Teaching Left Coast Horn Playing from the Podium

If you are a school band or orchestra teacher you know how frustrating and confusing it can be to deal with French horns. The parts that seem simple to you seem impossible to the players. When you need to hear them they can't play louder. They seem to tire out faster than anyone else. They play the right notes occasionally and you don't know why. What to do!

We are here to help. Horn playing is different and presents different challenges but once you understand them you'll be able to deal with them.

Common Problems and Some Solutions

Most of the problems you can fix from a podium boil down to one or two common and obvious mistakes. Poor posture, shallow breathing and poor timing are culprits in the vast majority of problems.

Poor posture makes efficient breathing difficult if not impossible, reduces mental clarity and shifts vital parts of the anatomy (abdomen, left hand, right hand, tongue, etc) into bad positions. 

Shallow breathing is the pariah of horn playing. If you see a player take a gulping or snorting breath, correct them. Six Places is a really good simple way of teaching breathing, as is the Reverse Ho Ho Ho. A horn is the second longest instrument in the ensemble, with very narrow tubing and a small mouthpiece. If you don't have a lot of air in you you can't control the beast very well!

Hitting the wrong notes: As you go higher on any brass instrument the open notes get closer and closer together. Horns have a huge range and most of what we play is in the higher range.  Our notes with the same fingerings are closer together than a trumpets and a lot closer together than on a low brass instrument.

You can stop and help them find the first notes of a phrase. Many times just finding the right partial to begin on helps a lot. If they continue to have trouble, be positive and suggest they follow a daily practice routine. Have them follow our Beginner Sample Practice Plan.

We also really like Erik Bolvin's Really Big Songbook for beginners and intermediate players. It is all common melodies. Many instrumental books have folk songs from around the world, some classical tunes and new compositions. The Really Big Songbook has tunes that are known to most kids so they can tell if they are playing the right notes.

The horn books in many band programs tend to move too high in the range too quickly. It can take years for a young student to be comfortable playing a note at the top of the staff. Our advice is let them take notes down and octave whenever needed.

Getting tired is a common problem. Our mouthpieces are tiny and we ask tiny muscles to do Herculean work every day. Horn players' chops do get tired more than other instruments.

You can work with your players to convince them they can leave an occasional note out to get some strength back. Horn parts for any level should not have long sections without breaks. Students and amateurs feel compelled to play every note on the page as if gospel; pros want to make  the best music and if that means leaving some notes out - then that's what to do.

Many ensembles have a 'warm up' rehearsal right before the concert. Tell your horn players not to play! Why waste precious chop strength at a rehearsal?

Where they sit makes a lot of  difference to horn players. Sometimes we forget that the bells face  backwards. If we are blowing into soft curtains it is going to be tough to play loud. If we are in a big boomy room and have to play quietly it will present challenges.

But the worst is when there is something behind the horn player that is putting sound into the bell as we are trying to blow it out. Never seat your horn players so their bells face the tympani or bass drum! They will have problems with endurance and accuracy!

Notes for Private Teachers

Teaching is such a difficult thing to do well. It involves at least two personalities working on very long term developments.

Make sure your students know exactly what to practice and how many times to do it. We at Left Coast Horn Playing require our students to practice their lessons every day. At the end of each lesson the student as a completed Practice Plan. We provide Sample Practice Plans here.

Be positive positive positive! Horn playing is such a mental game every negative experience can have a long term effect. Be supportive and as fun as you can be while guiding your students to improvement.

Focus on what works! Most embouchure problems can be solved by working on breathing. Moving an embouchure around when the breathing causes the throat to be tense is practically worthless!

Teach your students to count. They won't get it on their own and 99.99% of school and youth organizations don't require it. Drum it into them! But what an advantage as a player to have a rhythmic framework for their playing.

Make sure your students know how to conduct. They should at least be able to do a preparation beat and conduct the basic 2, 3, and 4 patterns. How can you play in an ensemble without understanding what the conductor is doing?

Try to get your students to see their shortcomings just as details to work on rather than a personal statement about themselves. If you ask any horn player they will tell there are one or two things they worry about all the time, whether it's tonguing or endurance problems or whatever. Give them a plan on how to work the problem so it becomes just another technical detail rather than a matter of self worth.

If a student doesn't inhale properly stop them! Don't let them set themselves up for problems before they even start playing! You have to be their cheerleader and your cheer must be 'sit up straight and take a deep low breath!' You must be relentless or they will descend into all sorts of problems.

You can teach well even if you are not a fine player but there is no substitute for sitting next to a good player and hearing what it really should sound like. For the student it gets rid of some of the misimpressions, like good players don't miss notes or have a fuzzy sound or need to warm up, etc. And of course it gives the student an example of how to play and reinforces that we actually do what we preach.

We recommend no more than 3 important points for the student to remember from the lesson. At the end of the lesson recap in plain language exactly what you want the student to do. Handing them a proper Practice Plan and saying 'this week I want you to focus on tonguing cleanly, keeping your left hand in the correct position and increasing the speed of your scales' will have the student leaving knowing exactly what to practice.

Play for your students! Nothing teaches them what to do like sitting next to a competent player who shows them how to get it done.