Notes for Private Teachers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Stopping the Notes with the Tongue and Reverse Tonguing

For the purposes of these exercises we do not allow stopping any notes with the tongue.

Many very good players stop notes with the tongue but they have had to spend many hours fighting the problems it causes. Some of them will claim that they can play shorter and cleaner than those of us who do not stop the notes with the tongue but that's bogus.

One of the most beautiful sounds is a horn playing a beautiful decresendo down to nothing. You can't do this unless you learn to control the air a the end of the notes, and if for this reason only you must learn to play without this evil problem.

Do not stop any of the notes in these exercises with the tongue.

Stopping the notes with the tongue almost always means the player cannot stop the air without the tongue and this causes many problems. Many players thrust their tongue forward creating tension in the tongue and throat and restricting the flow of air.

Players who habitually stop the notes with the tongue frequently have problems starting notes with a clean T. They wind up starting with what we perjoratively call H tonguing. There is no T and all the notes are snuck into.

Tonguing the end of a note but not the beginning is reverse tonguing and it is evil.

If you are unable to stop a note without the tongue you have some work to do. You have to accept that for a while you will have trouble ending notes cleanly. That's ok, let it sound bad at first.

You have to be your own police and every time you catch yourself ending the notes with the tongue you have to be angry! Make it stop! Learn to control the ends of the notes by forcing yourself to use the air rather than your tongue.

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

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.

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.

Aiming and The Target

What makes a high note high? Are they on the ceiling? Are low notes down by your shoes?

When we begin playing we have the feeling that the notes are either somewhere up on the ceiling or down on the floor. Do you remember how high notes in the staff felt?! We tend to develop these exaggerated habits early. We call it The Illusion of Up. We’ll show you how to get past them.

One of the great illusions of music is thinking high and low. We only call them high and low because of the way we write them. In reality what we think of as high and low notes are really short wave length notes and longer wave length notes.  Understanding this allows us to stop doing things that not only don’t help but make it more difficult!

The bit of your upper lip that creates our sound stays in one place as we play. It is our Target and we need to learn how to focus the air at it so that it does what we want it to. We can change the angle of the airstream as it hits the Target to play higher or lower but to play efficiently you must have the air aimed at the Target.

Our air is like a violin bow and the place it rubs to make the sound is the Target. And just like a violin if we change the angle of the air or move it we radically reduce the quality and efficiency of our playing. The analogy is not perfect but it is edifying.

If you asked most players where they aim for their notes they would give a pattern that looks like a ladder - aiming low for the low notes down by the floor and aiming somewhere higher for higher notes. It would never occur to them that they don’t have to.

It’s easy to demonstrate that we don’t need to aim up to play high notes. Pick out a spot on a wall to aim at and play a note in your middle register trying to aim your air right at that spot. Then pick out a spot lower on the wall and aim at it and play a higher note. It should be no problem.

It isn’t aiming up or down that changes your pitch.  It’s the size of the aperture (the hole where the air escapes your lips), the speed, aim and intensity of the air and the tension of the upper lip.

Aiming up or down or opening your mouth to play low or any of those kinds of motions make it more difficult to play correctly! If as you aim up to play higher you take the focus of the air from the Target and tense your tongue, face and throat muscles you impede the flow of air and wreck its focus.

Aiming and tonguing are very closely related. If your tongue is close to your lips when you play you can focus the air right at the Target.  If the tip of your tongue is too far back then the air swirls and changes before it hits the Target giving you less control and efficiency.

When you have an entrance and you are worried about hitting the first note, see a bulls-eye right in the middle of your upper lip where it meets the lower lip. Having a place to aim at gives you something for your mind to do. It’s so much more accurate than just worrying increases accuracy by a large percentage.