Since posting a blog on applying an electronics education model to music performance education, I have found several other blogs with related material worth investigating. While college performance majors graduate with strong fundamentals, many lack real-world survival skills. Students are left wandering in the dark to figure it out on their own.
Justin Locke discusses an “inside/outside” model to illustrate how college programs need to teach thinking beyond academe.
…what I want to propose, is a complete turning on its head of the current system. Instead of focusing on precision and conformity (and by that I mean precision of technique and conformity to past ways of performing, i.e., focusing one’s rare glimpses outside of oneself solely on other players of your same instrument), I suggest that arts education become totally focused on the whole thought of: “what does my audience want from me?”
He observes that the current education model encourages students to think too inwardly, burrowing themselves in practice rooms, focusing on minutiae, precision and conformity. This mindset, he suggests, may even encourage the narcissistic state of mind so prevalent in the business.
Drew McManus asks in The (New) Realities of Orchestral Life “why not give students what they’ll need instead of forcing them to flail around blindly for it when they actually need it?”
While Mr. McManus notes that some college programs have warmed up to the idea of preparing students for the real world, he wonders if the turn in the economy might result in these programs being cut back. Colleges that offer lectures and workshops on the topic not only help their graduates to succeed but also make their programs more competitive and desirable to new students.
When it comes to practicing the horn, making web sites or even blogging I have a tendency to overdo things at times. A part of my final procedure is to go back, condense and delete superfluous or redundant text.
A comic strip at BasicInstructions.net takes a humorous look at this process, and actually when applied to tackling a horn-related problem is pretty good advice.
I spent a good several hours marveling at Google Patent Search engine recently. It is an amazing resource – its scope is huge. I imagine that researchers would find this to be a very useful secondary research tool.
An interesting feature is that once a specific item is found, the user can backtrack (or “forward track”) references cited by each patent. It is then possible to trace the history of a design to some of the earliest (or latest) patents on record.
For example, using this method I found an early patent for the cylindrical valve from 1855. The owner is a Gustavus Hammer of Cincinnati, Ohio and this is the earliest patent I could find for this valve as applied on a musical instrument. While this does not mean that Mr. Hammer invented the cylindrical valve, it does show that he was among the first to capitalize on it.
For a researcher, the details of this patent could be of value. It could be a launching point for further study.
Numerous modern-day patents reference the 1949 Hubley Horn design. It was the earliest patent of a descant horn design that I could find.
I love the author’s description of cracked horn notes (“clams”):
Browsing through various inventions that have been tried out over the years was fun and informative. My search included:
The “Hornette” – a combination horn and cornet.
A horn with cork blockings instead of solder to dampen vibration…seems antithetical to what a horn should do, but interesting to check out…
The detachable lead pipe – Holton/Leblanc got this one first.
“Crossover” mouthpieces to make switching between brass instruments easier.
Through an article in the Horn Call and another online at hornplayer.net, I have known about the much fabled and infamous Veneklausen horn for years. It was interesting to inspect its finer details.
The 1965 Kravka Horn by Amati (possibly the same inventor of the Amati water key?). It looks like that it was an attempt to eliminate sharp bends in the traditional horn design, replacing them with wider, round curves.
Judging by the amount of television appearances that may be found online, Eliana Burki seems to be making a name for herself with her unique approach to the alphorn. At the very least she is to be commended for capitalizing on a niche and turning a one-trick-pony into a career.
Maybe I am missing something – while I watch her performances with interest, my attention wanes a bit after a few minutes. I cannot help but wonder; if Ms. Burki were less physically attractive, would she get the same amount of attention?
On the one hand I suppose if attractive people with gimmicks can help draw in crowds – why not?
On the other hand, I look to Renée Fleming, and must admit to being somewhat infatuated. The big difference though is that Renée Fleming is much more than a pretty face, her voice alone can hold my attention for hours on end.
For more information on Eliana Burki, take a look for yourself:
People page (Swiss version of Facebook?) for more.
A new blog I am following is at Julia Rose’s Horn Page, the site of Julia Rose, third hornist of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra. This site, like mine, has been around for ten years! It is great to see this new addition to the site.
The post I have been thinking about for several days is “My Crazy Embouchure,” which I highly recommend reading in full. In it Julia relates the story of her embouchure,
I have had my share of embouchure struggles throughout my career, including a major embouchure change in college. I played with a very einsetzen embouchure (almost all upper lip) until I was a sophomore in college. …
Somehow I did very well using that embouchure in high school. I had a very good tone for a high school student, a good low range, but I pretty much pressured the high range into existence. I was able to get around the limitations of my embouchure through sheer hard work and practice, as I really wanted to play the horn for a living eventually. But in my sophomore year of college I hit the proverbial wall, especially in the high range, and realized I needed to make a change. When I was in middle/high school, various people (who were in positions to know better) told me that I should never change my embouchure, as it resembled Dennis Brain’s and how could that be wrong, and that they had gone through embouchure changes themselves and that it “ruined” them.
So I was quite afraid of the change, but luckily I was studying with “Mr. Embouchure” in college, Douglas Hill. He is quite an amazing teacher- in my opinion his knowledge of embouchure is second to none in the teaching profession, and he has had an amazing success rate among many his students who are now playing and teaching professionally. He has turned many students who appeared at first hearing to have limited talent into fine players. He has changed many students’ embouchures successfully, which gave me confidence that it would all end up well for me. So I attempted the change.
Myself, I can relate to her story very well as I changed my embouchure not once but twice, in the middle of my undergraduate program and also at the beginning of my Doctoral studies. My original embouchure coming out of high school was 2/3 lower lip! I made all-state as a senior in high school but my low range was terrible and I was no super hot prospect for a performance program. I started college in fact as a music business major. But I got serious about playing and, in short, made a lot of progress working with good teachers. But I hit a bit of a wall after my MM studies and made another fairly big adjustment. It was needed and frankly got me where I am today.
My first embouchure change especially was not at all easy. I can really relate to Julia where she shares,
Little did I know that I was in for 6 months of sheer agony! He gave me the information I needed to make the change- what constitutes a good embouchure, his philosophies on embouchure, and told me to study the photos in Farkas’ 40 Virtuoso Horn Players’ Embouchures. So I began; I couldn’t play a C major scale for a week. I struggled in front of a mirror in a little practice room with a window on it, embarrassed by the pathetic sounds coming out of my horn. I’m sure more than a couple horn students strolled down that hallway, heard those awful sounds and wondered, “Who in the #&*$ is that?!” and peeked in the window. But eventually something clicked over Winter Break for me involving something with my lower lip, I was able to move the mouthpiece down, and my playing took off very quickly from there.
The mistake I see students make out of high school especially is that they are trying too hard to study with the wrong kind of teacher, one that is actually not capable of working with a student to work out their playing problems. Typically these are very natural players that may even have limited interest in teaching, they are “players” and their teaching is more along the lines of coaching. Their teaching success is based on teaching students who are also very natural players with few problems out of high school.
But plenty of other hornists have potential for success given hard work and good teachers. Really, in auditions at ASU, we are trying above all to estimate potential, we don’t expect finished products but players who we feel are capable of making progress. Julia certainly found in Doug Hill a teacher that took the time to work things out with a student that he felt had potential.
No teacher relishes embouchure work with students. It takes a lot of effort from both teacher and student. But the practical fact is virtually every horn student needs some embouchure adjustment to get the extreme ranges sorted out to a very high level, which may include an embouchure change. Be aware of that as you consider teachers and programs and your horn playing.
UPDATE 2012: The site is no longer online, but the quotes above remain very relevant.
At some point, everyone believes that their instrument brand of choice is good and therefore perhaps good for others – this is perfectly natural and understandable. Less understandable is when this preference digresses into intolerance towards anyone or anything that is different or does not agree.
In the latest Horn Call
(Vol.XXXIX No.1),
Frøydis Ree Wekre observes in “Never Say Never – Again”:
This is an interesting and very often geographical ‘rule,’ mostly originating from one dominant teacher/player, who transfers his or her phobias to students and to other players who hope to get gigs in this neighborhood.
In a private lesson I sat in on long ago (in a place far, far away), a conversation went something like this:
Teacher:
What is this? (pointing to some tubing on the student’s horn)
Student:
(confused) What do you mean?
Teacher:
All that tubing there… it is…inefficient.
Student:
I like this horn.
Teacher:
(impatiently) Why do you play on that garbage bucket? Honestly…I do not understand why people play these horns. They are incredibly inefficient. You should play on my type of horn. It is far superior…it’s the finest horn ever made.
Some believe that [Grant] Wood used this painting to satirize the narrow-mindedness and repression that has been said to characterize Midwestern culture… The painting may also be read as a glorification of the moral virtue of rural America or even as an ambiguous mixture of praise and satire.
While working as a temp at a technology education center this summer, I worked with their goals and rationale of their systems approach to electronics education and at the same time, wondered if the concept could translate to a college education in music performance.
Granted, the technology curve is exponentially greater than that of the music field, but, it seems that many performance majors I encounter graduate from college lack basic problem-solving, business and entrepreneurial skills.
Roughly translated:
Applying the eSyst model is not an exact fit, but this graphic abstractly illustrates the concept I am attempting to convey. My concern that is while the electronics industry has the eSyst project recognizing their educational gap, music performance education does not have a similar program.
A few music schools have adapted their programs and are staying on top of the tides of change. Yet, many others continue with an outmoded or incomplete education model. Students are graduating with strong fundamentals, but weak real-world skills, including: how to be an entrepreneur, how to plan a budget, and how to plan for retirement.
That being said, I am greatly encouraged by programs at my alma maters – Eastman’s Institute for Music Leadership and Arizona State’s experimental ensemble program. With a “top-down” approach, students can tailor their education to meet the current demands of the market.
For the lucky few, the highly competitive orchestra gigs are a godsend. For others it is a pipe dream. For many, the alternative career is in the “freeway philharmonic.”
Freeway Philharmonic
This term is gaining increasing popularity among musicians; it gives a name to a rising employment trend for many classical musicians, myself included. It refers to musicians who hold a collection of several part-time playing jobs (perhaps in tandem with a job outside of music) that in total, comprise a full-time career. It has even been the topic of a recent documentary of the same name which is being broadcast on PBS in some areas.
If recent events with the orchestra and academic profession (and the economy) are any indication of a long-term trend, downsizing may be in the future for many small and mid-sized American colleges and orchestras. The “freeway philharmonic” model may become the wave of the future for many (or even most) musicians and educators.
Shift happens
In offering these observations, I do not profess a “doom and gloom” forecast for the future of classical music nor do I lay blame on teachers or on the teaching profession. Rather, I profess that programs at the upper levels need to adapt themselves to changing times and real-world models – such as the freeway philharmonic.
Some private studio teachers may teach these concepts in one form or another. Formalized as a course or a bona fide program however, this real-world knowledge could be of even greater benefit to more students. A recent post at Joshua Nesmith’s Cincinnati Pianist Blog for example, offers the kind of advice that should be a standard course in college – i.e. “Surviving and Thriving in the Arts 101.”
A video illustrating changing trends in the technology field brilliantly illustrates the point in the broader scope. This is was what gave me the “aha” moment for this blog topic.
The systems view approach is a “top/down approach” to education where the market drives the college curriculum. A responsive music performance program that thinks like this – beyond textbook knowledge and “dream” gigs – could be sending performance graduates into the world prepared with specific tools, instead of vague dreams.
If it works for the highly competitive electronics field, can’t it work for music too?
Could a technology model work for a music performance education?
Last summer I worked in a temporary position developing a web site “in-house” for an education center (MATEC) devoted to catalyzing a change in electronics education. The project is called eSyst and its main focus is the systems view of electronics.
According to the project’s founder, many of the university electronics programs across the country are teaching outdated concepts. Students are learning, for example, from textbooks that are 20 years behind the current technology curve. Moreover, the learning model is gearing students for a “bottom-up” approach to problem solving – from the micro to the macro level.
Most electronics technicians do not view the world at the micro level any longer. They do not troubleshoot and replace discrete components. Instead, they must have a total systems view and importantly, a view of how that system communicates both inside itself and with the outside world
However, electronics students are being taught the basic fundamentals at the component level. While useful, these skills do not practically apply in the field.
For more details see the Flash interactive model.
The systems view advocates a “top-down” approach – focusing on the interaction of elements rather than the intricate details of the elements themselves.
Switching gears
In the full-time orchestral field, the employment outlook has changed significantly in the last few decades. While only a handful of full-time jobs are available, the number of music graduates is higher than the market can support.
Not only is the market like a rising tide in a shrinking pool, the entire field itself may be in a state of shift and flux. Many music graduates are unprepared to deal with the real world.
From Justin Locke’s Arts and Commerce blog:
Now that I am occasionally contracting orchestras myself … I often find myself vexed and frustrated by the musicians I hire and their attitudes towards me and how they market themselves. At one point I got so bothered I called some local music schools and offered to come and speak to their performance majors about how to deal with, and relate to, the people who hire them as professional players. I thought they would leap at the chance to have their kids meet someone who actually hires young musicians. Amazingly, I was rebuffed. I was told that “we are already doing this,” but it is clear to me as a contractor that no one is teaching musicians of any age how to deal with contractors.
John Ericson recently wrote a post at the Horn Notes Blog [post no longer online] about playing a stopped passage in Gershwin’s American in Paris with mutes. I ran into a similar situation.
Beethoven’s Rondino (1792) is written for two oboes, two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons. It was composed in the same year as the more well-known Woodwind Octet. There has been some speculation that the Rondino may have been intended to be part of this Octet.
Over the weekend I performed this piece with some friends as a part of a chamber music fund-raiser. It had been a while since I had played this piece and I had forgotten about the clumsy mute changes near the end of the piece.
This effect is written in both horn parts. For the sake of simplicity, we opted not to use mutes and played it as a subito pianissimo effect instead, taking some time between each entrance.
I did find a period instrument performance on the Duetsche Welle web site by the Italian group Ensemble Zefiro. It is from the 2007 BeethovenFest in Bonn.
It is interesting to listen to – the horn players use mutes modeled on originals from the period. Scroll down a bit on this page and click on the link under “Audios and Videos on the Topic.”
The horn players take considerable time to put in and take out the mutes. After listening to this, I am not sure if the subtle effect is worth the effort for a modern horn player. Stopping the music for so long to put in and take out the mutes is a bit disconcerting.
Also, modern mutes sound much more “buzzy” by comparison. This then makes me wonder about the final bars of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony:
Ethel Merker once remarked to me that owning one mute is not enough. She spoke of using a trombone straight mute for Don Quixote to get an extremely “buzzy” sound.
Along this line of thought I now wonder if this Beethoven excerpt would be better performed on a less “buzzy” mute – if such a thing exists.
I am not sure where I picked these up – this printout is not copyrighted so I am making them available here. If anyone has an more concrete idea of where these are from please leave a comment below.
This is an extensive flow/scale study that I give out to my students. They are fairly self-explanatory and are yet another variation to add to one’s arsenal of basic routine exercises.
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