I can regain my previous tone to use from time to time, as it was perfect for chamber music).

*Before BE I didn't understand what warming up was about, and all it did was to fatigue my lips. Now warming up makes sense, and I can play for much longer times. I was previously baffled by the amount of time horn players seemed to be practicing and had pretty much decided my 60 year old lips were the problem.

*Lip slurs were always a trial for me, but now I "get" what they're all about on a proprioceptive level and they're much easier. Lip trills no longer seem out of the question.

*One other result of BE has been greater ease in producing third octave tones on the flute. I think the better muscle awareness is what's making the difference.

Orange Community Band

One of the people who has done a lot of the work organizing and administering the Orange Community Band, the indefatigable Tom M., has begun a web site for the group. There's a link to the Dixie group on the page as well. Tom plays alto sax in the band and tenor sax with the Dixies. There are photos of maestro and of Al and Barb, who blew into town and created the the chorus and band out of thin air. Al also leads the little Presbyterian ensemble where I get to play flute and horn. The Friday group, that performs as The Kenwood Players, is drawn from the concert band.

I grew up in Orange in the 50's and 60's, went away to school and work, and returned in the 90's. There have been a lot of changes in the county. Having all these musical opportunities is one of the best as far as I'm concerned.

Overdoing it

In yesterday's rehearsal, maestro returned to a theme he's talked about several times. He makes the point that in Broadway shows, where there are no close-up cameras to telegraph emotions and effects, everything is exaggerated to make sure those emotions and effects are communicated to the audience. He usually makes this point when talking about dynamics and/or articulations.

It reminds me of a local man who arranges flowers and gives workshops on the subject. Just about anyone who has attended a workshop can repeat his signature quote, "It's not done until it's overdone."

I think when we're making music (and perhaps for people listening to pieces they know well) small scale effects work fine, because our brains are primed to respond to the effects. Playing music for ourselves and performing for others are two different enterprises.

Harp

The precipitating factor for the recent posts on music as massage was the presence of a harp at the Christmas concert of the community band and choir. Ms. Maestro is Anne Michaud, an accomplished harpist who also played with the Pittsburgh Symphony. She was the accompaniment for one of the choral numbers, and I got to sit directly behind her on the next tier up, with my music stand sitting down on her tier, so I couldn't have really been any closer.

As she played, I both heard the sound and felt the vibrations in my torso. I can't remember a more pleasing musical sensation.

Another thing that struck me was that Ms. Michaud has the compact build and physical manner of a gymnast. She brings a lot of physical energy to bear on the instrument, and has great enthusiasm in doing so. One of the ideas informing the learning materials is that music is, a least in part, simply physical gesture made audible. Ms. Michaud playing the harp wonderfully demonstrates the interplay of physical gesture and musical forms.

Accent and Tempo

In tonight's rehearsal, maestro just said he'd enjoyed listening to the music we made at the concert, but didn't elaborate, moving straight to the music for the Christmas concert 12/13. 

Later he talked about how misplaced accents can slow the tempo and drag you down. We were doing a figure in triple time with two quick notes on the second beat. Accenting them threw things off. Accenting the first beat and letting them flow from that made all the difference.

Incantation

On numerous occasions maestro has talked about music casting a spell as it is being performed. The point he's making is that an error by any player can break whatever spell has been created up until the error. And that's all a prelude to the importance of "focus".

Yesterday I performed with the small ensemble at the Presbyterian Church, flute for the prelude and horn on the postlude. Then in the afternoon played horn in the Fall Concert of the concert band. Lots to process, but I keep coming back to maestro seeming to be happy with the band's  performance, which to me was maybe a C+. Some things worked, but other things didn't. If we could have strung together bits and pieces of rehearsals where we've played really well into a single concert, the audience would have been deeply affected.

I look forward to maestro's after action report, but right now I'm guessing what so pleased him is that while we might not have cast as deep a spell as we might have, spells were indeed cast, and for us that's a really big step.

Acoustics Matter

For the concert in the park today, maestro situated the band in a different place than where we usually sit (on folding chairs). Instead of out in the middle of the area, he had us set up in front of the brick wall of the bank that's on one side of the park. That had the effect of amplifying and giving focus to the sound. From my first warmup note I could hear the difference. Our sound was much less diffuse than in the past.

There's a lot to music making that's difficult to really talk about. But there's also a lot that's really straightforward. Paying attention to the acoustics of the performance space can make a huge difference in the quality and effect of the music made.

Space and Rhythm

In band rehearsal yesterday we prepared a few numbers for the Veterans Day ceremony on Tuesday. At one point maestro said that when playing marches, leave plenty of space between the notes as that brings out the rhythm. It's one of those things that makes perfect sense once you've realized it.

On Top of The Beat

One issue maestro keeps returning to in rehearsals is that of our sounding heavy footed and slowing down during passages that should crackle with forward moving energy. Several times he has talked about our using a "lighter" sound. Yesterday he said to not give quarter notes their full value and we played with that lighter sound he's been wanting. We played more "on top of the beat".

It is sort of a forest/trees issue. Our focus on individual notes as they came along was preventing our feeling the overall rhythmic drive. So in music making, heavy/light is a secondary range that overlaps fast/slow. 

Move the tongue with air

Start the sound of a note on a wind instrument by having the air push the tongue out of the way. Moving the tongue without the air flow behind it gives a weak attack and a thin, quavery tone. Maestro also often suggests a "da" rather than a "ta" tongue motion.