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.
