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.
