How to Prepare for a Judged Performance or Audition

Nowadays young players face a number of tests. We have school auditions, frequent playing tests, honor ensemble recorded and live auditions. Playing these is quite different than playing a concert for the public, as the audiences have different reasons for listening!

You'll do better on these if you understand what these differences are and what the judges are looking for. Everything you do that makes it easy for the judges to like your playing gives you an advantage over those who don't.

To Prepare Music for a Judged Performance

• Play exactly what is on the page. Get the articulations, dynamics, etc. as they are on the page
• Understand and play the correct rhythms
• Know about the history and style of the music
• If you are playing a solo, sound like a soloist
• If you are playing excerpts from ensemble music (like orchestral excerpts or selections from a band piece) sound like you are sitting in the ensemble
• Don't be boring
• Get the opening salvo right
• Master what others will not
• Play as if you know the music down cold

Play what's on the page

What do traffic cops give most of their tickets for? Speeding, going through red lights or stop signs, not having current registration, unsafe lane changes. What do these all have in common?

They are easy to see! It's pretty easy to see if someone didn't stop completely. It's not so easy to tell if you made an unsafe lane change - unless you crash!

Audition judges are the same. It's easy to tell if a player doesn't play the articulations as written. Or if the music is marked mm = 120 and you play it at mm = 72.

If you are required to play a specific piece or edition you must play what is on the page. If you can select your own solo and have to hand a copy to the judges, you can change articulations, dynamics etc. if you mark it clearly on the part you hand to the judges. Then you have to play the piece as you have edited it.

Play the articulations as marked on the page. It's pretty easy to tell if you slur something that's marked tongued or vice-versa.

Understand and play the correct rhythms

Consider this snippet of the Beethoven Sonata:

Virtually all high school age and amateur players will play a triplet instead of the opening dotted eighth rhythm. To insure you don't play a sloppy rhythm practice the excerpt this way:

Use a metronome set to sixteenth notes. Glow slowly enough to get it right. Be sure that you count and subdivide.

Once you have that rhythm working put accents in where you actually would be tonguing notes like this:

Then practice the snippet as written, still subdividing in your head. Make sure the last sixteenths get a lot of air and a nice sound.

Know something about the history and style of the music

If you play the Beethoven Sonata like it was a Mahler fanfare or a Debussy tone poem describing an amorous satyr waking in the forest then you will have it wrong.

The judges may be trying to imagine you playing in the ensemble. If the style is all wrong you won't score strongly.

If you are playing a solo, sound like a soloist. If you are playing ensemble music sound like you fit into the ensemble

If the judges are trying to imagine you playing your concerto in front of their ensemble and you are playing too timidly it just won't feel right to them.  If you are playing a tutti part and it sounds like you are trying to outblow the universe that won't seem right either. Try to imagine what is actually happening and play to match.

Focus on the opening salvo

Your first impression is the strongest. Use it to make a statement about your playing! Take the time and care to get the rhythms right, match the style and sound like you know what you are doing. If you play the first phrase of your audition properly the listener will be predisposed to ignore little mistakes and give you the benefit of the doubt.

If you first phrase sounds sloppy, unprepared and unmusical the judges will spend the rest of your audition listening for clues that you are generally sloppy, unprepared and unmusical.

Master the parts others will mess up

Talk about getting an advantage! You can tell where the hard, tricky treacherous places are in an audition. Slam them! Learn them cold. Be the one player who hits the high note, plays the fast part cleanly or plays the low phrase tastefully. Even if you mess up other parts you will stick out as the player who got the hard parts right and that's gold!

Play as if you know the music down cold

Funny as it sounds it is very impressive to hear a player who sounds bored! Who would you want to have an important position in your ensemble, some one who sounds as if they are constantly struggling or someone who sounds like it's so easy you can do it in your sleep?

Put the Air Down Low First

When we say down low we mean down low. The muscles we want to use to control the air are around and just below our belly buttons, which we call Place #6.

If the air is up high within your rib cage the only way you can press to get it out is to use the muscles inside the rib cage and in the throat and mouth. How can you relax and use the flow of air to play when you can't get the air to flow!

If you inhale in a way that puts the air high in your chest first that is where your muscles will work to exhale. 

Think of your lungs as being like a plastic bag full of air and you have gathered the top together so there is just a small opening.

The right way to breath can be described as holding the bag around the sides and pushing up from the bottom.

If you press the bag in the middle you get air pressure going up and down. This may be the single most common problem in horn playing. It causes all sorts of grief, from footballs (notes that are louder in the middle), missed notes, thin tone, endurance and intonation and tonguing problems.

This is why many players have all sorts of vicious tension in their mouths and throat when they play. You can't unclench when you use muscles up high in your body to work the air.

When you breathe in it is imperative that you make a deep oh sound.  If you don't you won't get the air to the bottom of your lungs first.

Important note for advanced players: There are times when a high thin breath can help you make an effective sound - when you want it to be thin, perhaps to hide behind woodwind players. But you better have great control first and only do it when you want to produce a thin sound or you are going to develop lots of problems!

Hot Tea!

One trick to learn how to get the air pressed behind the tongue, rather than held by the voicebox is to use the words Hot Tea.

The idea is to inhale while saying Hot, including getting the tongue in the right position while inhaling. As soon as the tongue is in place (the t in hot) we press the air against it and keep the air pressure inside of you elevated.

Then release the tongue with an explosion of air while saying (or yelling!) Tea. We want a really hard T, like a hammer striking metal.

For all of you thinking this isn't tasteful, you are so right. It's an exercise! If done right it's an exaggeration, although there certainly are occasions to tongue like this.

Our goal is to learn the pattern, the sequence, the feeling. When we tongue quietly we want to use the same sequence and pattern, just not as loud.

Templating

We spend so much time and effort trying to learn what the inside of our mouth should be and how to shape the air it is a pity to waste it. But that's what many of us do.

How likely are we to hit the half note cleanly? Much of it depends on what we do during the eighth notes and the quarter rest.

If we play the eighth notes nicely then we want to use them as examples, as templates for what is coming up.

Many players would move their mouths and let their throats collapse as their System changes and relaxed during the rest.  Not Left Coast Players! We would try to keep our entire system as much the same as possible  so that we keep our set up to use on the next note.

Consider this snippet. Now we have not only a different note after the rest but it is an octave higher! What to do..

Most players would spend the quarter rest raising their shoulders (and eyeballs), tensing the throat and perhaps taking a shallow, hamster like breath - all things that make the top note harder!

Left Coast Players know what to do. We try to keep our System as much the same as possible. We will try to aim for both Gs in the same place with as little change in our embouchure or the inside of our mouth as possible.

We will stay still during the rest and use the G eighth note as a template for the upper note. Even if we take a breath we will try to keep our mouth as still as possible.

Instead of re-creating our system for the new note we keep the one we had just been using.

If you ask most horn players what the most important note of this phrase is you will get different answers but to us there is only one - it's the first note.

It's the note we are most likely to clam. It's also the most useful note!

If you are careful and play a well supported, cleanly tongued note then you have a template, an example of how to have your system shaped for the rest of the phrase. Since we are trying to make all the notes feel as much the same as possible we want to be extra careful to make the first note nice and use it for all the following notes.

Templating is also very useful for developing low and high ranges. Start your drills in your mid range and move up or down slowly, trying to keep the mouth shape of the mid range as much as possible.

What is The Target?

The Target is where we aim the air.

It is the center of the upper lip, at its lowest point. If you stick your tongue out and close your lips, it is where you tongue touches the upper lip.

The Target is where your lip actually vibrates.* It's where we want to aim the air. Always. We can aim up or down but the air must pass through the target.

Most players aim up higher than the target, especially when playing high notes. Unfortunately aiming above the target makes it harder to play high notes!

It make so much sense, to aim up when we play high and to aim low when we play low.  Fortunately for those of us in the know aiming up or down doesn't make the pitch go up or down.

What makes the pitch go up or down depends on the size of the aperture (the hole where the air goes out your lips), the speed and intensity of the air and the tension of the lips.

Note that we are talking about aiming the air at the Target or above or below it.  All air should be aimed at the Target regardless of pitch or range.

This straight ahead kind of playing has numerous advantages

• It helps to keep the tone quality good and similar in all ranges
• It make slurring smoother
• It allows for large leaps without changes in tone
• It helps you understand where to tongue

Why Tongue at the Target?

Tonguing at or near the target produces clean and powerful attacks and reduces the movement of the tongue. Moving the tongue too much brings the back of the tongue into play, constricting the flow of air, changing the tone and slowing the tonguing down.

When most people tongue at the Target for the first time they can't believe it can work because they are so used to tonguing higher.

Having a Target gives you something to aim at

How handy!

You know that feeling right before a high, quiet entrance? How are you going to get the first note to sound nice? Wouldn't it be great to get rid of that abstract, almost lost feeling?

You have a really loud entrance and don't want to splat the first note?

Give your brain and body something to focus on! Think about the target, where it is and how you are going to deliver the air to it.




* Yes we know vibrates is the wrong word but let's keep it simple.

Your Hands

Let's start with the most neglected of our hands - the left hand.

Many people think the left hand - well, most people ignore their left hand. But learning to use your left hand properly will make you play cleaner and enable you to play faster.

Two very important issues for the left hand are the position of your little finger and whether you use the tips or the pads of your fingers to depress the keys.

If you little finger is too close to the ring finger, the ring finger won't be able to move independently. If your ring finger moves slowly or is difficult to coordinate then it is probably too close. See a qualified repair person and have them adjust the little finger position for you.

The fingers of the left hand should be curved as if holding a ping pong ball. If the fingers are not curved, the pad of the finger rather than the tip pushes on the lever. This uses the muscles of the top of the arm (where the hair grows). This muscle is slower and weaker than the muscles on the bottom of the arm. To feel which muscles to use make a fist and press your fingertips into the palm of your hand.

Using straight fingers and pressing with the pads causes the valves to be partially open for a longer time than if the fingers are curved and the very tip of the fingers pushes the valves. This partially open condition makes the horn more likely to produce the wrong note, or a note that ‘cracks’ at the beginning. It makes general coordination much more difficult and decreases the speed and fluidity of playing.

For very legato playing when you want mushy, romantic slurs go ahead and straighten your fingers out.

Now the second most neglected hand - the right hand.

The right hand directs the flow of sound between your hand and your body. It should be against the right side of the bell, away from the body. Do not position your hand at the top of bottom of the bell.

There are many useful and proper shapes for the right hand. Different parts of the world use different shapes and you can learn to use the shape of your hand to produce different timbres. For example if you are trying to blend with woodwind sounds you might spread your fingers a bit and move your hand across the bell a bit to muffle the sound. To play bright and blatsy you might straighten your fingers and keep your hand to the right.

One indication if your hand is in the right position is if you can lower your pitch a half step by moving your wrist across the bell (keep your elbow and finger tips in the same place). Note: this is difficult for very young players and sometimes it's best to just keep their hands out of the way and pull the tuning slide out.

A common mistake that gets the right hand out of position is to keep the right elbow too close to the body. This tends to bring the right hand too close to the body too, muffling the sound.

Advanced players know that by using the right hand to adjust intonation we keep away from adjusting with our lips. Adjusting intonation with your lips makes your mouth move all the time (bad), reduces your endurance (bad!) and wrecks your tone and control (bad and bad!)

The C Word

It's a word you hardly hear in connection with brass playing and that's a shame, since it is one of our most important concepts. It allows us to play cleanly and makes our technique much easier.

The word is Coordination!

We have to coordinate the timing of the lips, fingers, abdominal muscles, and tongue on every note. The timing is critical! Small changes in timing can have deleterious or beneficial effects.

This is one more reason it is so important to practice slowly and carefully several times a day and why the Slow to Fast practice technique is so valuable.

A common coordination problem is the relationship of air control and embouchure when slurring. Most people increase the air flow for a slur too late, after the chops start changing. This is a common fault of face-based playing. When slurring the air should move first.

Experiment with your timing and you will find your playing much improved. The act of working on it will make you a better player.

Sample Practice Plans

The basic outline of a Left Coast practice plan looks like this

• Breathing exercises and routines
• Buzzing exercises
• A simple exercise done the same way every day
• Arpeggio exercises
• Tonguing exercises
• Exercises for special problems or to develop other techniques
• Long tones
• Scales
• Reading and learning music

Each of our exercises can be extended or leveraged. For example Exercise 1b might be played as plain as possible or with decrescendos on the last note, or continued on as low as possible, etc.

For a young student or beginner the entire routine before the music might only take ten minutes, for an advanced player it can be an hour or more.

Sample Beginner Practice Plan
Ten minutes

• Reverse Ho Ho Ho and 6 Places
• Mouthpiece buzzing exercise
• Exercise #1b (done allegro with brick shaped notes)
• Exercise #8
• Long tones
• Scales
• Etudes, solos and music preparation

Sample Intermediate Practice Plan
Half hour

• Reverse Ho Ho Ho and 6 Places
• Mouthpiece buzzing exercise
  
• Exercise #1b (done allegro with brick shaped notes)
• Exercise #2
• Exercise #3
• Exercise #4
• Exercise #6
• Exercise #8
  
• Long tones
• Scales
• Etudes, solos and music preparation
• Exercise #1a

Notice that Exercise #1a is always done last and every other day.

Sample Practice Plan for a Professional Player or Advanced Student
45 minutes to an hour

• Reverse Ho Ho Ho and 6 Places
• Mouthpiece buzzing exercise
  
• Exercise #1b (done andante and going down as low as possible)
• Exercise #2 (with extended variations)
• Exercise #4
• Exercise #5 (all versions)
• Exercise #6 (two octaves)
• Exercise #7
  
• Exercise #8 (for double tonguing, high and low range practice)
  
• Long tones
• Scales
• Etudes, solos and music preparation
• Exercise #1a

Strength and Efficiency

Strength is good. Efficiency is good Strength plus efficiency = the best!

Knowing which muscles need to be strong and which need to learn to relax is key. We need to have the muscles at the corners of our lips to be very, very strong. We need our lower abs to very strong. That's about it.

We need to keep the muscles of the throat relaxed, especially the lower part of the tongue. Your tongue is probably longer than you think. When you swallow the lower part of your tongue helps to push the material down your throat. You can feel the tongue flexing all the way down to your vocal chords.  

Tension in the back and bottom part of the tongue is one of the most common problems in brass playing.

How do we overcome this tension? By breathing from Place #6. Controlling the air in our out from above Place #6 causes causes tension in the throat.

To gain the strength in Place #6 we constantly remind ourselves to breathe from there. We strengthen those muscles simply by breathing correctly over and over.

We strengthen our chops by playing progressively longer and higher drills. Long tones are very important. Long descrescendos help too.

We define efficiency as the percentage of air that goes through the mouthpiece without increasing the buzzy quality of the buzz. You can hear two things in a buzz, the raspy buzzy sound and the hissing of the air. The hissing airy sound is the inefficient air.

The airier and hissier the sound of the buzz the less efficient. The raspier and buzzier the sound the more efficient.

Some benefits of being more efficient are obvious but there are many that are not so obvious. Intonation is greatly improved with an efficient buzz, as are endurance, flexibility, steadiness, tonguing, quiet playing and phrasing.

Anatomy of a Slur

Left Coast playing techniques teach us to have the control to use many different articulations and to have different qualities of slurs. Sometimes we want the smoothest sound possible, sometimes we want the fastest slurs possible and sometimes we want to smoooosh it up so it’s lush and romantic. We want to be able to control the type of slur we work on the extremes.

However the vast majority of the time we want the quickest, smoothest slurs possible even when playing legato. It simply sounds better.

What is the anatomy of a slur?

Think of a slur as having three parts: the first note, the second note and the time that we are changing from the first to the second.

Many players begin their slurs as soon as they have hit the first note. If the second note is higher then first note tightens and the mouth begins to tense. Sometimes the eyes, shoulders and head raise up! Aack! If the second note is lower the mouth opens and the jaw drops. Oh no!

The first note should be as straight as possible (unless there are phrasing issues).

The air should change first, before the lips or tongue to begin the move to the second note.

The mouth and throat should be relaxed so that the new note can sound and the air can flow.

In general the effort you put into changing notes should happen as quickly as possible. We want to play the first note without hinting whether the next note is higher or lower. We want the energy and movements we make to change notes take up the least amount of time as possible.

Even for legato playing we want the valves to move quickly and the air and embouchure changes should be rapid. The only exceptions are to make a really mushy legato slur.

See Understanding Note Clusters for more hints on making smooth slurs and explains what happens inside the horn as you change from one note to another.

Of all the things that happen when we change notes the air should be the first to move. If the lips or mouth move first we hear that in the note as a decrease in volume, a dulling of the tone color and change in intonation. It also keeps you from aiming at the second note with the air and encourages ‘push and pray’ playing instead of aggressive air playing.

A common problem and one that causes all sorts of horn misery is the air slowing down on the end of the first note of the slur. It is usually caused by the back of the tongue raising up to ‘get ready’ for the new note but this takes our mouth out of position and creates wind resistance! We want to increase the air during the slur. You can learn to do this by playing a crescendo during the first note of the slur and continuing to crescendo during the slur and into the second note.

You want to increase the flow of air during the time the notes are changing. You want to use the increase in air to aim at the new note, especially when the new note is lower. We have this tendency to think of the lower note as easier and taking less air, giving a 'falling' quality to the slur. Evil! Lower notes take more air, not less and decreasing the air and falling makes us hope to get to the right note rather than aiming at it.

Even slight reductions in the air volume at the end of the first note can cause problems. It’s helpful to have a friend listen carefully while you practice this to see if you can eliminate it.

Don’t move!

Many of the problems we have are caused by parts of our bodies moving when they should be still, or being tense when they should be more relaxed.

A big culprit is the back of the tongue and the muscles around the throat. In most cases this is caused by controlling the air at Place #5 or higher.

There is a fancy name for this problem and it’s at the heart of most breathing treatises. It’s called the Valsalva's maneuver and you can find a lot of information about it on the web but here it is in it’s simplest form:

If you control the air above Place #6 you will have to use the muscles in your throat and mouth to push the air out. The muscles will tense.

If you control the air above Place #6 you will have all sorts of problems

• Your throat will close and you will have trouble tonguing cleanly
• Your mouth muscles and your tongue will tense up and you can’t use them to get the air focused and they won’t be relaxed enough to let your mouth find the right shape
• Your volume of air will be small
• Your sound will be thin
• You will have trouble with your high and low ranges
• You will have little volume control
• Flexibility will be a problem
• Intonation will be difficult to control

Since many of us do not have the lower ab muscles developed we have to practice controlling the air down them. Do it for a couple of minutes every day and your playing will improve dramatically!

Our Way of Practicing

The most important feature of Left Coast Horn Playing is that we work on our breathing every day. Not just an occasional taking of a deep breath or blowing into a machine but real work with real improvement.

1) Work on your breathing every day! Don’t assume you have figured it out. Work on it to improve it every day before you practice or play. Do it all the time!

2) We practice with a written plan on our stand and we follow the plan every day that we practice.

The plan may take ten minutes to execute for a young player or beginner or for a player who is so advanced they can accomplish something valuable in ten minutes, or twenty minutes for an intermediate student to an hour for an ambitious player doing a heavy workout.

Having a written plan that you work from every day means that you build upon your skills every day. A well designed practice plan makes your practice efficient and effective, not scattered, haphazard and inefficient.

3) After our breathing work every day we practice three things

• Careful drills that are the same every single day
• Drills and exercises that increase your technique (higher, lower low, faster trills, cleaner slurs, etc.)
• Reading music to increase fluency

These are in addition to etudes, solos and concert preparation.

The drills focus on controlling the air and reducing manipulation of the embouchure. We use exaggerated hard tonguing, sffz, glissandi and other exercises to learn how to shape and control the air.

20 minutes of this kind of focused practice will be of more benefit than hours of noodling.

4) We are always working to expand our technique. We want to be practicing to higher, lower, louder, softer, etc. every day. If you play only what is as difficult as you played yesterday you get stuck in yesterday.


Focus on Your Breathing All the Time

OK, maybe not all the time. But frequently.  'All the time' is only a slight exaggeration. This is the crux of Left Coast playing. Focus a lot of attention on where you are putting the air in your body, which muscles are doing the work and how it is shaped when it comes out.


Focus on What Works and Attack Your Enemies

Focus on what works, don’t focus on what’s going wrong. If you need to improve your tonguing, don’t think I am bad at tonguing instead tell yourself Now I am going to sit up straight and take a deep low breath and work on improving my tonguing.

No matter what your enemies are, go on the attack!

When you want to improve something set aside time to focus on fixing it. At the same time make sure you are doing what works - good posture, correct breathing, clean tonguing, etc.

Then try to figure out what is actually happening that is causing the problem. Be curious, be aware of what parts of your body are doing what and have patience.

No Negativity!

We are trying to train ourselves to be comfortable reliable players and that is tough to do if you are berating yourself constantly. When something goes wrong try to figure out what caused it and how to change it.

The difference between a genius and a schizophrenic is that the genius tells the voices in his head what to say.

You can convince yourself of anything. If you tell yourself that you have a tonguing problem, or a weak high range or any other problem you won't get better by reinforcing in your mind that there is a problem. Simply think of it as a problem to be solved over time and you'll have success.

Exaggerate Exaggerate Exaggerate

If the exercises say FF or SFFZ we really mean it. If your neighbors call the police when you practice these then you are doing it right? If the dog whines, your teeth self clean and your canned food pops open then you are doing it right.

Hit the SFFZ notes really hard. Blast those puppies! Don't worry about tone color or musicality. Exaggerate!


The purpose of these exercises is to develop breath control and strength.

Make it Your Goal to Get Better Every Day

Even if you have off days you will be on a steady path of improvement.

Lastly

Find ways to really enjoy playing. How often do you take your horn out of the case and admire it. Imagine the knowledge and skill that went into producing the metals, the shape, the case, everything. Read about the great composers. Listen to a style of music you have never heard of before.

Your audience can tell if you are having a good time whether you're playing bluegrass with your family or the most serious opera.  


OK, Really Lastly

A valid criticism of Left Coast Horn Playing is that we do not address musicality in any way on this site. Of course we care a lot about musicality and that's why we are willing to spend the time doing structured practice to be our best at it.

But we feel that musicality is best learned beside a qualified teacher. It is the most human part of music.

Whip your Brass into Shape - The Brigade System

The system here is named after the work of August Escoffier, a French chef who created the brigade system for modern restaurant and hotel kitchens.  It is a simple system and it works. Players need to know when to lead and when to follow and this system allows them to learn and put it into play.

The Brigade System

The purpose of the System is to get all of the musicians focused on the task at hand while applying the techniques that create great music. It gives their minds direction when they would normally wander. It can be taught quickly. It is appropriate for middle school and older.

Players need to be taught how to play cleanly, balanced and in tune. They can only do this if they know who to match and whom to play cleanly, balanced and in tune with.

Section players balance and tune to the principal of the section

If the principal trumpet is playing then the other trumpet players listen to them and copy their dynamics, phrase shape, pitch, style, tone color, etc.

The other principals listen to the principal trumpet. The principals also need to know if they have the tune and should project above the orchestra, or if they should back off and have their section blend with the rest of the orchestra. Any player who has a solo line may ask the whole section to pipe down when they are playing.

If the principals can’t see the principal trumpet, then make them move. If the members of a section can’t see their principal make them move. Or course this not always possible during a full rehearsal but it is worth the effort if it is possible, and it should be done at all times during sectionals.

Active playing vs. passive playing

Make sure the players are playing actively.

Developing your section

When working with a brass section conduct as little as possible. Do not begin by counting out loud. I have the section leader simply take a breath in tempo then play. There will be resistance at first but you will find the section will learn to do this easily and it greatly improves ensemble. Have them practice starting without a conductor. Have them do it until it is really together a few times in a row. Five minutes of focus on this will make them a far better ensemble.

Stop frequently and ask questions

If you stop frequently and ask, ‘who has the lead line’ or ‘how is the balance right now between the trombones and trumpets’ you are going to make the players think and work to get it right. If you wait until the end of the piece you are giving permission for the players to be passive while playing it through. If you stop and demand that they pay attention then their minds will be driven to pay attention and they will pay attention while they play the whole piece.

Demand that they learn to read music

So much music is taught by rote these days. Christmas music is passed out in September.  End of the school year music is passed out in January. Youth symphonies give out their year’s worth of music during the summer but don’t hold the players accountable for knowing it at the first rehearsal.  Many students learn to play by copying the person next to them.

There are high school brass sections where the average experience is 4 or 5 years but players don’t know the names of notes or the fingerings. One student who had piano lessons for 8 years and played in school bands for 4 years when he started taking lesson  did not know what a key signature was,  the note names or what kind of rests there were. When asked how his piano teacher put up with it and he said she just showed him where to put his fingers on the keys and how to play. Hopefully they weren’t paying much for those lessons.

If you are too busy to instruct individuals, give them written assignments or send them to good teachers. If they are not fluent in reading music, your section will only sound good with many rote rehearsals.

Everyone must know how to conduct

If your players don’t know what beat pattern is being used how can they start and stop cleanly?

1) Have them practice a prep beat with the other players playing. Do it on a regular basis until they are all breathing and starting together cleanly.

2) Teach them 2.4 first, then 3/4 then 4/4.

Teach them to count

They must be held accountable for not counting or subdividing or miscounting rests. Players need to be given the tools to  learn. Teach them to count on their fingers, or use verbal games or whatever tools you use. But be insistent that they apply them and be responsible. 

Young brass players have trouble counting long rests. It’s difficult for them to focus on something so simple. Add the negative feedback when they don’t enter properly and they are set up to fail. Instead of being negative demand that they use a system. If they fail to come in, go back and play the same section and make them practice counting the rests. Don’t give them cues to listen for unless it’s in addition to making them count.

When to be positive, when to be negative

The brass player’s experience is often one of neglect except when problems arise. In an orchestra the brass may only get comments from the conductor when they fail to enter or miss notes.  You have to teach them how to count long rests and to subdivide, then you must demand that they do both. You also must recognize when they are doing a good job and congratulate them frequently.

Some leaders scream and cajole. That’s ok as long as there are instructions. If they are not trying then I give you license to chastise harshly. But most of the time when leaders yell at their kids the kids do not have the tools to do what the leader wants.

Being demanding does not mean yelling or berating them. Simply demand that they do what you have taught them. Many leaders ask the group to do something then gives up after one try.  Two minutes of boredom fixing an issue is nothing compared with a lifetime of good playing. The more you demand of kids the more they will succeed and will appreciate the success.

How you can help them play their best

• Make sure your players are warmed up before rehearsal. One of the biggest differences between amateur and professional groups is what happens 15 minutes before rehearsal. Amateurs sit around and talk. Pros warm up seriously and take some last minute shots at the tricky parts.

Don’t have them play a warm up rehearsal. Why would you do that to them? I have seen youth symphonies warm up by playing through entire Shostakovitch symphonies. Come on! The same conductor who did this called me later to ask why the brass was screechy at the end.

Professional orchestras usually have rules written into the contract describing how soon before a concert you can have a rehearsal. It’s to insure a good concert. Do the same for your students! If you are nervous about them all being there or want to go over a couple of places in the music it can be constructive but if they haven’t learned the music by the day of the concert what good are you doing by running through the whole thing?

• Don’t line up your brass section all across the back of the orchestra. They should be in a section, like woodwinds and strings. They will be more likely to play together and to come in correctly if they are seated in a section. 

• It is critical that the players be taught to recognize perfect intervals and how to tune them. Without strong intonation across the group the section will sound thin, the players will tire quickly and the soloists will miss more notes.  Perfect intervals on brass instruments have magical qualities when done right, grating qualities when done poorly.

• Some people feel strongly that you must tune to the lowest voice in the section (mainly tuba players!) but this is rarely how it works in the professional world. In the pro world if you are playing second and turn to the first player and say ‘you are out of tune and need to follow me’ there is a chance you will get fired or not called back.

In a community, school or youth orchestra setting, do you really want your sections to tune to the weakest player?

Demand that they act professionally

Demand that they be on time. For performances they should look sharp. It’s show biz! A loose atmosphere is fine and we brass players like to joke around but there’s a difference between a loose atmosphere and sloppy standards.

Shined shoes, clean shirts and combed hair are part of our professional deportment. Teach it to your players at a young age and they will feel professional when they play.

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.

The First and Last Notes

When you play focus on making good first and last notes on each phrase or exercise.

If your first note is air starved or choked then your whole System is out of position for the rest of your phrase or exercise.

If the last note is weak then you will tend to let the support sag.

These two problems are a major source of clams. Not having your System in the right shape makes it tough to play well on the rest of the phrase. Letting your System sag on the last note makes the next notes much harder.

Make sure when you play our exercises that the first notes are cleanly tongued and full of air.

Make sure that the last notes are not flat or thin sounding. If you play again immediately try to keep your system in the same shape while you are taking a breath. The more you have to re-form the system the more things will go wrong.

What is The System?

The System is everything from the outside of your lips to the bottom of your lungs. It all works together and if one part isn’t working properly then another part has to pick up the slack.
If your support is shallow then your throat has to push the air out, making the muscles tense and restricting the flow of air.

If your tongue is tense then your embouchure will be tense.

If your posture is poor then your whole System is at a disadvantage.

Face Based vs Air Based Playing

When we play we get most of our feedback from our chops.  We hear players say ‘my chops are messed up today’ or ‘my lips feel thick’ or tired or dry or whatever. We rarely say ‘I think my tongue is not quite in the right position’ or my breathing isn’t being controlled from the right place today.’ And that’s a pity.

We get most of our feedback from playing from our faces. If our chops are tired we feel defeated. If our chops feel good it feels miraculous. Unfortunately this also means that we focus our attention on our embouchure instead of our breathing.

The main focus of Left Coast Horn Playing is to train your mind and your body to focus on the air, not the embouchure

It takes a combination of a strong and correctly formed embouchure,  proper breathing both in and out and the correct shape and texture in the mouth and throat to play well. Most players concentrate on the chops both while they practice and when they play in an ensemble, ignoring their breathing. Many teachers are guilty of having their students work on drills, etudes and solos and excerpts and never mentioning how to breath other than an occasional truly confusing comment about diaphragmatic breathing.

How you take the air in and blow it out is more important than having a good embouchure.  One can play well with a misshapen or ignored embouchure but without breathing correctly one cannot play well.

To divert our brains’ attention from our chops we need to concentrate on breathing. There seems to be an equilibrium between how much work the air does and how much the chops do. If our faces work really hard then the air can’t be doing it’s job. If the air does its job the face can relax an amazing amount.

We want the shape of our mouth when we play to funnel the air to the point where the sound is being made - the center of our upper lip. This target is the flap of lip that actually moves and creates the sound.  Focusing the air anywhere else or not focusing the air is inefficient and produces an unstable, airy sound.

Getting the focal width of your air the same as your aperture will, if aimed at the aperture, be the most efficient way to play.

The most important factor in breathing correctly is which muscles in the body are used to draw the air in and to blow it out.

It’s easy to demonstrate how important this is. I say, ‘I am going to play like a beginner’ and then play like a 7th grader. Then I play like a high school freshman, then a senior, then a good college student then a professional. The only thing I change is which muscles I use to take the air in:

7th grader: I take a quick snort through my nose
Senior: I take a slightly longer breath into my throat and a little into my chest
College student: Controlled by the muscles at the bottom of the rib cage
Professional: I use the ab muscles right below my belly button.

It is the length of the air in the body that determines not only the tone quality and color but that enables us to focus on the air and all but forget about embouchure.

Some great horn players will say to breath naturally. Those same players tend to be large men who take huge breaths when they play. I think what they really mean is to have relaxed muscles pulling the air in.

You’ll note in some of the Left Coast exercises there are notes marked sffz. These notes should be hammered! Play them as loud as possible with sudden contractions of your abdominal muscles, as if someone had punched you in the stomach and you harden the muscles to protect yourself. This is an exercise to learn control and gain some strength in your abdomen, so hit them hard and don’t be tasteful.

These are Annoy Your Neighbor drills. Blast those notes! Don’t worry about tone color or if it goes to the wrong pitch. That’s ok but playing them quietly or weakly is not!

Understand Note Clusters

Three clusters

Note clusters are notes that have the same number of sound waves but use different fingerings or length of the horn.

To understand this it helps to know that when we go from one open note to another we are changing the number of sound waves that are occurring in the horn.

When we play the lowest note we can on a length of tubing we make one sound wave that is the length of the horn. If we add some energy and break the sound wave in half the note will jump up an octave.

If you play the second F below the treble staff on your Bb horn you will be playing the fundamental, making one sound wave. If you slur up to the F below the treble staff you will have 2 sound waves in the horn, each 1/2 the length of the horn.

If you add more energy and break the sound into 3 waves, you’ll go up a fifth and get the C below the staff, middle C.  Add more and you’ll go up a 4th and have 4 waves. The more waves you have the shorter they will be and the higher the pitch.

When you play that middle C and have 3 sound waves and you push down your second valve, you still have 3 sound waves, you have just made each a little bit longer. If you switch that for 1st valve you will still have 3 sound waves.

Middle C and the B, Bb, A and Ab below it are in the same cluster. They all have the same number of sound waves but use different fingerings.

Every open note plus the notes between it and the next open note are in the same cluster.

Now for the good stuff! Slurring between notes in the same cluster can be done with just the valves! You don’t have to adjust your mouth, aim differently or anything else. Slurs done with just the valves in a cluster have a beautiful smooth sound.

You know that you are moving from one cluster to another if you go up and make the horn longer or slur down and make the horn shorter. These slurs can’t be made just with the valves. You have to adjust the energy going into the horn to change clusters.

If you slur from middle C to the D above it you are making the horn longer but going up. You can’t be staying in a cluster. You must add enough energy to break the sound waves and adjust for the slightly longer horn.

Conversely if you are slurring from D to C then you are making the horn shorter and going down. You have to add air volume to adjust for the lower pitch and decrease the energy somewhere (breath, chops or both) to re-connect the sound waves.

You can see how important it is now to slur quickly! To break sound waves or re-connect them takes energy, just like a karate master breaks a board. Would the master move the hand slowly or move it quickly to break the board?

Moving slowly spreads the energy out over time! Doing it quickly, led by the air of course makes for clean beautiful slurs.

Chop Management

Wouldn’t it be great if most of the time you never thought about your embouchure? This is what happens when you concentrate on your breathing and shaping the air. Eventually the embouchure learns to take care of itself. It will still get tired and some days will be better than others but playing will be more about making music than just worrying if your chops will last long enough.

If you have not read the section on breathing do that before you read this. None of this is worthwhile if you are not working on your breathing.

Great breath control can make a player with a mediocre embouchure a fine player. If your air control is not developed then the world’s greatest embouchure won’t make you a good player.

Understand what your chops do

Like a violin string the part of your lip inside the mouthpiece should be held in place firmly at the ends and flexible in the middle.

Just as a violinist has to drag the bow at the correct place on the string we need to focus our airstream at the correct place on the lips. This place is called the target.

The target is at the lowest point of your upper lip. To find it open your mouth without making an embouchure and put something thin like a pencil or the shank of your mouthpiece in your mouth horizontally and close your mouth. The place where the object is touching your upper lip is the target.

The flesh at the target should be relaxed and flexible. It can be stretched by the muscles at the corners of the mouth pulling away from each other but the lip inside the mouthpiece should not be tense. 

Strengthening the Right Muscles

The right muscles to strengthen are at the corners of the mouth. If you make the biggest frown that you can, the muscles that pull your lips down at the corners are the muscles we are talking about.  These muscles act like the pegs and tuners on a violin, holding it tight at the ends and increasing the tension when needed.

These muscles can be strengthened the same way any other muscles can but we have to remember that they were not designed to play a brass instrument. Our chop muscles are small and weak to begin with. It’s important to take it slow and easy when building the muscles up.

Your lips muscles burn fuel from your blood and create waste products including water and lactic acid.  When you use a muscle a lot the acid builds up faster than the blood can get it out of there so it burns the muscle. When this starts to happen your brain gets a signal saying ‘help!’ and the brain stops using the muscle. This is the feeling we get when our lips are so tired we can’t go on.

But there is good news. When you sleep your body fills in the holes the acid left in your muscles with - more muscle! This is what makes weightlifters’ muscles so huge. They routinely burn the muscles and let them build. We can do the same thing.

You can use a pencil or a mouthpiece or anything and hold it in your lips (no teeth!) as long as you can. When you can’t hold it up anymore rest for a few minutes and do it again. Do this daily and you’ll feel your chops get stronger and stronger.

Long tones are great for strengthening the chops. Make sure you are warmed up. Start in your mid range and hold a note as long as possible. Decrescendo through the whole note but keep a good tone.

At first do four or five notes at the end of your practice day. Hold them as long and as quietly as you can with a good tone.

As you get stronger go up by by thirds.

When you feel quite strong, instead of one note play an arpeggio and slur up a half step from the top note and hold that note as long as possible.