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.

The Illusion of Up

Where are high notes? On the ceiling? Are low notes on the floor?

There are two factors that cause us to believe the Illusion of Up. When we begin playing we have no muscles in our embouchure and every note can seem 'heavy.' We feel like we have to hold our embouchure up for every note.

The worst part of the illusion is the very terms we use. High notes and low notes and middle range notes. High notes are written higher up on the page. Lower notes are written lower. They could be reversed. But if we turned music writing completely upside down it would confuse us because we believe the illusion.

What makes notes higher on a horn? We need to make the aperture smaller, increase tension in the lips and increase the speed of the air.

The things that we do to aim up - tensing the cheeks, turning the lower lip forward, raising the shoulders, etc. makes it more difficult to play high! Try to play straight ahead!

A demonstration we do frequently is to hold a finger up and ask a student to aim right at the finger tip and play a note. We then ask for a lower note and we move the finger tip higher. The player will see that you indeed can aim higher for a low note and lower for a high note.

Building a High Range

Good high ranges don't happen in a day.  They take time and proper technique to build. Here is how to go about it.

First read these articles

• Six Places
• Ah vs Oh
• Don't Move
• Face Based vs Air Based Playing
• Aiming and the Target

At first you'll want to work on your high range every other day. It's ok to be really tire your chops out if you let them rest a day.

Start by playing some of our exercises in their normal range so that you play them properly. Then start transposing them up by half steps.

• A good way to start is with exercise #1A. Start in your mid range and play the exercise up as high as you possibly can. Pinch, squeeze, make funny faces, whatever you need to do to get up as high as possible. For this exercise we are not looking for fine technique or a pretty sound.

Do this exercise as the last thing you play for the day.

• Make sure your practice time includes exercises to expand your LOW range.
• Practice scales and long tones up as high as possible every day.

Don't expect results the first day or even the first week. With diligent practice you will notice your high range getting easier and more reliable soon.

If you are in this position, ask your conductor to program a piece you are afraid of to light a fire under you. Knowing you have to perform something outside your range will get you working (hopefully intelligently) on your high range!

Don't Play the Horn!

You can't! No one can!

The horn is a tube. That's all. Just a tube. When we play it just sits there. The only thing it really can do is get shorter or longer.

They are just fancy tubes!

What we really play is ourselves and the air trapped inside the tube.

This is an important distinction. Understanding what is going on with the air inside the horn allows you to focus on controlling the air rather than the embouchure.

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!