As we get closer to the end of the list of 25 fundamentals given by Douglas Hill in his book, number 23 is an incredibly important one: coordination.
Not having studied with Hill, my first thought was this had to do with passage work, coordinating fingers and tongue, etc. But there is a larger, deeper picture; coordination is something to very much think about.
Coordination = combining things
For sure coordination does include combining elements of technique at increasingly higher levels. For example, coordination of tempos — you may be able to play certain intervals tongued, but not slurred, certain passages slurred but not tongued, etc. Not to mention you may not have mastered all the variations between the most legato tongue and a very dry staccato in passage work.
Fundamentals have to be learned first, but then everything has to coordinate and synchronize effortlessly for high level performance.
PSA: You can’t coordinate things you can’t do well
Related, part of your practice has to involve facing realities of your technique and focusing on bringing up the level of the weaker elements. This can be as basic/focused as working on the venerable Clarke Second Study and getting every key up to the same tempo and effortless. When that happens, you are coordinating a lot of things better.
Most typically, for the advancing player the element that needs extra help is the low range. Towards that, I’ve spent a lot of time working with students on the low range, and a lot of personal practice too. If you need some materials to help with how to play the low range better, I might suggest my Low Horn Boot Camp book. It’s available in print and Kindle versions, and, honestly, much of the text in the front matter of the publication is visible in the preview on Amazon. Check it out there.
Coordination = synchronization
The general topic of accuracy development is one that fascinates me, both as a performer and as a teacher. I had a series going a couple years ago on accuracy in Horn Matters (it started here), and I’ll get back to it after this series concludes. But for sure one of the major elements that impacts accuracy is coordination.
To play correct notes many elements must line up at the same time! Besides working on your ear, another word that comes to mind in relation to accuracy is synchronization.
But how do you teach that? I am reminded of The Inner Game of Tennis and his approach to various technical concerns. A big thing is that if you try to force elements to coordinate or synchronize them, such as for a more powerful serve, you will have nothing but problems. If you try to do any one element of the serve “better” it just messes up a natural process, you won’t get the best results. You get the best results when things synchronize naturally and without thought.
Which is to say that you need to let things coordinate for the best musical results. Trust in your natural process. Don’t try to play anything; trust your automatic process that it will produce the best result.
But how?
That is the trick. How do you coordinate things without thinking? How do you just let music happen?
In my own case, and this sounds like really bad advice, at times every single day I do just mindlessly play horn. Usually, it is scales or the first or second Clarke studies, giving it very little thought. It also often will be very familiar etudes or solos.
What I like to think this does is help you trust your body to produce (“coordinate”) music that you have already visualized in your mind. To do that, you do have to have your technique worked out! As already mentioned, you are not going to play booming low notes with a full tone if you simply can’t play them. Visualizations alone won’t get you there. Your practice (correcting bad habits, replacing them with correct approaches) has to make those notes available to you, which may take years of study. But when they are there, trust your process, focus on the music, allow it to happen, don’t make it happen. Develop and trust your automatic process.
Coordination = making great music
To close, that is the goal; to make the great music you visualize in your mind come out the bell exactly as you want it to. To get there, many things have to coordinate effortlessly. This is such an important core concept, one that remains difficult to describe, but I think we can all grasp as a high goal. It is the goal of all our efforts.
When the series continues the topic is repertoire.
