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 9

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Exercise 9 is to develop a way of playing that does not decresendo on the note before a tongued note.  It also helps us to play large sudden intervals using the air to change notes.

To play Exercise 9

• Breathe correctly and tongue cleanly
• Speed is not important. Go slowly and be careful
• Play the dotted quarter notes all the way until you absolutely have to tongue the eighth notes
• Make brick shaped eighth notes and sudden slurs
• Use more air on the eighth notes than the dotted quarters. Aim at them with the air, right in the middle of your mouthpiece

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 1

Exercise 1 is our most basic exercise. We do it daily no matter our ability level. It is the equivalent of a chef sharpening his knives to get ready for the day's work, or a flower arranger cutting and laying out the flowers before arranging them.

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The main goal of the exercise is to produce three totally brick shaped notes. That means that it starts with a clean T tongue and blow through all three notes as if they were one note. The air flow should not increase or decrease during the note.

This is most important at the ends of the first two notes. Do not go flat or get quieter at the ends of the notes.

Let your fingers do as much of the work as possible. We want the lowest note at the end of the exercise to sound and feel as much like the first note as possible.

You will find of course that some notes do not speak as well or have the same tone color as the others. While this may be cause by numerous factors it is most often because of intonation. When you hit a note that doesn't speak well try moving your right wrist to adjust the intonation.

Go as low as possible every day. For many students the lowest notes will be out of your range. That's ok, just play as low as possible every day. If you can play all of the notes here just try to go lower every day.

This is a wonderfully extensible and leveragable exercise. Sometimes we alternate between hard accent on the first note and sneaking in as quietly as possible.  You can play the middle of the three notes stopped.  Sometimes we tongue all three notes, the first one very hard, the middle one normally and the last note legato tongued.

But whatever variation you are working on do it the same way every day for at least a week.

A great way to learn to control the air from Place #6 is to put a decrescendo on the last note, dying away without letting the tone color change. If you move the control up from Place #6 while you are playing your tone color will get dull and thin. You want to hear a bright shiny sound all the way down.

If you control the air from too high up your throat and the thick part of your tongue in the back will move, changing the sound of the note. Try to keep the note as boring and simple as possible. You will see that the only way to do it is to control the air from Place #6 through the entire note.

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.