There are several reasons suggested for this problem. Unless the horns are miked and tracked separately, it doesn't seem likely to blame the delay on the sound engineers. The fact that the horns are the only ones late suggests that it is not a problem understanding the conductor's beet. Rather it is most likely a timing problem caused by 1) the way the horns attack entrances or 2) the time delay of the reflected sound. For the first point it seems important for the hornists to be completely ready at least a beat ahead of the entrance, if possible, with air support, embouchure and tongue position so that at the moment of the attack all you need to do is release the tongue and the note plays; for some players this may take some practice to do this. Phil Meyers recommends preparing for an entrance in time with the rhythm: breathe, set, release. It is very important for horn players to be ready ahead of the beat so that they can more easily compensate for the time delay of the reflected sound. If you attack the entrance exactly on the beat or exactly with the instruments around you, the horn sound will be late. A beat before the entrance is too late to be getting ready to play. Regarding the second point, the reflected sound, the ideal distance between the bell and the reflector is 6 feet or approximately 2 meters and the bells and or reflector surface should be positioned so that the sound is reflected past or around the bell, not straight back into it. For most of us, the reflector is the back wall. A curtain in front of the back wall is not a reflector, but if the curtain material is particularly heavy, it may be a sound absorber; in that case you may need to place a portable reflector in front of the curtain. At six feet, the sound delay is tolerable (5-6 milliseconds) and is usually barely noticeable by the audience but may be quite noticeable in a digital recording. It might seem obvious then that the closer your bell is to the reflector surface the better because it reduces the delay, but this turns out to be not true. If the bell is closer than four feet, then the sound cannot reflect around or past the bell effectively and much or all of the sound reflects back into the bell so you have quite a battle going on trying to push out new sound while the old sound is trying to get back in. This leads to exhausted players and missed notes and the poor audience doesn't get their due. Farther than six feet and the sound delay becomes noticeably objectionable. The faster the tempo, the more noticeable the delay and the more necessary to articulate ahead. At mm 60, each beat is 1000 milliseconds, a delay of 5 milliseconds is .5% (hardly noticeable). At mm 120, each beat is 500 milliseconds, so a delay of 5 milliseconds is 1% of a beat (more noticeable) and so on. This is what makes after beats such a challenge at fast tempos for hornists; as the tempo gets faster you have to play after beats closer to the beat or they will sound later and later. This is why it helps to have the snare drums also play after beats, because they don't have the delay problem that horns have, then you just sync with the drums. If you are hearing a 1/4 beat delay, them my guess is that your bells are at least 15 feet or more from a reflecting surface or else you don't have a useful reflecting surface, like when a band or orchestra is positioned in the middle of an auditorium away from any walls. Sometimes we have to play with the horns jammed up against the back wall. The only solution I have for this situation is to sit at an angle to the wall so the sound is reflected past the bell to one side or the other like a pool ball deflecting off the edge of the table. The angle has to be such that the sound is reflected between the players and not into your neighbor's bell. The biggest obstacle to solving the delay problem is often the setup crew and/or the conductor who more often than not don't have a clue or a care about the correct positioning of horns in regards to the reflecting surface and get quite angry if you try to "educate" them. Ensembles are usually setup from the podium to back (as if the conductor is the most important) and the horns end up where they end up; the correct setup should be from the back to the front starting with the correct position for the horns. Such is the life of a hornist.
Loren Mayhew \@() [EMAIL PROTECTED] (520) 403-6897 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nicholas Hartman Hartman Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 6:00 PM To: horn@music.memphis.edu Subject: [Hornlist] Anticipating the Beat Dear list, This past summer, I had the opportunity to play in a full size concert hall with a full symphony orchestra. I listened to our recording of the performance, and I noticed that the horns were consistently about a quarter of a beat behind. I find this strange because there was a wide range of talents playing in this orchestra, and we were ALL behind the beat. I'm sure this has to do with the hall, and it would seem that the most obvious way to correct it would be to play a quarter of a beat ahead. I have to question if this is correct, because there were eight horn players there, and none of us thought to play ahead of the beat. Also, I have never had a teacher tell me to play ahead of the beat. Is this common practice among orchestral horn players, or is there some trick I'm missing? Would the use of special equipment (like a sound shield) help this problem, or would that be on the list of blasphemous taboos of horn playing? Thanks very much. Nick Hartman __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/ _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/loren%40mayhews.us _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
