Great players with strong gifts and great instincts including great pitch skills may not need to buzz, but most players can benefit from it when learned under the watchful guidance of a fine teacher/player and used with common sense. Of course, don't obsess or overdue any learning tool. Musical Product Dictates Technique so most important is to imagine as you play how a great player would sound and concentrate on that. For most students, this means listening to recordings and singing and buzzing with recordings.
I studied with Phil Farkas, Myron Bloom, Meir Rimon, Mike Hatfield, Froydis Wekre and worked some with Arnold Jacobs. They did recommend mouthpiece buzzing to improve accuracy. Myron Bloom suggested slow glisses on leaps to reduce corner motion which improves response and intonation. Jacobs advocated mouthpiece and cutaway mouthpiece rim buzzing to improve mental conception of tone and pitch recall to improve accuracy. Jacobs discussed the benefit of buzzing in great articles from the June 1991 and October 1992 Instrumentalist Magazine. Tuckwell in his book Playing the Horn and Fred Fox in his book Essentials of Brass Playing both write that we should learn to feel the embouchure independent of the mouthpiece. Fox suggests free buzzing without the mouthpiece as a way to develop firm corners that don't move and to learn to move lips only inside the mouthpiece. I have found mpc buzzing on a cutaway mpc rim or slide pull ring and free buzzing without a mouthpiece very beneficial for students who move their corners, as in stretching into a smile for ascending leaps or relaxing/puffing on descending leaps. Try playing a middle c below the staff, then buzz it on the mouthpiece or rim, then while continuing to buzz, remove the mouthpiece. Faster air and slightly more firm corners which snug in against the side teeth usually helps if the student has trouble keeping the buzz. Some students don't quite get it at first and tend to try to buzz differently than they play. Buzz on mouthpiece loudly, remove mpc and keep the buzz. If done correctly this can be very beneficial on leaps and in mid-low register. I've seen several fine guest artists free buzz while at Illinois State, including Hermann Baumann. This may not be helpful for everyone, but it is for most students. I ask students to mpc and rim buzz along with mp3s of excerpts and solos. Players who have trouble rim buzzing or free buzzing should read Gardner's Mastering the Horn's Low Register p. 16, pp. 20-21 of Farkas Art of Horn Playing, pp. 15-16 of Farkas Art of Brass Playing, p. 10 of Playing the Horn, pp. 40-41 of Fred Fox's Essentials of Brass Playing and Jacobs' articles from the June 1991 and October 1992 Instrumentalist Magazine. I respect everyone's opinion on whether to buzz or not to buzz. Just my 2 cents worth, Joe Neisler [email protected]  ================================== Dr. Joe W. Neisler Professor of Horn School of Music Campus Box 5660 Illinois State University Normal IL 61790-5660 Phone: 309-438-5063 Email: [email protected] Illinois State University Sonneries Quintet Conn-Selmer Educational Artist Jurist, International Horn Competition of America http://www.cfa.ilstu.edu/profiles/default.aspx? q=BM200807100056&unitAbbr=schoolofmusic http://www.cfa.ilstu.edu/music/wind_brass_percussion/horn.shtml http://www.cfa.ilstu.edu/music/ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Illinois-State-University-Horn-Studio/ 143092533162  _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
