Blasting the Air

Left Coast Horn Playing uses several exaggeration techniques to accelerate learning. Being able to suddenly produce an intense, focused blast of air is a basic technique of playing and is best learned by exaggeration.

It is imperative that we learn to control the flow and changes in flow of air from as low in our abdomen as possible. The lower the control the better and more efficient the sound, the more relaxed the mouth and throat can be and the more control we have over the music!

It is also imperative that one learns to breath using muscles low in the body. How can you blast air from lungs that are not full or by using muscles in the rib cage? Foolishness!

It is also very difficult to tongue cleanly if the air is controlled from too high up in the body. That makes the throat and tongue tense! How can you control it if it is already tense?

Many people do not have a lot of strength in Place #6. That is why we have to work at our breathing exercises every day. Forget your embouchure weights and other gizmos!  Spend that time working on blasting the air and trilling properly and you'll improve much faster!

To blast the air properly
Get your body in a proper position to take a huge breath.
If the muscles around Place #6 are not relaxed you cannot do this properly.
Take a quick, full breath, using an oh sound, filling the bottom of your lungs first. Do not raise your shoulders.
Suddenly tighten the muscles around and just below your belly button as if someone was hitting you in the gut. Push in and a little bit up. Do it hard! Violently!

You should get a sudden blast of air. If not, try it again. Work at it once or twice every day and in a short time your playing will improve.

Exercise 10

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Exercise 10 develops clean slurs and builds fingering technique and tonal awareness.

To play Exercise 10

• Start with a big deep low breath
• Play the accented notes louder than the tonic note and play them louder until the end of the notes
• Try to have the same tone color as you descend to the lower scales

Exercise 4

Exercise 4 is our basic arpeggio exercise.

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It is imperative that you 

• Begin with a clean tongue
• Do not let the notes go sharp as you go up or flat as you go down
• Do not football (get louder in the middle) of the notes
• Make the change between notes as quickly as possible, with no hints before the change, using a sudden blast of air
• Make the last note good
• Take a breath whenever necessary and use lots of air

We want brick shaped notes with the fastest change of notes possible.

One of the most common mistakes when arpeggiating is changing the shape of the mouth or the tension of the lips before the air changes. To get this to work you must breath from Place #6 and blast the air.

Controlling the air higher than Place #6 will cause your throat to tense up making it almost impossible to get the blast of air necessary to get you to the next note.

Articles related to this exercise

Understanding Note Clusters
Air Based vs Face Based
What is The System?
Chop Management
Strength and Efficiency

Exercise 3

Exercise 3 is our introduction to trilling and an exercise that teaches your mouth the most efficient position to be in.

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To learn to trill we begin by using very hard  accents. You cannot overdo it! Really blast air all of a sudden by pushing really hard from Place #6. If you can't do that go back and read the articles on breathing and do the exercises. When you can make the clean slurs with hard accents then put them on every note. By the end of this the muscles in Place #6 should be tired.

Without the extremely hard breath accents this is just another bunch of trills. With it it can improve your playing immensely in a short time.

The hard accents blow your mouth into the right shape. It takes decades of practice with good instruction to find the shape, but if you use the air properly here you can experience it in two seconds. You know it happens when the notes are brick shaped and change suddenly from one to the other with a pop. That pop is the sound wave breaking or joining and we love to hear it. It means things are working efficiently.

It is imperative that the lower note be just as loud and have the same tone color as the first note. After we have mastered the trill a bit we back off on some of the accents and play the ones that are written.

For beginning students have them trill between lower notes, perhaps bottom line E and the G above it. For advanced players practice as written and higher and lower.

Make the last note very long and decrescendo as much as possible without changing tone color to make sure you are controlling the air from  Place #6.

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.