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On Not Distracting Other Players

John Ericson
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This is the final article I will be posting from the archive of the original Horn Notes Blog, originally dated 7/17/05 and posted with the title “Oh ****”

Any horn player who is any good more than likely has a bit of a perfectionist streak in them. We just hate to make mistakes. This is a part of what drives us to work hard, but it can make us and the people around us a but nutty.

In relation to this it is very easy to develop a habit of physically displaying your displeasure with your own mistakes. I have been reminded of this yet again this summer in Brevard.

twitter-bird-234-iconI recall a time when I was playing second horn for the summer of 1987 with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (a great experience) when the first hornist for part of the summer, Peter Kurau (then assistant principal horn, now full time at Eastman) let me gently know that I needed to be aware of this and nip a bad habit in the bud. I had a habit when I missed things to do something with my left hand, I believe something like clenching it and sometimes hitting my bell. Try it, it feels sort of good in a way but it potentially distracts other players; you have to learn to control yourself. (David Angus, third horn in the RPO, was principal horn for the second half of the summer; Rebecca Root took off to play at Chautauqua, and Eli Epstein had left to join the Cleveland Orchestra).

It is tough, but also try not to say critical things under your breath. This is really common, and I will most likely never be perfect in this area. Not that it makes it OK, but as an aside I am told in fact that you can hear David Krehbiel say things under his breath after certain cuts in his orchestral excerpt CD. Keep aware of this, try to keep it in control.

I remember too, in that same period when I played a lot with the RPO, Eli Epstein (then about to leave the section to perform second horn in Cleveland) told me to be careful about dumping out water when the first horn was playing alone. This is great advice. We kind of get in our own little zone and don’t realize that we are not only potentially distracting people but also potentially impacting our future work! People always want to play next to someone that makes them feel comfortable who makes it easy for them to play their best.

Speaking of people comfortable to play with, Jean Martin-Williams (professor of horn, University of Georgia) is leaving us here today, taking the rest of the summer off from Brevard. She will be missed. When I arrived in 1999 I was “the new guy” and every week that I have been here Jean has also been here playing second or third horn and keeping things running smoothly in general. Some colleagues along the way will make playing tough either intentionally or unintentionally, but colleagues like Jean make it easy.

With that the archive is officially empty! The Horn Notes Blog was one of the first if not the first horn blog, and we have aimed to include the best of that content in Horn Matters.

Wilke Renwick, hornist and composer

John Ericson
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If you have played in a brass quintet at all you have probably seen the name Wilke Renwick. His Dance for brass quintet is certainly one of the most widely performed works for that ensemble.

What is not as widely known today is he was also a fine horn player and for many years was Principal Horn of the Denver Symphony.

Wilke Richard Renwick Jr. passed away on May 23, 2014 at the age of 92. His obituary may be found here, details of which I would highlight being,

  • Served in Navy bands during WWII
  • Studied with Willem Valkenier and Harold Meek in Boston after the war
  • Became Principal Horn of the Denver Symphony Orchestra in 1954 and performed with the orchestra until 1986.

There are a number of videos of his Dance on YouTube if you are not familiar with the work. Instead of choosing just one to highlight, this search result will take you to a long list. Enjoy!

I always found it a fun piece to play and I believe most horn players would agree. This work will be one that Renwick is remembered for.

A Conch Shell Horn

John Ericson
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With summer upon us it is a good time to step back and switch things up with something different.

Conch-1Often horn players make use of the conch shell horn in a presentation on the history of the horn. I have never had one but a couple weeks ago stumbled across this example at a garage sale. It has a couple spots super glued back on, but for $2 I could not pass it up.

The sound is surprisingly powerful on the fundamental it sounds, which for horn in F would be a written E on the top space. The harmonic series offers other pitches as well but they do not sound as powerfully.

The mouthpiece end was simply made by opening up the end of the shell. The other two photos below give views of the rest of the shell.

The seller said he bought it in Hawaii on vacation. It is a neat item that will find a place in my office.

Conch-3

Conch-2

Doug Hall, a Vintage Knopf Horn, and a Horn Convention

John Ericson
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San Diego Symphony hornist Doug Hall is hosting a regional horn workshop next weekend, but his name is also in the news if you read The Horn Call. On page 46 of  the May, 2014 issue is an article titled “Doug Hall’s ‘Pay it Forward’ Gift to a Young Horn Player” by David Axelson. It was of particular interest to me as I now teach at Arizona State the horn player that received the gift horn facilitated by Hall.

While it is not stated in the Horn Call article, the article there is reprinted in full from an article that you can also read online, originally published in the Coronado Eagle & Journal (link here). The short version of this is that Hall got an idea to rebuild a horn that had been a old rental horn, very beat up and literally saved from the trash by a former member of the San Diego Symphony, George Cable. It is a pre-war Knopf horn, and the article (well worth reading at the link above or in The Horn Call) details how a number of other people became involved with the rebuilding effort including Darby Hinshaw, George McCracken, Eric High, Bill Holcombe, and Bruce Roberts.

Jackie-hornThe photo, received from Hall for this article, is of when the horn was presented to my student, Jackie Fazekas, who is seen with Cable and Hall.

This is where I enter into the story of this instrument in a small way as well. I was very excited to play the horn when it arrived in Arizona and found it had a really nice sound (classic Knopf/Geyer) and played well generally but was very sharp and the high Bb was not very good at all.

We puzzled over this in a number of lessons. I knew for sure the main slide needed extended. Jackie obtained some tube from Hall to extend the slide, and realizing that it could probably be extended so far as to use dedicated extenders I started seeing what I had around that would work as extenders. I ended up offering her, temporarily, the extender slides off the stop valve on my Paxman triple and then, the last week of classes, carved out time to make extenders using the tubing from Hall (I have just enough horn building experience to be dangerous! I’m not a pro, but I can do very clean work).

So add one more person to the list of people involved in getting this vintage horn back in shape and note that now the high Bb is pretty stable, the horn plays in tune, and the sound is still really nice.

And going back to the first sentence of this article, The Southwest Horn Convention is this coming Memorial Day weekend in San Diego! If you are in the area be sure to attend, there will be tons of horns to try and a very interesting selection of guest artists and sessions. More info here:

And thank you again to Doug Hall not only for the photo above but also his efforts to “pay it forward” and invest in the future.

On Recording a Brass Trio CD

John Ericson
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Besides the normal things that keep horn professors very busy at the end of a semester I have, with my ASU colleagues Douglas Yeo and Deanna Swoboda, been recording a CD of brass trios.

trio-recording-sessionFor me this is a “comeback” CD of sorts, as my most recent CD came out in 2005, my Canto CD (more here). As I write this we are one session away from finishing up recording, and this view is of us on the first day of recording.

Even before editing I am pretty excited about this project, the group sounds great and we have had a great team in the recording booth. The studio is Tempest Recording, and Clarke Rigsby has our sound dialed in great. Rose French, a freelance hornist in Phoenix (runs a chamber ensemble, serves as horn professor at Grand Canyon University, etc. — an interview may be found here) is producing and keeping us on track; her assistance has been absolutely invaluable as well.

Musically you may be thinking what does a trio of horn, bass trombone, and tuba play? And how does it sound? We are playing a mixture of original works and arrangements, including brand new works by Paul Ferguson, Benjamin McMillan, and Elizabeth Raum. For a bit of the flavor of how we sound check out this earlier article, where a YouTube video of us playing a Reicha Trio arrangement is featured. In short (and I may be biased) the sound of the group is deep and full.

And speaking of Reicha, if you want to buy our two suites from Reicha for this very brass trio they will be published soon, I will have more news on all of this over the summer.

UDATES–

See this article for more on editing

See this article for more on mastering

UPDATE: The CD is out now, more here.

On Tweaking the Thumb Valve Position

John Ericson
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As noted in a very recent article, I have several horns I can and do use regularly. One common adjustment made on horns is to add “dimes” to the valve levers, to meet your fingers better (more here). 

But you also have a thumb. Going back to the triple again for a recording project I noted the thumb valve is really not quite the right place for my best technique. Some horns have adjustments built in, but triples often not so much, the space is really tight with the two thumb valves and in my case two thumb valves and an extra button for the stop valve.

In this case, when I first purchased this Paxman model 83 I hit upon gluing a piece of plastic tubing on the F/Bb change valve to position it  bit better. I played the horn full time for several years that way, then went back to a double as my main instrument, I was no longer often playing first horn. In that time frame I took the tube off and switched the horn stand in Bb, which I think was how the fine folks at Paxman thought most people would set the instrument up. In Bb I think the thumb valve position as delivered is quite good.

I set the horn to stand in Bb for some time for use in solo and chamber music, but I need it to stand in F for “real” horn playing, my brain stands in F! Coming back to it from double and needing to hit full technique on a variety of music I added the tubing back again as seen in the photo.

Thumb-valve-tubingThe tubing is available at anywhere that sells hardware. I cut the section of tube needed to cover the lever with a sharp hobby knife. As a model railroader my glue of choice is Walthers Goo, available at any good hobby shop that stocks model trains. It is a great contact cement that I have used to fix many mutes as well. Follow the instructions on the tube; I also clamped it on the valve for several hours as you don’t want the tube falling off! Most of the other valves on this horn are string action and have a bit more adjustment built in — but the F/Bb change valve is mechanical.

This general technique of gluing on a piece of tubing is an easy fix toward getting a problem valve in the right position and also completely reversible if you wish to remove the tube later. Alternately, you can affix something else. I have on a prior instrument added a layer of cork to a thumb valve and a student I had at one time had mounted a block of wood on a thumb valve paddle to build it up.

The overall point being you have some options, there is no need to suffer along with feeling you can’t quite reach a valve optimally.

Tip: Calculating Timings of Works of Music

John Ericson
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I am working toward a trio recording project now, and as a part of planning for that I needed to come up with timings for a number of works that we did not have recordings of. There will be three brand new works included on the recording and a number of works and arrangements that have not been recorded.

Schmidt-Snip-2A lot of people would just play them down and time them. But there is a better way to get a good estimate.

I don’t recall anyone telling me this system but it must have been thought of before. What I was inspired by on this was that you can time for example the number of seconds between highway mile posts and calculate your speed. For example if it takes 60 seconds to travel one mile you are driving exactly 60 miles per hour. We used to do this game on family car trips.

In music we can create a similar formula to come up with a timing for a piece of music, which would be this:

Meter times number of bars divided by the metronome marking

So for example if a piece of music is in three and is 20 bars long and the tempo is 60 beats per minute you get:

3 X 20 / 60 = 1

It would be exactly one minute long. This system is fool proof and can give you a very accurate estimate if you know your metronome marking accurately. Realizing of course that if you get an answer of 1.5 that translates to a timing of 1:30.

This simple formula is applicable to any piece of printed music and is a great tool for planning performances or recordings of any type.

Speaking of the recording, I am very excited about some of the new music and will have more on it all as we record and release it! Our first day of recording is today.

On the Horn Parts in the Scherzo of Mahler 5

John Ericson
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One of the great orchestral works featuring the horn is the Symphony No. 5 of Mahler. The full work itself has six horn parts. However, the Scherzo movement only has five horn parts, divided as follows in the score:

Mahler5-3-snip

 

I actually wrote a paper about Mahler 5 as an undergrad (a great topic!) and have been clear about the number of horn parts my entire professional life. I have performed the work at least five concert series as well; once on principal horn, once on second, twice on third, and this past week again on sixth horn with the Phoenix Symphony (Bravo to the entire section! And to all horn sections of performances past; many good memories).

The soloistic Corno Obligato part is well known in the horn community. What is not well know is that actually the standard set of hand manuscript parts has a “horn V” part in this movement as well. Note the score seen above again; there is no horn V. The printed horn V part is actually just the third horn part copied out again in that same hand manuscript. I suspect it is in the fifth horn part for convenience only.

On this movement normally the first horn will play the Corno Obligato part, the third horn will play first horn, and the fifth horn play third horn. With the sixth horn chilling, tacet on this movement, and the assistant either not playing or only very lightly used.

The reason this is all post-worthy is that I am told that sometimes groups will actually play the horn V part in this movement, having the sixth horn read it. This is not what Mahler intended; don’t do it! It will throw the orchestration off to double one of the horn parts like that. If you are in doubt check a score, which makes it crystal clear that this movement really has only five horn parts, orchestral horns 1-4 and the famous Corno Obligato solo.

On Choices of Horns

John Ericson
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This past few months has been productive and interesting in terms of practice and equipment. Two things drove this. One was being forced to change mouthpieces due to allergic sensitivity (more here). The other is an upcoming recording project.

French-horn-choicesI had settled in and was playing for a couple years a horn that is comparable to a custom Geyer horn, a Willson, seen on the chair in the photo. What I found in rehearsals with the trio was that it felt a bit too bright for the context, the trio being with tuba and bass trombone. And part of the project I was thinking I would need to play on the triple but I could not find a mouthpiece I liked for it.

Without going blow by blow on the whole thing, I ended up also getting out and seriously trying two other horns that were available to me seen in the photo, an ASU owned vintage Hoyer (East German era) double and also my big double, a Paxman 25AND. I also had to really work around the mouthpiece issue as each horn seems to focus in best on different mouthpieces.

The conclusion is that I am playing the recording later this month and in May on my triple, a Paxman model 83, with a Moosewood BA mouthpiece, but also using the big Paxman double this week to play extra horn with the Phoenix Symphony with a Moosewood B-14 mouthpiece, both with the same Moosewood Delrin (plastic) rim. Both horns are feeling great and I look forward to 6th horn on Mahler 5!

And I will have more notes and tips related to the recording coming soon, but for a flavor of what we are working on check this article for more.

Rethinking Your Warm-Up for Better Results

John Ericson
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At an extreme, warm-up routines come in two flavors: etched in granite, or free-form.

This past weekend at Arizona State we hosted Prof. Jeffrey Agrell of the University of Iowa for a horn day event. One topic area that came up was warming-up, in the session he titled “Warm-Ups: Horn Math: a New Look at an Old Topic.” A couple elements of this really challenged me to think.

Earlier in his career when he was playing full time in an orchestra he had a very set, long routine. Many orchestral players do. I also had a long, set routine that I did with little variation for many years (ask anyone who played with me in Nashville!).

The positive for this type of long routine is it is consistent, sort of a base of operations as a horn player. Start at the beginning and play to the end, go from being cold to being totally warmed up and ready to go. Does not require a lot of thought, could do it reading a magazine or watching TV, feels good.

The negatives are that this type of routine can will become deadly boring over time, and it will only maintain your playing.

Turning back to my initial thinking on the topic, in my University of Horn Matters article I wrote that 

… I am really not convinced that every published warm-up you will find is actually realistically what the author normally personally did. Maybe it is, but then again maybe it was more what they hoped to do or recommended to people when a publisher wanted them to fill some pages with the topic, but when push came to shove they had other ways to warm-up that set up their chops better for actual performances. There is no one-size-fits-all plan for warming up, and there is a very good argument to be made that if you don’t vary it over time you will not progress on the horn.

For those very familiar with the series, that last sentence is one I changed after Prof. Agrell left. A good sports trainer does not give you one routine and that is all you ever get! No. What happens is you work out a routine then they/you modify it progressively to continue your training progress.

A lot of horn players don’t do that. They work out a routine based on elements from books and teachers and then stick with it for years, maybe forever. Their goals never move forward.

There is a better way. Prof. Agrell will be publishing more in an upcoming book so I won’t tip my hand too far on what he said, but what I am now experimenting with personally is changing up more elements of what I do on a daily basis.

In my own case, my normal routine for a while has been based on a repertoire of elements of a warm-up routine, which I then plug into a general warm-up format. I have been through many phases on all of this, with one recent phase being more use of a tone generator, as noted in a very recent article. But it was not the same every day.

Clarke-snipMy general goal now is to break down those elements further and play them in variations that focus on specific “problem areas” and are

  • slower
  • faster
  • shorter
  • longer

AND also to generally warm-up less. I can get pretty ready in 10 or so minutes really, ready enough to move on to music that starts out not too difficult for another 10 minutes and to use that to extend the warm-up.

Right now I am also working on a lot of music for a recording project, so to more formally morph the end of a shorter warm-up into the beginning of practice is much more efficient use of limited practice time. With a more tangible example of what I am doing being instead of the familiar Clarke study seen above (which I have down!) I have gone back to working on perfecting better a minor key variation of this study found in the Al Vizzutti trumpet method.

These are just some of my thoughts as of now, but they are stated to encourage readers to vary their warm-up, to focus in the elements you need to do to physically get ready to play, and to focus on problem areas of playing without getting hung up in a long, etched in granite routine that never varies.

UPDATE: For another angle on rethinking the warm-up see this article: shorter is better. 

And: I now have a warmup book out through Horn Notes Edition, available in print or Kindle formats on Amazon.

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