Exercise 2

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This exercise trains you to use the minimum movement inside your mouth when changing notes.

There are two elements of this exercise; repeated notes alternating with technical figures.

Play all on the D horn. That is your F horn with the first and second valves depressed. You can use normal fingerings on the scale if you wish or use it as hand horn training, but play everything else in the exercise on one fingering.

Make the repeated A as simple and brick shaped as possible.

Play the repeated notes with very clean tonguing and a very slight separation.  We want to keep our mouth still so if there is too much separation the mouth will tend to move. Keep it still!

Don't use a D tongue here. Use a hard, clean T.

It helps at first to blast, and we mean blast the air when you are changing notes both up and down. You want to blast the air suddenly, as if you knew you were going to get hit in the gut and you suddenly and violently tighten the muscles around your belly button. Do it hard and suddenly and violently! There is no advantage to being subtle here.

Don't breath right before the figures. If you need a breath right before one play some more of the repeated notes.

The repeated note teaches your mouth what shape to be in. Try to keep that shape while playing the technical figures. You know you are doing it right if all the notes of the figures have the same tone color. If they get quieter or darker or thin or wobbly then you are probably moving your mouth or more likely the back of your tongue too much.

User lots of air, especially on the lower notes and the glissando.

If the glissando is a problem, just go up a couple of partials and come back down. The important thing is that you go up using a blast of air and keep the blast going while you come down. Keep a good, bright tone color. Don't aim up!

When you can comfortably play the exercise you can back off the accents and start to transpose up by half steps. If you do back off the accents be careful not to fall back in the trap of easing off the support and using too much face.

The fingering pattern going up is:

• F horn 12 (as the exercise is written)
• F horn 1
• F horn 2
• F horn 0
• Bb horn 23
• Bb horn 12
• Bb horn 1
• Bb horn 2
• Bb horn 0 (top line F)

You can replace the technical elements with anything you are working on. For example if you want practice double tonguing or playing stopped or really loud or really quiet you can just write in your own drills.