Washington Business Daily

How can I improve my embouchure flexibility?

I have been playing French horn for about 4 years. I am first chair in my high school's honors band. My biggest problem is flexibility. If I am playing a phrase where the notes range more than about 6 or 7 notes apart, I have an extremely hard time and I can almost never get low enough or high enough to play certain parts of the passage. How can I work on improving my flexibility? Does anyone have any tips, or any warm up techniques? Would using a deep cup mouthpiece be beneficial over a shallow cup mouthpiece?

Public Comments

1. You should be playing long tones. They will help you to build a better sound concept and improve your horn playing but only if your are actively listening to what you are doing and adjusting to meet the needs of what you are trying to accomplish through your practice. Tips for effective lip slurs require you are familiar with the mechanics of horn playing. Dedicated practice over time will embed these mechanics into your muscle memory such that you don't have to think about it. Practice with intention and conviction. If you are trying to do something on the horn and its not right, STOP! Do not let the bad notes and methods enter into your muscle memory or that is what you will keep doing. Learn to understand why it didn't work and repeat it correctly to wash over the bad method. For instance, to make an effective lip octave lip slur from middle C to 3 space C you need to have a very solid concept of how to play each note. Play middle C. You must be able to hear the note before you play it. Hold it and listen to it. Adjust your embouchure to produce the best possible sound. Play it soft. Crescendo to loud and back down again. Attack it hard. Play it with no attack (a breath attack). You need to be able to play middle C on command. You need to actively practice all aspects of how to produce that single note without thinking and this is just one note. Do the same for every note. Know how every notes feels, how it’s played, how your embouchure is formed. Sometimes we refer to this as know how the note tastes. How your mouth cavity is formed. How much air is required. You learn this by practicing. You practice long tones. Scales. Lots of scales. Arpeggios. Etudes. Solos...etc Over time your concept and muscle memory of how a note is played is learned. That’s where the slurs come from. Since you know exactly where your lips and everything else need to be you can just click to that position and voila. The mouthpiece you use should be a fit for you. There are many different kinds, but in general a mouthpiece that is not too extreme in any of the standard characteristics is best. For an article on mouthpieces look here: http://hornmatters.com/2009/07/choosing-a-french-horn-mouthpiece-i/ Richard Dean of the Atlanta Symphony recently came out with a very helpful book The Efficient Approach. It describes some of the techniques you can employ to improve your sound and give you a better concept for what to do: http://www.richarddeane.com/Site/The_Efficient_Approach.html Your horns job is to amplify and enhance the sound that you have already created. Any note on the Horn is a combination of Pressurized Air, Embouchure, and your Oral cavity. Find the balance between these three elements and you will improve. Horn playing is a lot of fun when you achieve this level of command over your instrument. You can think of what you want to produce and make it happen, but you won’t be able to do so without studios and dedicated practice. My best advice is to have a competent teacher observe you and provide you with a regiment of studies to help you along your journey in horn playing.
2. to improve flexibility just do partial exercises go up and down your horn with one fingering (in key) and do partials up and down and once you are good at that skip partials and work on the skipping notes in your music.