Re: [Hornlist] High Range
Most of high range problems occur due to excessive lip closure. There must be a lip opening left, otherwise no lip vibration. The closure must be at the corners so to prevent air escape. If air escapes at the rear while playing high c3, dont mind; it simply happens. But keep in mind: any excessive closure of the middle part of the lips is of evil in the high range , middle & low. Have you ever thouht about shortening the vibrating portion of the lip by contracting the muscles, the same time forming some kind of cushion, the tension absorbed/created at the corners ? it works much better than any stretching/thinning the lips. Open the throat as well so to enable the easy but controlled air flow ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Hornlist] Wagner Long Call
The short call is just Siegfrieds signal when on the boat on the Rhine Journey, but it comes in several variations (lengths) during Goetterdaemmerung and in Siegfried, on stage (Goetterdaemmerung) & in the orchestra (Siegfried) or both (Goetterdaemmerung). ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Hornlist] High Range
Matt James wrote: 3. use of the BREATHING GYM!!! helped me in my endeavours. Here's a question: Can someone recommend a reputable dealer to buy this from? I ordered it last *December* from www.focus-on-excellence.com (since that was the site recommended by a list member around that time) and I never received it. Luckily they never charged my credit card. I emailed them and never got a reply. I called them on the phone over a dozen times and left a message and no one ever called me back. They are even in the same time zone as me! They obviously don't want my business and I'm happy to take my business elsewhere. Anyone have a good suggestion? Greg ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Hornlist] Wagner Long Call
If you listen to the many Long Call samples on my website, you will find out, that Siegfried tries many ways to wake up the dragon (not vake up !!! or fake up !! Hoh - hoh - hojotohoh !). But the loud playing comes at the end when the full orchestra has entered allready. The climb to the high c3 must be something very special & the culminating c3 is a real culmination in sound quality & loudness. Four forte () would be just enough, just enough. But anyway, this solo is not for the average player and not for the average first horn. Greetings from very warm Colombo/SriLanka a country where dragons still do exist (crokodile) Hans ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Hornlist] High Range
Hey, I can rifle of my .02 cents. I have spent alot of time tweaking my high register and really trying to decipher the problem. as we all have. Over my time I have found these little tricks I have learned from colleagues and such along the way have helped. 1.Think of the notes as a rise in a line, as opposed to C3!!!. more a less don't get over anxious about the high note coming up. 2. As all ready said, relax up there. And let the air go. And let it go fast. To help with that I have all ways used an exercise to start high notes with a breath attack and really force the air into committing to it. 3. use of the BREATHING GYM!!! helped me in my endeavours. 4. And the exercises from the Brophy, the semi tone approach. These are some of the things I have found beneficial in my endeavors, best of luck to you in yours. Mat James ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Hornlist] High Range
hey Nick- how are you doing, besides the High range? First, don't panic. I think I could safely say that high range is a difficult thing for everyone. I had a pretty terrible high range myself until last winter. One day I decided I was sick of missing up there and pinching the life out of high notes so I started working on it smartly, consistently, and with much self-evaluation and self-observation; 6 months later I am much more secure. Everyone has trouble with high notes though, if they say they don't there most certainly lying! Is this problem something you've developed recently or something you've always had trouble with? If this is something recent I would consider that it is the summer. A lot of us students aren't taking lessons over the summer and the bulk of our regular playing (lessons, studio classes, rehearsal, recital, concerts, audition and competition preparation...) is missing. I sometimes feel in the summer that I am a little lost having only me to critique myself and assign material to study and prepare -I also don't have that guy down the hall paying the 3rd Horn call from Till louder, faster, and more accurate than me all day. I mention this because it is easy to unconsciously develop bad habits or start doing things different that you used to during these time. Are you really taking the time to warm-up properly as you would during the year? Are you consistently monitoring breathing? Are you playing along with a tone-generator (not a chromatic tuner-they are terrible but that is another story and has already been mentioned on this list before) to make sure you are playing in the center of notes and not riding high? Are you keeping the shoulders and neck relaxed? Is your right hand position correct and you vowel formation clear? I would suggest that you pretend to start over tomorrow. Get out a mirror and check every thing out- you won't know what is wrong until you find it, and to do that you have to look and examine all aspects of your playing. Play the first line of Kopprasch No.1 at quarter =60 and make sure you are breathing right. I am pretty sure that your fundamental embouchure set up well and you breathing are good; when I've heard you play it sounded like it and K. Drifmeyer wouldn't let you play with bad habits; so this is probably something recent - you just have to figure it out. I have a terrible habit of sticking my upper lip over my lower and pushing them together. Almost every time I find myself in a little playing rut -where things feel stiff, high range a little messy, and flexibility is poor- it is because this nasty thing crept in again. Usually I need only make myself aware and it clears up. Bad habits seem to creep in more when we are at stretches of time where we don't have to be ready for a concert, rehearsal, or lesson every week and -because we are all human, yes even Horn players are human- we cut corners. I think you get my point, let me know if this is not the case, I have lots of ideas for high-register exercises. The most important thing is to be patient though; with consistent practice and a good basic set-up and breathing it will come. Somebody very wisely once told me that "There are no mysteries to Horn playing". It might seem like a black art sometimes, but almost always careful self-examination and/or a good, knowledgeable and observant teacher (who you definitely have) can figure out the problem and eliminate it with a systematic approach and evaluation. Let me know if you want some recommended exercises, but there are a lot of people more qualified and experienced than me who probably will suggest more and better ideas... Take care, Dave Meichle Lawrence University Try Juno Platinum for Free! Then, only $9.95/month! Unlimited Internet Access with 1GB of Email Storage. Visit http://www.juno.com/value to sign up today! ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Hornlist] High Range
Someone on this list actually mentioned avoiding overtightness in the high register just recently (I believe it was Matthew Scheffelman). Their advice (which echoes the advice of many good teachers), is something I've done for a couple of years to improve my own high register - to learn to stay more relaxed even as you play up to C3. I'm sure others can explain it more clearly than I can, but what teachers usually advocate doing is to play scales and arpeggios starting in the low range and slur directly into the high range. Also, it helps me to slur up the harmonic series starting say on a low c and going straight up to a high C (all while staying fairly relaxed and letting your air do most of the work). Hopefully this will help you, it has definitely improved my high register over the past year or two. Steven Slaff On 8/6/06, Nicholas Hartman Hartman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Recently, I have been worrying about my high range, or lack thereof. I can make a C3 sound almost 100% of the time, but I have to work very hard, my face turns red and scrunches up, and I can feel it for about ten minutes after. Having studied with professional players all my life, I know that all of these are not supposed to happen, but when I try to use less pressure, try to be less tense, and try to let the air do all of the work, my lips won't even vibrate. I feel like I'm chronically missing some key piece of advice because none of my peers seem to have this problem. Please, any advice would be invaluable as nothing seems to be working for me now. Thank you. Nick - Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1¢/min. ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/sslaff%40gmail.com ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
RE: [Hornlist] High Range
Nick wrote: > Recently, I have been worrying about my high range, or lack > thereof. I can make a C3 sound almost 100% of the time, but I > have to work very hard, my face turns red and scrunches up, > and I can feel it for about ten minutes after. Having studied > with professional players all my life, I know that all of > these are not supposed to happen, but when I try to use less > pressure, try to be less tense, and try to let the air do all > of the work, my lips won't even vibrate. I feel like I'm > chronically missing some key piece of advice because none of > my peers seem to have this problem. Please, any advice would > be invaluable as nothing seems to be working for me now. Thank you. Nick, although I'm sure you're a more advanced player than I am, I have been struggling with the same issue. My teacher told me to buzz, using only my mouthpiece, starting on written third space C and working my way from there up one octave to high C. I am to practice looking in the mirror some of the time, and all of the time to try and focus only on using the muscles inside the mouthpiece, trying to keep everything else, especially the rest of my face, as relaxed as possible. Of course, one must still have some tension at the corners and I am not trying to do the impossible, only to get high notes by focusing on the embouchure itself. Not have the horn attached seems to take away the incentive to push a ton of air through your lips. I've been doing this for only about 10 days now and it has already made a difference. I know I'm doing it right when I get better high notes playing more quietly instead of more loudly. I think, while I'm practicing this, about some of the things Farkas says about embouchure, how it ought to be at least somewhat like what one does when one puckers the lips to whistle. This seems to be a good thing for me; perhaps it is worth discussing with your teacher as well. -S- ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
[Hornlist] High range
Hi I used to have this problem until my teacher helped me to correct it. Try relaxing the muscles in your neck more, and allowing the air to flow more freely. Hope it helps Kev ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
[Hornlist] High Range
Recently, I have been worrying about my high range, or lack thereof. I can make a C3 sound almost 100% of the time, but I have to work very hard, my face turns red and scrunches up, and I can feel it for about ten minutes after. Having studied with professional players all my life, I know that all of these are not supposed to happen, but when I try to use less pressure, try to be less tense, and try to let the air do all of the work, my lips won't even vibrate. I feel like I'm chronically missing some key piece of advice because none of my peers seem to have this problem. Please, any advice would be invaluable as nothing seems to be working for me now. Thank you. Nick - Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1¢/min. ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
[Hornlist] NHR but list related; especially for AOL and Gmail subscribers
This is mostly a repeat of what I wrote a few weeks ago, but with some additions. Recently a few AOL subscribers have had their horn list subscriptions disabled by excessive bounces, meaning that AOL rejected messages as spam and returned them to our server undelivered. Our server sent warning messages about the bounces, but these were also rejected as spam. This was due to two things: 1) an apparent change AOL made in their spam filtering rules and 2) the inclusion of our server on a well known black list because of apparent spoofing of the horn list address by a virus. Don't worry, the virus can NOT be propagated by the list; it just means that some subscriber to this list is or was infected, and the virus is using that member's address book for both To: and From: addresses. I've taken steps to have our server removed from the black list; music.memphis.edu is NOT an open relay and all messages are scanned for spam and viruses before being sent or delivered. To insure that you keep receiving horn list posts, please make sure that horn@music.memphis.edu is in your address book. If you still find yourself unsubscribed by excessive bounces, you may need to contact your isp to see what settings you can tweak to ensure that list posts get through to you. As I mentioned before, the "envelope sender" of posts is unique to your address and may be something that the isp will ask about. It can be found in the header of this message; something like "horn-bounces [EMAIL PROTECTED]" Incidentally, the crazy From: address that shows up in Microsoft Outlook of that envelope sender plus "on behalf of" the real sender is a Microsoft idiosyncrasy - a bug they consider a feature - that violates standard protocols for header handling. Another question that has come up a couple of times recently concerns Gmail subscribers not receiving copies of their own posts to the list. A "feature" of Gmail is that it checks the Message-ID: header of each incoming email against its record of outgoing messages from the same address. If that ID if found, that server assumes you don't need another copy of a message you sent yourself, so it quietly deletes it. AFAIK, there's no override, so if you want to be sure your post was received, I suggest you set the "acknowledge" flag to yes on your list options page (the address of which is at the bottom of this message). On our end, I just added some additional spam filtering to try to cut down further on the number of bogus messages that Gary has to moderate, as well as the quantity of spam our real person users (such as myself) have to wade through. While it's training itself, there may be some false positives that are rejected. If this happens to you, please send the message to me personally so I can feed it back to the server to train it. You can avoid this problem by sending plain text posts and making sure your address includes a real name as well as an email address. And don't use a lot of capitals and exclamation points in the subject, or mention genital enhancement pills ;-) The next couple of weeks are traditionally a very slow time for the list as many people are on vacation, so don't get worried prematurely about missing posts. If you suspect you're missing something, check the archives (linked from the listinfo address below) to confirm. Stay cool, Dan (already missing the "winter" weather in Cape Town) Phillips Dan Phillips Associate Professor Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music University of Memphis [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Hornlist] Wagner Long Call
You definitely don't want to 'wake the dragon', that's how the short call came to be, and Hans uses it to eliminate inferior students. It happens quite frequently, especially in Ireland. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: horn@music.memphis.edu Sent: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 10:39 PM Subject: Re: [Hornlist] Wagner Long Call So what happens if you don't play the horn call loud enough and you don't vake the dragon? Do you play it again? I can picture a lesson with Hans on this excerpt.. Vake the Dragon VAKE THE DRAGON Your comments are as usual, great to have here Hans, thanks! LT ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/billbamberg%40aol.com Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free. ___ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
