Counting

Other than breathing there is no subject as sorrowfully neglected as counting. Counting is not only important for knowing where you are in the music and playing correct rhythms but it increases the coordination of the lips, tongue, fingers and air. Many professionals know what fraction of a beat they are on at all times - even when counting rests!

Demand that your students count everything but the most basic drills.

There are many systems for counting and we do not believe that one is superior to the other. Some people count one-ee-and-uh-two-ee-and-uh and some people count one-two-three-four-two-two-three-four.

We also believe that a system is important for counting long rests. The average student has trouble counting 20 measures of rest and as we know sometimes we get much longer rests. How to keep the mind from wandering?

There are two systems we advocate and use. One is simply counting to the music. Don't just count numbers in your head, make them follow the music.

Another very useful method is to have a system that counts on your fingers. We use our left hand for counting ones and the right for counting tens. We start with straight fingers and curl them to count. We start by curling our left pinky for one, the pinky and ring finger for two, etc. until all five fingers are curled. For six we uncurl our thumb, for seven we uncurl the index finger, etc.

When we get to ten we have all straight fingers on the left and and curl the pinky on the right.

Eleven is the pinky curled on both hands. Twelve is both pinkies and the ring finger on the left hand.

When we get to one hundred (gotta love those classical symphonies) we use our feet. This gets us counting too 299!

When you get good at this you can keep track even when you get distracted.

Slow to Fast Practice - a Powerful Technique

Slow to Fast is a learning technique that helps us acquire new skills quickly. It helps to make patterns or skills repeatable.

Use this technique to

• Teach our brains to remember skills we want to last a long time
• Learn complicated skills quickly and reliably

When we learn a new skill our brains aren’t sure if it should be stored where it keeps important memories like how to walk, or things it needed once a long time ago like getting off a chair you sat in once a year ago. The Slow to Fast technique described below signals the brain to move it where you can get it quickly.

If you want to learn something and have it be part of your permanent skill set this helps greatly. It works great for scales and trills and all sorts of exercises or complicated passages.

If you ever get called at the last minute to sight read a concert you will appreciate this technique. When I get to the hall I look for complicated rhythms or technical passages, I do them slow to fast once or twice and I am almost always ready to play them in the show.

If you want to learn a long complicated passage, learn bits of it and then string them together. For example if you have a long passage of scales that are hard to play, start by playing just the first measure Slow to Fast. When you can play it comfortably add the next measure. Keep going until you have mastered the passage.

Some people like to learn the end of a passage and work backwards.

To practice Slow to Fast

• Play the bit very slowly. Start painfully like ‘when are you going to play the next note?’ slowly.
• Keep repeating it gradually increasing the speed.
• If something goes wrong then play then next time play it slower. It is more important to get it right than to just get through it.
• Continue accelerating until you can’t get it to go any faster.  Then go faster. You always want to drive PAST the point where it doesn’t work any more.  At the end it should be falling apart. If it still sounds good then go faster!
• Then relax for a second, take the biggest breath you possibly can and play the passage as many times as you can in that breath.

That’s it. A very quick and powerful technique! Use it every day and your improvement will skyrocket!

How to Play Left Coast Exercises

Left Coast exercises are meant to be concentrated and leveraged. They are short so we can really focus on what we are trying to accomplish. They are designed to be flexible and extensible.

Always play them with a steady rhythm and start slowly!

In all the exercises have these goals in mind

If you don’t take a deep low breath, controlling the air from Place #6 then none of this matters. While playing these exercises always take a deep, relaxed breath, controlling the air from as low in your body as possible.

When the exercises advise you to keep the same tone color throughout, we are looking for brightness. Some of our exercises ask you to decrescendo without changing tone color. You can only do this if you control the air from below Place #5, halfway between your rib cage and your belly button.

We use these decrescendo exercises not only to learn to make beautiful decrescendos and control the ends of the notes but to train ourselves to control the air from as low as possible.

Some of our exercises have sffz on them. These are to be played loudly and with as much air as is possible to push through the horn. Play them loud all the way through with no decrescendo or softening at all. Be tasteless and wild! If your neighbors call the police you are doing it right!

If the exercise says to play Slow to Fast, then start really really slow. The slower the better. You can increase the tempo right away but start out really slowly.

For Slow to Fast exercises go faster and faster until you reach the point it falls apart. Never play as fast as you can then quit. Go faster! Always push!

In all technical exercises every day try to go higher, lower, faster, slower, louder, quieter! Always push yourself!

While these exercises can be done occasionally you will improve very fast if you do them every day. Ten minutes a day doing these drills will help you improve much faster than doing them for once for an hour each week.

Riddle

What’s this?

• Right ear 
• Heart, soul, intellect and ears
• Left ear
• Left ear
• Left ear

It’s a horn section!

• The assistant uses his right ear to listen to the principal
• The principal uses all his experience, talent, soul and technique they can while listening to the other principals
• The second horn listens to the principal
• The third horn listens to the second horn or the principal
• The fourth horn listens to the third horn or the principal

Playing as a section is more important than your differences

Each position has unique responsibilities.
 
Of course these are general rules and exaggerations. If the second horn has a solo then everyone else should listen to them, etc. And there are other ways to organize things. But this is how it is done in Left Coast playing.

Few things ruin the sound of a horn section like a player who refuses to match the players in the section. 

 

Sections that play very well together know that being together and in tune with your section is more important than being in tune with other sections or players in the ensemble.

Active vs. Passive Playing

Learn to play together!

Are you an active musician or a passive one? Do you actively listen, count, think about your air or do you simply hope what comes out of your bell is fine?

Active players know their role in an ensemble and pay attention to filling that role.

Horn playing is so complex we have to count, listen, imagine and think about love, money and politics or whatever is on your mind at the same time. Fortunately our brains can handle it.

Indications you are an active player

• You think about the music before you play it
• You understand what a conductor does and are actively trying to fit in to it
• You listen carefully to the principal of your section, or if you are principal you listen to the other principals and you play in a way that helps your section follow you
• If something you play doesn’t sound good or you have trouble producing it you figure out why and work on it. Even if you don’t know why you work on it
• You count and subdivide and know where you are in the music at all times

To become an active player

• Practice playing and counting until it becomes second nature. Know what beat and what fraction of a beat you are playing at all times!
• Know how to conduct simple beat patterns and know how to do a preparation beat
• Listen listen listen! Listen to recordings, listen to your teachers and most of all listen to the people you are playing with

Wise leaders encourage active playing

• Instead of teaching by rote they insist that students sight read frequently
• They make sure that each player is taking the time to learn their individual parts
• They make sure the players know what the basic beat patterns are and know the basics of conducting
• They teach ensemble skills and insist the players learn them
  

Most sectional rehearsals as used to teach players the notes rather than on playing as a section. Pity.

If you are leading a rehearsal and you start off ‘one two three four’ then all the players will be passive unless they are counting with you and feeling your beat as you count - which they won't be doing. Counting out loud for them induces them to be passive.

Never sing a part to teach rhythm or pitch. Let them figure it out. Don't spoon feed! You can sing if you are demonstrating a style or technique but not to teach rhythm or pitch.

Sectional rehearsals should be done as much as possible without a conductor.  If you want to teach a section to play together they have to pay attention to each other, not the conductor. If you tell the ensemble that someone is too loud they will fix that particular problem but they won’t learn how to depend on themselves to play balanced.

Teach your principal player to start the section off by taking a breath for one beat before the music starts, just like a conductor gives a preparation beat. Have them practice starting together.

Encourage the section to play this way in the larger ensemble too. It's the only way to play together as a section!

When you tell them to fix a problem you are active and they are passive. If you tell them there is a problem then let them fix it, then they become active.