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Quote from Charlie Parker

Bruce Hembd
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In the quest for space and a better user experience, the random quotes feature at the top of Horn Matters has been taken down. If you were a fan of this feature, fear not  (!) – that bank of wisdom is something that will make excellent material for future posts like this one.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

– Charlie Parker

This reminds me of some great advice from my conservatory teacher Milan Yancich. He always encouraged students to take music jobs that involved travel – a foreign job, a tour, a residency or just a road-trip to a gig.

When it came to taking jobs or something like moving to the Big City to take private lessons and play gigs, Mr. Yancich’s first question was always – “are you single?”

If the answer was ‘yes’ he would launch into an animated sermon on the benefits of life experience in horn playing.

Eager to advance as quickly as possible, I would often ask him – how do I get experience, Mr. Yancich?

He would just laugh softly to himself and ask me to resume performing the Farkas routine for him.

Time Out; Space is Good

Bruce Hembd
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4

When I taught school a common discipline strategy was time out. A misbehaving child could be culled from the flock and placed in a corner to contemplate the consequences of their naughty actions.

This is something that I find having to do to myself from time to time.

When it comes to web design for example, over the past month I have been slowly spacing things out in the Horn Matters web site.

A few years ago it was all the rage to make web sites busy-looking and fill in every space with stuff. Current practices and standards are much different, leaning more towards minimalist design.  On this site I have been pruning and re-arranging things with this in mind.

‘Time out’ is important too for us as horn players. For starters, the benefits of intense practice sessions don’t really sink in until they are evaluated and reflected upon.

I would add that taking time off of the horn is also a good thing to do every now and then. As school semesters wind down and summer break begins, this is an ideal time to think about some time off and reflect on the semester that has passed.

European [Alexander] Shank Mouthpieces and the French Horn [updated]

John Ericson
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Several mouthpiece makers catering to the North American market produce mouthpieces with a European shank. It is a topic a lot of horn players and teachers still seem somewhat unaware of, and is actually quite important to consider depending on the model of your horn.

Some horns will certainly play better with a mouthpiece that has a larger diameter shank. Which leads us to a question —

What is a European/Alexander shank?

A student looking at mouthpieces recently [2010!] pointed me to the text Laskey now has [UPDATE: had] in their website, which gives a good overview of the situation and what the shank change can do for you as a player.

With the increased number of German-made horns, The Laskey Company is now making many of our horn mouthpieces with J, G and F cups available in a larger shank. Players using Schmid, Hoyer horns, etc. now have Laskey mouthpieces made specifically for those instruments.

Because the shank is slightly larger in diameter, it will not go in as far as the standard shank.

This modification adds more “presence” to the sound, increases the quality of attack and improves intonation and response….

If you are presently playing a horn with a larger receiver (Schmid, Hoyer, Alexander, etc) you will find the changes we have made to be a significant improvement.

MP-std-shank

But what does that mean?

If you get down to it, there is not much difference between the actual European taper and the Morse taper used on American mouthpiece shanks. If your mouthpiece wobbles, it is either an issue with your specific mouthpiece shank, or an issue with the receiver (wear, or how it was made).

This is the key point: the way Alexander in particular makes their leadpipes really requires a mouthpiece with a type of larger diameter shank that could in fact be called an Alexander shank. They have made these horns a long time, and their horns (as with all other brands) can be variable, but I believe their current production horns will generally work well with what we would call a European shank mouthpiece.

Being very popular horns, there is a large market for mouthpieces that work well on their horns — and a market for horns that work well on the same mouthpieces that suit an Alexander. Other European makers clearly have their own takes on the topic of mouthpiece fit, but I really should highlight the point that

Just because your horn is European, it does not necessarily need a European shank (unless it is an Alexander!)

But it might. It depends on how your receiver was made, and, again, this can be surprisingly variable even in the same brand of horn over a period of time.

There are two ways to tell if you need a European shank. One way is visual, the other is by play testing. You should try both.

If you play a European horn where it looks like your mouthpiece might be fitting in too far compared to other horns, you should consider trying either a European made mouthpiece or a mouthpiece with a European shank.

Which gets to the other main point, play testing is always needed. The right mouthpiece will bring everything into focus like the horn maker intended — and the horn will certainly feel and play better.

What are you waiting for?

It can make a huge difference in some cases. And, as I have heard remarked several times (and have certainly experienced), a change to a better mouthpiece can make for a huge change in your outlook on everything.

For photos and more information on how to check if you need a European shank mouthpiece see this article.

Article updated significantly 2023

Ascending Third Valve Horns Past and Present

John Ericson
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2

The Mellocast for this week is on a topic not often discussed, that of ascending third valve horns. In short, this is a French system with its origins in the 19th century that is still seen in use today but not so often.

Over at one of my favorite sites, the Richard Martz Horn Collection, we read this introduction to the topic of the ascending third valve horn and find this first illustration. Note how the first and third valve slides look to be about the same length. That is because the first valve lowers the horn a step and the third valve raises the horn a step. As he explains there

This is an “ascending” horn. That is to say, when the third valve is pressed, the pitch of the horn is raised a whole step instead of being lowered by a step- and-a-half (minor third) as is the case on most three-valve instruments. This is accomplished by reversing the usual function of the third valve piston. The open horn air path includes the tubing of the third valve slide. When the valve is pressed the valve slide tubing is bypassed, shortening the length of the air path, thereby raising the pitch of the horn. For this reason a G-crook is used, since the rest of the horn corpus is the length of a standard F horn. (Horn math: the G crook plus the third valve slide equals the length of a standard F crook, therefore the open horn is pitched in F.)

These can and are also produced as double horns. They are not run into often but when they are I know they cause confusion as I have been contacted by people who ran into them a couple times. This horn in the second illustration is an Alexander Model 203 ST double horn. In short, it works under the fingers very much like a regular double horn. A 23 combination still gives A-flat for example but acoustically it is arrived at differently. The photo is linked directly from the Alexander website; this is a horn you could purchase today.

They go into all of this in more detail in Episode 110 of The Mellocast with special guest Sandra Clark, Principal Horn of the Toledo Symphony. Check it out for more!

UPDATE 2021/25: For more thoughts on playing the ascending third valve see this article.

Gottlob Benedikt Bierey: Excited about Valves

John Ericson
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Bruce sent me a link to a very interesting post yesterday from the site Wired.com. The title of the post was “May 3, 1815: Blown Away by Horn With Valves” and it had to do with the first published notice on the valved horn.

The article itself is compiled from “various” sources and I am pretty certain that one of them might be me. The Wired article begins,

1815: A Prussian composer reports a new contrivance. A local chamber musician has modified his brass concert horn, adding valves that allow him to play all the notes in the chromatic scale deftly and with total precision.

Brass instruments were exceedingly limited at the time, and the invention put the concert horn technically on par with the rest of the orchestra. Gottlob Benedikt Bierey of Breslau (now the city of Wrocław, Poland) was bowled over.

In fact, he was so tickled, he wrote about the valves in the local newspaper: “What a new realm of beautiful effects this has opened up to composers!” This was the first public announcement of a valved horn.

To fully appreciate Bierey’s enthusiasm, you have to understand that for a very long time, trumpets were pretty boring.

While from a scholarly perspective you could quibble with elements of the article, on the other hand I really like the more popular angle the author Michael Calore takes and it is worth a read. Because he is correct; Bierey was pretty enthusiastic about the valve, Stoelzel had in fact made the horn completely chromatic! This was really big news and fits in with the theme of their This Day in Tech series at Wired.com. We tend to miss that excitement when reading accounts of events that happened long ago, and besides that it makes the historical context of a lot of the music we play today clearer.

As noted already, I have an article over in Horn Articles Online on “Why Was the Valve Invented?” that I tend to think the author of the Wired article must have referenced. [UPDATE: That article is no longer online, but a shorter version may be found here]. You can be the judge. I have more on the topic there, but in short the journal referenced is Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung for May 3, 1815. Gottlob Benedikt Bierey (1772-1840) was music director of the theater in Breslau, had personally examined Stoelzel’s horn, and gave the invention a very favorable report. This translation of the original article by Bierey is from Kurt Janetzky and Bernhard Brüchle, The Horn, page 73:

Heinrich Stölzel, the chamber musician from Pless in Upper Silesia, in order to perfect the Waldhorn, has succeeded in attaching a simple mechanism to the instrument, thanks to which he has obtained all the notes of the chromatic scale in a range of almost three octaves, with a good, strong and pure tone. All the artificial notes–which, as is well known, were previously produced by stopping the bell with the right hand, and can now be produced merely with two levers, controlled by two fingers of the right hand–are identical in sound to the natural notes and thus preserve the character of the Waldhorn. Any Waldhorn-player will, with practice, be able to play on it. …

I have become convinced of this mechanism and its usability and declare, as a matter of both my insight and the truth, that its use imparts to the Waldhorn a perfection not hitherto attained, and produces an effect in full-voiced music not previously known.

… What a new realm of beautiful effects this has opened up to composers!

Indeed! It took the world of music a while to catch on to the potentials of the new brass instruments but Bierey was pretty excited about the valve back in May of 1815.

UPDATE: I now see that the Wired article has links to two of my articles in Horn Articles Online. Thank you for the links!

Hornmasters: Tuckwell on Holding the Horn and Left Hand Position

John Ericson
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In our series of quotes from classic horn texts we will close out this part of the series with Barry Tuckwell.

On playing standing and sitting

As a soloist Tuckwell in Playing the Horn (1978) was very open to playing standing.

Tuckwell 001When one is standing, it is not too difficult to find a relaxed, ‘at ease’ position; the main object is to be as comfortable as possible, and well balanced. Too much rigidity in the back will cause unnecessary tension; a feeling of poise should be aimed for, as if one is ready to spring forward. This will induce a feeling of alertness without tension.

As to his seated posture, it is a posture very related to this same, easy and balanced standing posture, with the bell off the leg. His approach is typical of modern horn players today.

I prefer to hold the horn free of the body and not to rest the bell on the thigh, even when I am seated. I find this gives me greater freedom for unhampered breathing.

…Spread the legs apart in a comfortable position to provide a good balance, and hold the trunk of the body erect, but no so that the position is stiff, exaggerated, or uncomfortable.

And supporting the horn in general

Tuckwell also offers this advice on supporting the instrument in either position.

It is most important to not hold the horn in such a way that will cause undue fatigue and tension. This may occur when the left hand grips the horn too tightly and when the elbows are kept away from the body.

I find it better to keep the elbows near the body so that one supports the horn only from that point and not from the shoulders. If the horn is held in this way the mouthpiece is slightly to the left of the mouth. Instead of facing straight ahead and bringing the instrument round to meet the mouth, I find it better to turn the head to the left so that is comes into line with the mouthpiece. This keeps the body in a comfortable position and avoids unnecessary tension in the left arm and shoulder.

When we return to the Hornmasters the topic will be the right hand, a topic on which everyone has an opinion.

Continue in Hornmasters Series

Return to Week 2 of the University of Horn Matters horn pedagogy course

Spirituality and the Talent Myth

Bruce Hembd
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While some artists and musicians might resist the idea that innate talent may be a myth, the growing evidence in scientific research is pointing in this direction. A few weeks ago in “Innate Talent?” I featured author David Shenk.

He flatly states that in genetic science, innate talent does not exist.

In a fascinating interview at MarketPlace, author and table tennis champion Matthew Syed echoes this sentiment. He asserts that diligent practice and solid mentoring determine higher standards of excellence. Expert training, according to Syed, is a greater determiner than speed, strength, intelligence or talent.

Current genetics and neuroscience research back this up, he claims. The success in his own career came from a rich combination of advantages.

From a Publisher’s Weekly excerpt at Amazon.com:

[Matthew] Syed, sportswriter and columnist for the London Times, takes a hard look at performance psychology, heavily influenced by his own ego-damaging but fruitful epiphany. At the age of 24, Syed became the #1 British table tennis player, an achievement he initially attributed to his superior speed and agility.

But in retrospect, he realizes that a combination of advantages—a mentor, good facilities nearby, and lots of time to hone his skills—set him up perfectly to become a star performer.

He admits his argument owes a debt to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” but he aims to move one step beyond it, drawing on cognitive neuroscience research to explain how the body and mind are transformed by specialized practice.

In the MarketPlace interview Syed’s commentary aligns with David Shenk’s analysis, that in genetics research –

SYED: I suspect that no matter how long we probe into the DNA of these master performers we won’t find anything implicated in that sequencing. What we will find is extraordinary upbringings.

Vigeland: If excellence is all about practice, and the number of hours you’re putting in, is it possible to say how many hours it’s going to take to become the best of the best whether you’re a musician, or an athlete, or even a CEO?

SYED: The earliest, really, paradigm experiment that took place in this field was by Herbert Simon and William Chase, two academics who looked at chess players. And they discovered that nobody had reached grandmaster quicker than 10 years. And Malcolm Gladwell in his wonderful book “Outliers,” he says look – 10,000 hours is the magic number in order to get to the top. However, it’s not 10,000 hours of any kind of practice. If you don’t approach it with a voracious appetite, if you don’t clock up what Anders Ericsson, a very famous psychologist from Florida, calls deliberate practice, it’s not going to get you anywhere.

Vigeland: I think one of the practical applications here, you say the talent myth is dis-empowering because it causes individuals to give up if they don’t make early progress. And your answer to that is again, look, don’t worry about it, just keep practicing.

The interview continues with a very interesting experiment.

SYED: Yeah, in fact a brilliant psychologist, Carol Dweck from Stanford, has done some terrific research in this area.

She took 400 fifth graders and gave them some simple puzzles. And afterwards half of them were praised for intelligence, for talent — you must be really smart at this. The other half were praised for effort. Gosh, you must have worked really hard.

Then she gave them some more difficult tasks to complete.

Those who were praised for talent, for intelligence, when they come across these really difficult challenges and started struggling, they thought, oh my goodness, I don’t want to lose that smart label. And it actually zapped their ability to persevere on the task. Those who were praised for effort, when they came across this really difficult problem they thought great, I can demonstrate now how hardworking I am. And they really ratcheted up their enthusiasm, kept going.

So what Dweck argues very convincingly is that we must praise young people in any educational scenario for their effort and not for their talent, and try to embed what she calls the growth mindset.

Vigeland: So this is really a message to parents everywhere to stop calling your kid a genius and instead say, hey, good job for studying.

Spirituality

This dialogue presents an interesting paradox; while “talent myth” might be a common term used in this field of research, in the field of music it is a different thing.

To clarify – I would point out that of course people can be born with certain attributes that are advantageous in the right circumstance. In music however, the shining aura of innate talent is not so tangible.

Here are some tough questions to ask:

  • Is this approach to training too existential and cold for us to accept?
  • Is this discrepancy related to religiosity, that talent is something immeasurable like the spiritual soul?
  • Is there some kind of middle ground?
  • Does practice micromanagement kill the spirit of the music?

There is I think one universal point worth remembering.

Diligent, focused practice is a fast path towards achieving excellence. Intense concentration on the process – instead of on the outcome – can produce better results.

Additional reading:

  • Listen to or read the entire Marketplace interview here.
  • A related approach to explore is determining what is a goal and what is a dream. I touched on this a while back in “Dream Big, Think Small.”

Appel Interstellaire [Interstellar Call] for Solo Horn by Messiaen

John Ericson
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Recently I heard the Appel Interstellaire [Interstellar Call] of Olivier Messiaen performed by Patrick Hughes at the Northwest Horn Symposium. This is a work that I know is being performed more and more by horn players and is certainly one that more horn players should know about.

This work is actually the sixth movement of the piece Des canyons aux étoiles… [From the Canyons to the Stars…], a work commissioned in 1971 and subsequently inspired greatly by a trip by the composer to Utah in 1972, especially by Bryce Canyon, seen in the photo.

This particular movement is for solo horn. The score has two Biblical passages in French on the page before this movement to set the mood. The first is listed in the score as being Psalm 146: 3-4, but [UPDATED twice, thanks to comments #3 and 7] is by the Hebrew system of Psalm divisions the text of what I would think of as Psalm 147: 3-4,

He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.

and Job 16:18,

O earth, do not cover my blood;
may my cry never be laid to rest!

They are powerful words to ponder listening to this work. Several passages are to represent bird calls but always strike me as sounding also like Native American flute. The work certainly for me very effectively conjures up mental images of the southwest.

This work I have heard is, if you are serious about winning the International Horn Competition of the Americas, a must play work. As the full work was only premiered in 1974 it was not well known when I was in school and I did not study it at the time but it has become much better known today. I have heard it performed several times recently and it is certainly a work serious students of the horn should know.

“So, how do I get music for this great work!” you may be asking yourself now that you have heard it and read something about it. According to Douglas Hill in his book Collected Thoughts, “Messiaen eventually decided it should not be played separate from the symphony.” In reflection of this fact it is actually impossible to purchase a part (it is a rental) but you can buy a score and perform it from that as an orchestral excerpt.  Arizona State for example owns the score; it is divided into three volumes and you need volume 2 of the set. However, be warned: the score is in C!

The music situation makes it a bit harder to learn than most comparable works but the work is certainly worth the effort and it is not too hard to find or develop your own part in F. I hope to see ASU students make use of our score of the work many times in the coming years.

There are many versions of this to be found on YouTube. Below is one of my favorites, performed by Jean-Jacques Justafré.

Op Ed: On Critical Thinking and Bias

Bruce Hembd
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The topic of prejudice has come across the radar of late – on several fronts at once. Funny how that happens.

Within Horn Matters, John has touched on this topic in “Prejudice and Bias in the Horn World.” [P.M. UPDATE: for a related article of my own (with a touch of humor) see Tuh-may-toe Toe-mah-toh ]

Related to this, my wife is currently enrolled in a class on racial diversity. Here is short excerpt from a paper she wrote for this class.

***

Most people will not admit that they are prejudice.

A few may actually be proud of it, but in general we want to think that we are fair and impartial to others; that we are good, kind and just.  To admit prejudice and bias is to admit that maybe we are not as good as we think and to let in this possibility can really wreak havoc on our sense of self.

But if we put our ego and fear aside, we might not have to dig too deep to find the roots of prejudicial thought; and by admitting it, we may have a chance to overcome it.

Prejudice is an error of cognition.  We process inaccurate information as fact; first over-generalizing and then attributing negative feelings, beliefs and attitudes to the person(s) in our site.

***

Prejudice is an error of cognition.

In terms of musicians and music critics who mindlessly adopt biased, negative beliefs towards certain schools of playing or particular players, this statement is a direct hit at the root of the issue.

Wachet auf!

Wholesale acceptance of prejudice at face value – plain and simple – is lazy thinking; it lacks imagination. We should strive to do better, after all as musicians we are hip-deep in the business of imagination.

Be wary and critical, even vigilant when appropriate, of lazy thinking. Adopting a biased viewpoint simply because it generates social electricity does not necessarily make that belief lasting or genuine – to yourself or to the outside world.

It might very well be an error in judgment: a shallow illusion clouded by peer pressure, the desire to fit into a clique or some other external influence, or perhaps even a deep-seeded issue related to something bygone.

While in politics we like our leaders to be bold, decisive and absolute, in real life there is absolutely nothing wrong or wishy-washy about exploring beliefs, reserving judgment and even perhaps, changing your mind.

Strive to be open-minded; think deeply about biases. There may be something profound and life-changing waiting in that exploration.

http://hornmatters.com/2009/05/prejudice-and-bias-in-the-horn-world/

Steampunk Horn

Bruce Hembd
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0
  • Steampunk Horn
    Steam Punk is a genre of comic book that takes place in an alternate reality, where instead of electricity being our main power source, it is steam. A steam punk horn is here.

[Updated 2021, JE, from a “Random Monday” post. Yes, it is a real short post, but the link to the horn is still good and worth a look.]

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