Piano & Horn
Wednesday, January 31, 2024 by Billy Roberts | Vision
When I first considered giving private lessons on a regular basis, my goal was to focus on French horn and voice. When I decided to offer piano lessons too, I printed business cards for Roberts Horn & Voice, which stated “Beginning to early advanced lessons in piano, French horn, and voice.” However, I recognized pretty quickly that I was selling myself short as a piano teacher. As I sorted out my priorities, it became clear that piano needed to be in the name of the business, but I took my time to process this change because I wanted to see how keeping piano and horn primary would affect my musical aspirations in general. I am not just swapping voice for piano as a secondary instrument behind horn. I have chosen to make horn and piano dual primary instruments. The piano is more useful to me in many ways, and I do feel energized after my arms and my mind have had a workout at the keys. However, the horn routine exercises my breathing and posture in ways that the piano cannot.
Although piano is the word that comes first, I am not playing horn any less. Although I do not do a daily routine with horn, I do have two to three days per week that I rest completely from piano practice to focus on the horn. Instead of struggling to balance time for horn, piano, and voice, this arrangement of priorities helps me to be better able to keep in touch with the skills necessary for both teaching and performing with the horn. Vocal work is limited to a short daily routine during the week and choir participation. Settling on a business name that leaves out “voice” has actually been very freeing, enabling me to enjoy singing simply for the joy of singing, whenever time allows. My goal is to maintain the highest level of professionalism in terms of balancing teaching and performing with my responsibilities to family, work outside of music, and other activities. Not only will this help me to enjoy teaching and performing more, it will ultimately allow me to better understand and meet the needs of each individual student. I’m looking forward to the opportunities that this renewed focus will bring.
Finding the Perfect Horn Embouchure
Thursday, December 28, 2023 by Billy Roberts | French horn
In last month’s reflection, I wrote that it was getting easier for me to switch back and forth between horn playing and singing. I also implied that finding the right balance of resistance in the throat for horn playing is akin to a singer’s discovery of mask resonance, that feeling of a perfectly balanced voice that is neither in the nose nor stuck in the throat. For singers, this often produces a sensation of vibration at the base of the nose which may also be felt in the cheekbones. However, not everyone feels the same sensations, so it is important to not get too hung up on trying to achieve a particular feeling. In horn playing, a similar balance needs to be found between a quality of air that is forced and stuffy versus air that is too breathy or throaty.
A horn player’s focus on breathing from the chest and diaphragm may produce a sound that is too breathy, throaty, or forced depending on the volume of air being used and the embouchure’s ability to handle that flow of air. Similarly, a player whose breath is placed too high may have a thin sound and weak support for the embouchure muscles. However, these issues can usually be resolved without much thought simply by developing a good embouchure shape. It is not enough to simply clamp the lips tighter when moving from the lower register to the upper register. A smile type embouchure results in a thin tone. Although the appearance will vary depending upon a player’s lip structure, the aperture must in some way be made narrower from side to side as a player plays higher. In general, if the player imagines the lips as forming a slightly rounded aperture, the neck and oral cavity will have to follow suit in order to make this possible.
Focusing on posture first and air supply second puts the player in a position to become aware of the shape of the oral cavity and the working of the embouchure muscles. That is the point at which horn playing becomes like singing. Posture is the first thing I think of when I sit down and the last thing I think of when I’m lost in the music. Air supply is something that I think of when my embouchure tells me that it needs a little help. In this sense, the embouchure muscles are like the little light in your car that tells you when your gas tank is getting too low. If you spend your whole drive overthinking the amount of gas you’re using, you’re not going to enjoy the scenery. Adjusting the embouchure muscles as you move up and down through the registers is like learning how much to press down or let up on the gas pedal as you drive a car. It is something that a driver is conscious of on some level throughout the drive, even though it is not the primary focus.
The perfect embouchure comes naturally when you find a comfortably upright posture that enables you to regulate your air supply with free lips and a relaxed throat. As you listen to yourself, you can hear whether you need to use more or less air. Although it may help to think about other factors, such as having the leadpipe angled slightly down and not placing the mouthpiece too low on the lips, it may be better to let these serve as signs to help you stay consistent once you’ve found an embouchure that is working. There really is a bit of trial and error that any beginner will go through before getting it right. Don't worry about trying to do everything exactly by the book. As you become familiar with your body’s own idiosyncrasies, you’ll be on your way to your own natural playing style. As in driving, these mechanical things become second nature as you learn to sing through the horn.
Thanksgiving Reflections
Tuesday, November 28, 2023 by Billy Roberts | Reflection
With thanksgiving behind us, I am thankful for many things this holiday season. I’ve enjoyed watching my kids grow and helping them with piano and math. I’ve seen my oldest nephew get married. With horn and voice, I’m finally finding that balance of enjoying music without letting it dominate my life. I would love to have more time each day for piano, horn, and voice, but I’m treasuring the moments I have with family and also reading a lot more. French is going well. I’m not aiming for conversational French at this time. Instead, I’m just enjoying my bilingual Bible and slowly becoming more familiar with it through daily reading and listening to audio.
I’m also gaining a more consistent approach to the breath with singing, horn playing, and speaking which carries over into better sleep and relaxation in general. Although piano gets its own practice time, I’ve begun practicing the horn and voice together. I’ll play for a few minutes, then sing for a few minutes, and so forth. I used to feel like playing and singing were so different in terms of mechanics of the throat that I had very little luck trying to go back and forth between the two in the same session. However, I now believe that if the voice and embouchure are working properly, it should be very easy to switch between the two.
I once had a very well educated pedagogue tell me that a good way to develop embouchure is to take in a good breath through the nose and then play the horn with that set. I had another equally qualified horn player tell me that the nose should not be involved in horn playing, that everything depended on the throat. I can see where both points of view come from. In singing, there is a sensation known as the mask resonance where the voice is placed neither in the nose nor stuck in the throat. I find that if I have that feeling of singing properly, my embouchure is in the right place when I pick up the horn.
I think finding that optimal placement is a model for finding balance in life. So often, we strive to do what we think is necessary in order to meet our goals when all we need to do is slow down and listen to the Maker who sets our lives in order. On Thanksgiving day I listened to Matthieu 6 several times via an online French audio Bible. The same passage I’d heard over and over spoke fresh to me as I heard it in another language. When we recognize that God is the source of everything we need, we find that it is all right there if we will come to him in prayer with thanksgiving.
