Horn Matters | A French Horn and Brass Site and Resource | John Ericson and Bruce Hembd

Mutes are not a new invention, as they have been used in works since the time of Beethoven (his sixth symphony being especially notable).

Don’t worry, play muted

It took me years to figure out that most brass players (other than horn players!) harbor lots of concerns about playing muted. It really is interesting, as playing muted horn with a good, modern mute is typically just as easy playing open.

In general the topic of muted horn also appears to have been of no great concern for Farkas from a technical standpoint (“with proper practice, the change in resistance caused by the mute will not be upsetting”), but certainly the mutes of the 1950s must have required more adjustments of corks than we expect to see today.

In older works it can be confusing what the composer wanted you to do

But there is a big elephant in the room on the musical side of things to address as well. Quoting from The Art of French Horn Playing,

First let us clarify the myriad terms used to denote muting or hand-stopping. The is a distinct difference between the sound of a muted horn note and a hand-stopped note, as most composers are well aware; but players are inclined to treat this difference lightly and use whichever method suits their convenience. I believe that this is a rather serious mistake and, to some composers, a downright affront.

Farkas gives an overview of some of the more confusing notations of Ravel and Debussy and offered a short list of terms related to muted and stopped horn.

(I have a longer PDF list at the link below, with the most important terms related to muted and stopped horn marked).

• French-German-terms

Farkas also explains that the terms schmetternd and cuivre “refer only to the player’s ability to get a hard, brassy sound on the open horn by unduly tightening the embouchure with a ‘smile’ and forcing the tone.”

Reality is some composers didn’t/don’t understand the effects they request in their own music

While he has several practical notes on muting (“It is not necessary to jam or grind the mute in” for example) Gunther Schuller in Horn Technique is especially concerned with the musical side of the horn mute question in the orchestra. In explaining this he takes the opportunity to chastise composers who don’t understand the effects requested in their own music.

Many composers are not very clear about the difference in the sounds produced by using a mute and that of hand muting (or hand stopping). Not knowing the difference, they write in their scores simply ‘muted’ or the equivalent in their own language. Often they write ‘con sordino’ when they really expect hand muting; and vice versa. Many players also assume that the composer and the conductor do not know the difference, and therefore do whatever comes easiest, which is usually to put a mute in the bell. A few composers, however, like Wagner, Mahler, Ravel, Debussy, Respighi, and Stravinsky, do insist on the differences between the two forms of muting.

Just say “no” to plastic, cardboard, or metal mutes

As to non-transposing mutes Harry Berv in A Creative Approach to the French Horn feels that mutes made of fiber produce “a more mellow, descriptive sound” than do mutes of plastic, cardboard, or metal.

On finding a good mute

Barry Tuckwell notes in Playing the Horn that

A really good mute is exceedingly rare: most produce altogether too open a sound. This may sometimes be improved by cutting down the corks so that the mute can be fitted further into the bell.

I believe speaking generally that the consistency and quality of horn mutes used by professionals has gone up over those used when the above books were written. As to my recommendations, this is what I had posted in an article in the old Horn Articles Online site:

There are a lot of mutes on the market, each with a unique shade of tonal color and slightly different playing qualities. If you can, try the mute before you buy it–especially try the low range, which on some mutes is quite poor. In general many professional players in the USA prefer “Rittich” style mutes, the ones that look like a tall cone. I would by choice recommend a tunable version of this type of mute. While it may make sense to purchase a cheap mute for a school program, for personal use always look for something up the ladder in terms of quality.

On the history of the “Rittich style mute”

Many students today wonder what is a Rittich style mute, or why this name became associated with this type of mute, such as seen in this photo. Nicholas Smith offers this background in an article based on his 1980 dissertation,

In surveying today’s professional players as to what their mute preference is, the name Eugene Rittich of Toronto, Canada seems to be mentioned more than any other. Mr. Rittich has been for many years Co-Principal of the Toronto Symphony and his experimentation with mutes began as a result of his dissatisfaction with what was available.

He began working in 1962 to try and achieve better intonation and response from the then popular cone on cylinder mute shape. This failed to produce the results he wanted, so he experimented with a simple cone shape which achieved better results. Before long, he was receiving so many requests for copies of his design, that he decided to produce them for sale. Since that time (1967), he has worked to find the best combination of the many variables found in a mute’s dimensions. These include taper and length of the cone, top hole diameter, diameter of the inner cylinder, placement, width, and thickness of corks, and the materials from which the mute is made.

The Rittich mute has an adjustable length inner cylinder for fine tuning the mute to any horn. Although this feature isn’t new, it is probably the most successful application of a tunable mechanism on a mute to date. The success of his design is evident by the large number of copies being presently produced by other manufacturers.

A tunable mute

One thing that needs highlighted from the quote above is also you should have a tunable mute. The whole concept is unique to the horn, and allows a mute to be adjusted for ideal intonation in relation to your bell size and hand position.

You need more than one mute

Besides keeping a mute in the trunk of your car, my only other small note would be that it is worth having several mutes. In particular I find that for brass quintet a mute with a brighter tone is desirable, brighter than that of the typical orchestral horn mute.

Next up in this series is the topic of stopped horn.

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To close our look at trills we hear from two more recent publications, and I have an important note to add at the end.

Facial movements will be visible

Frøydis Ree Wekre feels lip trills are an excellent way to build strength, and has exercises to develop trills in Thoughts on Playing the Horn Well. She encourages attention to the following points.

Be sure to keep the upper lip free (no pressure or minimal pressure) to vibrate and change pitches easily.

Some players recommend a conscious use of syllables with help from the tongue: da-i-a-i-a-i-a. However, I think that the lips, with some help from the jaw, can do most of the job.

For louder dynamics, more facial movements will be visible.

That last point is one that is an important one in relation to reality. Some students struggle trying to follow conventional wisdom on keeping the face still, but a bit more movement can solve the problems.

The best trill exercises are not the traditional ones

As to what exercises to use to practice trills Wekre emphasizes “Avoid the type that starts with slow notes (quarters) and only gets to the fast action when you are out of breath.” HMMM, sounds a bit like a lot of the exercises in a lot of the books … which in reality tie some players up in knots. I often call what she recommends “lip flips,” and this approach is certainly worth a try by anyone working on trills. Lip flips? If you wish to see what they are, you will need to buy the book!

The ideal time to learn to trill is…

Douglas Hill has an interesting personal aside on lip trills as he begins his examination of the topic in Collected Thoughts on Teaching and Learning, Creativity, and Horn Performance.

For some reason, this particular technique causes a great deal of grief for many students. I learned it before anyone told me it was difficult to do. That, I believe, is an important point. To believe something is difficult causes one to try too hard. I believe that lip trills are some of the most relaxing physical gestures that we do, or at least they should be.

I’m pretty sure I also had largely worked out my trills before I knew they were hard. Working somewhat in isolation at a small college in Kansas was in fact a helpful thing, I did not pick up the dread of trills being difficult that so many seem to have. This is where what books say and what teachers say can lead you astray. You will try hard to do something, but actually the suggestions won’t necessarily work for you and can simply give you a complex.

Introducing the tongue as a key element

Hill continues,

A key component in understanding how they need to work should involve a rethinking and renaming. They should be thought of as “lip/tongue/air” trills. The procedure involves all three aspects of your playing in coordination with each other, so that none of them have to work too hard. The biggest problem is usually when the student exerts extreme lip-flexing between two neighboring notes. Notes which are usually a breeze to administer when slurred during a scale passage.

Hill suggests a method of practicing trills that begins with aiming at the note between the trilled notes, feeling the break between the notes, and moving to longer and longer series of flips of “tah-eh-yah” figures. At the end of his discussion he suggests another possible new name for the lip trill, “flip trills.”

Hill goes into more detail in terms of text and exercises in his later publication, From Trills to Tremolo to Vibrato. For those interested in more of his approach, this is worth tracking down. This book is available from the publisher.

Another very important element: your horn and mouthpiece

There will be a point for many that trilling becomes a frustration. They try everything, nothing really helps.

The element that might finally help is try to trill on a different mouthpiece, and also on a different horn. Some horns and mouthpieces and combinations of horn/mouthpiece are just stiff, much too “slotty” to produce a good lip trill.

As to finding that perfect horn and mouthpiece, there are certain etudes and exercises that can be very helpful and revealing. I would highly suggest reading and considering what I have to say in this recent article:

• Mouthpiece story — Testing “connections” with Maxime-Alphonse 4:12

This serving again as a reminder that sometimes it is not you, sometimes it is actually a physical equipment issue that is the problem.

In the end, each player is an individual and will have to sort out trill technique, and hopefully the ideas in these articles will be of help.

We are near the end of this series! The next topics are muting and stopping.

Continue in Hornmasters Series

One book that is not that well known today is Playing the Horn by Barry Tuckwell. It was written by Tuckwell in much the style of being his version of The Art of French Horn Playing.

A master of the lip trill speaks

As his recordings attest, Tuckwell was a master of the lip trill. In Playing the Horn he offers great advice and more on the topic. Starting very practical, Tuckwell notes that

…the fact is that a trill is only a rapid movement between two notes. Every player can move from one note to another and back again; however slow this may be, it is still a lip trill. The task is to try to increase the speed. There is no secret formula to produce lip trills…. The time-honoured lip trill exercises still hold good today…. Most important is to know exactly how fast to play a trill—this will always differ according to the dynamic level, the register, and the length. Lip trills are not produced by the lips alone; every note we play requires a different tension of the face muscles and a different pressure of air. Therefore it must be remember that, even in a rapid lip trill, the upper note needs more air pressure. Thus a basic physical problem of trilling is that the difficult progression, that which requires greater effort, is from the low to the high note. Here one has to think differently from the way one would behave instinctively. It is therefore of great benefit by way of contrast to practise trills starting with the upper note. A common misconception on how to practise trills is the dynamic level. If played softly the trills can frequently be respectably fast, but although this may be adequate at home it is soon found to be insufficiently loud for practical use. The amount of effort required for a loud trill is much, much greater. Therefore trills should also be practised as loud as possible.

Experiment with non-standard fingerings

Tuckwell also notes that you should experiment with different fingerings for trills, in particular fingerings that might at a slower tempo be unusable. For example a trill on written third space C might normally be fingered open on the F horn; taken as T12 “The D will be slightly sharp and the C definitely flat, but at speed the narrowing of the gap between the intervals will make them in tune.” He notes that this system may be “adopted in many places” and also that “A good half-tone [lip] trill also can be made out of a three-quarter-tone interval.”

A practical approach to camouflaging a weak lip trill

A final note from Tuckwell is again extremely practical.

A good way of camouflaging a weak lip trill is to start very slowly, finish in a slow, deliberate fashion as at the beginning, and incorporate a turn at the end. However dull this may sound, it is better than the disastrous mess that misguided over-enthusiasm will produce.

With Tuckwell we finally have some great insider information from a master! So far as I know this book is long out of print (his publication Horn is much easier to locate) and it is certainly one to look for in an academic library or among the books owned by an older horn player. Next time the series on trills closes with notes from two more recent publications.

Continue reading in Hornmasters series