Embouchure and Posture (Part 2)
Wednesday, April 24, 2024 by Billy Roberts | French horn
Have you ever picked up your horn and started playing but found that your mid-register notes were stuffier than usual? That happened to me yesterday. At first I thought maybe the horn wasn’t in tune with itself. After adjusting some slides, the sound was freer, but the tuning was worse off. Clearly, that was not the right solution. I took a break, put some oil through the valves, picked up the horn and tried again. Everything worked fine. However, it was not because I had cleared excessive sludge from the rotors. That wasn’t the problem, although I did enjoy faster valve action.
In my rush to make the most of the twenty minutes or so I had with the horn, I did not pay attention to my posture as I sat down to play. My lower jaw tends to be set back because of the way I developed during adolescence. When I’m singing or playing the horn, I have to be conscious of letting it relax enough to come forward slightly. This is not a universal problem, but I’m sure most other players have their own unique thing to be aware of when setting their embouchure. I remember that when I first discovered this about myself, I thought I would benefit by using my neck and facial muscles to bring the jaw slightly forward. However, that approach proved detrimental to playing. I eventually discovered the neck and shoulder posture that worked for me to allow the jaw to naturally sit where it needs to be in order to form an efficient embouchure.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that the warmup period for me is not so much about preparing my lips as it is making sure my head, neck and shoulders are aligned to foster efficient playing. To be sure, I still want to make sure my lips are loose before spending extensive time in the upper register, but I feel like it’s ok to go through all registers of the horn while warming up so long as the high notes are approached correctly. As I pondered that opening question, I noticed that the low register did not have the volume I was used to and my upper register had a thinner tone than usual. However, since the mid-register was the area most affected with stuffiness and intonation difficulties, that is where I chose to explore a bit to find out what was going on.
I pulled out my Warburton buzzard, which I’ve written about in a previous blog, buzzed a few notes in the mid-register, and had the problem sorted out in just a few seconds. That is a great benefit of working embouchure without the weight of the horn. When I picked up my horn, I made sure to use the same jaw setup, and that is where I figured out that my whole upper body posture was a little off. Last month, I wrote about the REMplenish bottle and how it has helped with my posture for singing. I’ve picked up many other tips over the past few years, but this proves that posture is still something that I need to think about first, no matter how rushed I am when sitting down to play.
One other thing worth mentioning as I close this blog is that horn playing works by putting a small stream of air through a small opening. The use of air is emphasized so much by brass teachers that some students may inadvertently open their mouths too wide, try to blow as much air through as possible, and then wonder why the horn does not respond to it. It is the quality of air that matters, not the quantity. Certainly you need good support, but that is to ensure that there is plenty of air behind the air that is actually going through your horn. It is possible to overblow a horn, just as you can overblow the voice when singing. However, as you play with a lip posture that allows you to keep a small aperture where the lips are neither bunched too tightly nor spread too thin, the danger of using too much air becomes unlikely simply because an efficient embouchure only responds well to the optimal flow of air.
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.
A Balanced Mind-Body Approach to Horn Playing
Thursday, August 31, 2023 by Billy Roberts | French horn
As I write this month’s blog, I’m nearing the halfway point of my first piano pedagogy course. Devoting ample time to piano, which has been my secondary instrument for most of my life, and my coursework means that horn will have to take the backseat again for a while, but I still feel like I need to maintain a consistent thirty minute daily routine with the horn. I typically advise beginners to put in thirty minutes a day five days per week, regardless of instrument, and following my own advice helps me through times like this. At the very least, I want to avoid having to relearn major aspects of technique when I’m able to spend longer sessions with the horn. I anticipate that next summer, after this new set of coursework is behind me, I’ll be able to devote more time to the horn again.
I have learned two important things about my own horn playing over the past few months. The first is with regard to embouchure. When I resumed horn playing two and a half years ago after a long break, I spent a lot of time overthinking my breathing, jaw placement, and angle of the mouthpiece to the lips. I developed an embouchure that could provide a really nice tone, but with no endurance. I finally had to throw all of that overthinking out the window and just ask myself: what’s most comfortable? As it turned out, the basic embouchure that I used throughout all of my formative years really was the most natural one for me. I didn’t need a big change, just a better understanding of how to work with what I already had.
Similarly, I did a lot of overthinking about posture when I picked the horn back up. I studied myself with a mirror a lot, which seemed to help me play standing, but that impeded my progress when I resumed a seated posture with my bell on the leg. Of course, the whole issue of playing on the leg or off the leg is in itself a big debate. I find that my technique is more secure when I play with the bell on the leg. It works best when I lean slightly forward, but not in an exaggerated manner, with my head tilted slightly as needed to achieve the best angle between the mouthpiece and my lips. When I tried to figure this out with a mirror, I tended to have my body too straight and too symmetrical. It was only by taking time to slowly assess every part of my body and how it all worked together in a relaxed but upright posture that, piece by piece, I was able to again find the posture that provided the optimal mouthpiece angle for my airway and embouchure to work efficiently.
This takes us full circle to my opening paragraph. Maintaining a consistent daily routine for horn playing helps you to start each practice session with a relaxed mind and body. Our bodies were not designed to play wind instruments, so if you skip a day the physical aspects of playing may feel a bit foreign until you have had a chance to warmup. However, the modern horn was designed to work as well as possible with the physical capabilities of our bodies. By approaching the horn in a similar way every day, there’s a familiarity that develops that allows you, as I’ve said before, to start feeling as if the horn is an extension of your body. This is when you really learn to sing through the horn.
