Is vibrato a fundamental? For Hill it is number 19 on his list which I have used to guide this series.
There is an extended article on the topic of vibrato in the Hornmasters series:
I would point readers to that article for more on the specifics of how to make a vibrato, etc. However, I do have more to say on the topic.
Vibrato story time
In that longer article I mention that there is a personal story that I would be expanding on in the live class at ASU. It’s a pretty good story, and it relates to the practical matter of you need control of your vibrato, playing with or without it on demand.
In my own case, as a Doctoral student at IU I was taking auditions and applying for every job I could. I was doing OK too, advancing a decent number of times, enough to keep me going.
That being said, I was advancing but not winning. Why?
There were two auditions very near each other which finally clarified to me what I was doing wrong. In one audition I advanced to the second round, and the committee asked me back for another second round! It was very unusual but must have been allowed by their contract. I played again and was pleased that I played almost exactly the same. But then the committee asked me to play the Brahms 1 lyric solo a second (third!) time, “this time without vibrato.” I could not do it. I really could not. They did not advance anyone to the finals if I recall correctly.
Within days of that I got some backdoor feedback from another recent audition, already taken, for an ICSOM orchestra, where I had made the finals. The feedback was that they liked my playing but didn’t like my vibrato. Someone else was hired (and they still have that job!).
Back in Bloomington I puzzled about this. Years before in a lesson with Verne Reynolds he said something like “John, I don’t understand your vibrato.” I replied that I just wanted to sound like a fine tenor, and he nodded and that was the end of any discussion of the topic. I took it at the time that he thought it a good answer and to keep playing the way I played. Then I got to thinking about my current teacher at IU Mike Hatfield, and he would have never commented on it, that was not his way of teaching. “That’s just how John sounds” was what I guessed he thought about it.
But I was recently married and did want to win an audition! I had one more coming in a month. I spent that month practicing with a dead straight tone, not a hint of vibrato. That next audition was for Third Horn in Nashville, the audition I won. The rest is, as they say, history. Learning to play with no vibrato was actually the gateway to the rest of my career.
I’ve also puzzled about what if I had figured this out sooner? Would I have won a prior audition? Maybe? So many things are out of our hands though, it is better just to let go of thinking about the past. We learn some things more slowly than others.
The actual fundamental is you need control of your vibrato
I would say it is very important to be able to turn on a nice vibrato – and to be able to turn it off. It all depends on the musical context.
As to that, the soloist or principal horn can make more use of vibrato than a section player. One thing you might try in an audition is to use a light vibrato on your Mozart exposition (like a European soloist) but play the excerpts pretty much straight.
And again, for more on the actual topic of how to make a vibrato (there are several ways to do it) see the Hornmasters series article.
When this series returns, we look at all sorts of extended techniques.
Continue reading in the Fundamentals Series
