Know How to Conduct

We are not kidding.

How can you play well in an ensemble if you don't know what the conductor is doing?

You should know at least how to conduct a preparation beat and the basic beat patterns. There are only 4 so it's not a big deal. You also need to know what an ictus is. (It's the point in the beat pattern where the beat actually happens.)

About Left Coast Horn Playing Technique

Left Coast Horn Playing is a way of practicing and playing that emphasizes training the body and mind to inhale and exhale correctly.  Left Coast Horn Playing takes a logical and behavioral approach and develops controlled, repeatable technique. Our techniques are not designed to produce a single unchangeable style, rather they are designed to give you control over your style by developing a wide palette of repeatable techniques.

Main features of Left Coast playing and practice

• We have a daily plan and we follow the plan
• We focus on controlling the air inside the horn and working daily to improve breathing with the goal of controlling the flow of air from as far down in the abdomen and as far forward in the mouth as possible
• Knowing what and where the target is and aiming the air at it
• Getting away from the illusion that concentration and development of the embouchure is more important than focus on air control and emphasizing exercises that develop air strength and control
• Use of exaggeration in teaching. Sffz, long decrescendos and practicing in a wide range of tempi are typical
• Clean tonguing and using the tongue to focus the air
• Working to reduce or eliminate unnecessary movement of the face and tongue by focusing on air control
• Short progressive and leveraged drills designed to hone in on one particular aspect of playing or combining techniques to make learning efficient
• Working to improve ensemble skills as well as individual technique

Don't Drop Your @#$&!@# Jaw!

Few words have done more damage to horn players' low ranges than the dreaded 'Drop the Jaw.'

To develop a controllable focused low range try not to move your jaw when you play lower. Practice playing in the mid range and using that mouth shape as a template for your low range.

Dropping the jaw before the note starts does several things, all of them bad.

• It makes it difficult to focus the air
• It causes the back of the tongue to move up, restricting the flow of air
• It makes it almost impossible to return to the middle or upper ranges without terrific amounts of tension

Note that we do not say the jaw does not move or the mouth get slightly bigger when playing low. The difference is that we let our mouth relax and find the right shape from the acoustics of the note. We do not try to put the mouth in the right shape first.

We want the shape of our mouth for our lowest and highest notes to be the same as much as possible.

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

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!

The Importance of the Brick-shaped Note

Not only do we want to make brick shaped notes our standard note shape we want the ability to make them not-brick shaped if we wish. To get that kind of control one must be able to produce a beautifully brick shaped note.

A brick shaped note begins with a good solid tongue and continues without crescendo or decrescendo until it ends cleanly.  It is difficult to do and requires a lot of dedicated practice. It takes time to develop. The important thing is the mental focus on making brick shaped notes and the use of Place Six. If you focus on those you will notice great improvement in your sound in a short time.

Musically speaking playing with non-bricked shaped notes creates unwanted attention on the shape of each note rather than the phrase. Many amateur players play this way thinking they are making a beautiful emotion-laden sound. In reality they are making their audience seasick!

Imagine a really bad actor auditioning by reading the Gettysburg address. Read the following aloud and make each word a football, getting loudest in the middle of the word:

Four - score - and - twenty - years - ago

I can hear the auditioners already yelling Thank you. Next! It’s irritating.

Then say it as if it was one phrase:

Four score and twenty years ago today

And you can hear how much more musical it is.

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.

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!

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!

Left Coast Tonguing

Not quite what we had in mind...

The Left Coast method of learning to tongue gives you great control over the beginning of notes. It improves your sound and accuracy by learning how to deliver the air to the Target efficiently and strongly. It allows you to develop many different kinds of articulations from the most smashed, blistering attacks to the smoothest legato you can imagine.

In Left Coast Playing the tongue is used to hold the air back before the note starts then aim it at the Target.


How do You Shoot?

Almost..have it..have to focus..

 One of the challenges of archery is releasing the string with the right hand so that it releases smoothly and doesn't move left or right.

The guy on the left has a lot of fancy stuff helping him to pull the string back and some thing in his right hand that helps him to steady it and release it straight. It still looks difficult to do.

Ready! Aim! Fire!

The shooter on the right here has a crossbow. Notice that the string is held in place and is released mechanically. No need to worry that the release will reduce your accuracy.

This is why we want to practice getting the air pressure built up while being restricted by the tip of the tongue (NOT the back) then released with an explosion at the beginning of the note.


Having the air pressure start at the same time as the note or worse, after the note starts is a major cause of clams, thin tone, bad attacks, notes that don't speak and other gifts from some angry horn god.

We are not saying that we always tongue this way but we advocate practicing clean, really hard tonguing all over your range.

Common Tonguing Mistakes

The most common mistake is to take a shallow breath. If you take a shallow breath your throat muscles including the lower parts of your tongue have to work to push the air out! How can they relax and control the air when they are tense and squeezing the air? It is imperative that you take a deep relaxed breath in order to learn to tongue well no matter what technique you use. Controlling the breath from Place #5 or above is simply asking for tonguing problems.

Another common mistake is to let your voice box close after taking a breath. This means the air has to be controlled in one extra location and it’s really hard to coordinate your tonguing if you have to control it from three different places. We want to control the air from as low down in the abdomen as possible and as close to the Target as possible. We don’t want to control it from inside the rib cage or in the throat.

The next most common mistake is not tonguing cleanly enough. What a huge disadvantage to not starting with a sudden burst of air. You have to get all the air in your horn vibrating at once.  The cause of this is usually either the air pressure starting at the same time as the note instead of before, or the tongue being shaped incorrectly.

Moving the back of the tongue too much is a common problem. It cuts off the supply of air

When we are beginners it seems like all the notes are high notes and we instinctively aim upwards. This affects our tonguing too and most people tongue quite a bit too high in their mouths.

Tonguing should be done as close to the Target as possible for at the Target.

Left Coast tonguing gives you great control of note shape and articulation. It trains you to use the air to shape the notes, not the muscles of the face and neck.


The Four Steps for Everyday Tonguing

1. As with all of our exercises you start with a deep, low relaxed full breath.
2. Get the tongue in a position where it can prevent the air from escaping.
3. Create air pressure between the lowest point of the lungs and the tongue.
4. Release the tongue with an explosion of air.

Yes, we mean an explosion. We want all the air inside the horn to begin vibrating at once. if the air does not explode into the mouthpiece we tend to get an airy weak sound and a lot of facial tension.

It is much easier and faster to learn this kind of tonguing then learn different articulations than it is to just tongue things over and over hoping that someday it will sound good.

Once a good strong T sound is happening, practice creating the same sound more quietly. Try always to hear the T even when making really quiet attacks.

This doesn’t mean we always tongue hard or don’t learn legato tonguing. But our basic technique and the one we use most often is the clean tonguing that results from the four step system.