High range session

High range is always a mixed bag for some players. For me, it has always been my biggest struggle as a player, low range came much easier. The routine below is one I have been using a few times a week lately to get ready for the world premiere of a new concertino for amplified horn and bass clarinet with others. This is with my group Timepoint. Though, back to the routine.

High range routine

A quick note, with most high range work, there is more than just high notes in here. All about balance.

For context, this is usually in my second session. I find personally if I do this kind of work in the morning I lose the flexibility I usually have and get more “locked in”. When it is busy it can always be a challenge to have a large scale view of the work we do.

That is it for this week, share, like, comment. Thanks for stopping by!

The commercial drill

So there is a sporting event today. One thing I love to do when watching something full of break and commercials is what I call the “commercial drill”.

Here is how it works

Tools: Horn, metronome, random number generator.

When the commercial begins grab your horn and get to town. Set the random number generator to have a range of say 42 - 136 this is your tempo range. You will also want a way to pick note duration (quarter, eighth, triplets, sixteenths, quintuplets, etc.), and scale.

  • Hit those randomizers, when you get your results play the scale up one octave, down two, up one. Then break right into the arpeggio to cover the same range. (do various articulations)

  • Rep the scale a few times with different note duration. You can do beat division on each note, or play the scale in that pattern.

Do this until you hit all 12 major and minor scales.

Now you have done all your scales, you feel great. But now what, there are more sportings going on. Time to up the anti. Interval time. Using the same setup as before just add one more way to pick a random interval, I use thirds through tenths. Get your scale, your intervals, and for fun let’s just go max range. Start from the bottom and work all the way to the top of your range (Singer style)

Repeat the above using the outcomes until you guessed it, all 12 major and minor scales.

More sports? More fun!

Now we are going to do non-standard scales, pentatonic, Limited transpositions, whole-tone, diminished, etc. You get the idea this is all about fluency and breaking the normal habits we all have

That is it, happy sporting watching and happy scales.


Patterns patterns patterns

I have been working on a "manual" of sorts. One of the sections that is the most fun for me, and I enjoy working on myself is that of "patterns and scales". I often find students being pushed to do 2 octave scales as a necessary evil to band method, when in fact most music we encounter uses small sections of scales and collections of patterns. Scales are great, don't get me wrong, but variety is the spice of life, and 5 notes are pretty powerful (especially when you link them into other groupings.) 

Here is a link to one of the exercises coming out of the manual I am working on.

DOWNLOAD LINK

A breif about that manual, it is being designed around "marching" instruments. Which is mainly to say, which I need to note as a horn player, that the books harmonic and range content is based around instruments one find in marching bands. Look for that soon.

Give a cup of Coffee to keep me awake

Coffee Size

Dice games, adding some spice to practice

As I have been doing the accountable practice project (Read more here about that) one thing I have done a lot of, and has had some questions asked about it is the use of dice. I love using dice to add spontaneity and to keep me on my toes when it comes to working on technique. 

How does it work?

There are a few ways I do this, and I'll outline them here. You will need 3 dice, a 12 sided die, an 8 sided die, and another one (I use a 10 sided since it was handy). You can add any others as well at times I use a 20 sided die to chose how many times I have to attack a note, repeat a passage, etc.

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The basic approach I have been using on my twitch stream is using the 12 sided dice to chose the scale, the 8 sided dice to pick either 1) the scale degree to begin from or 2) the scale degree to go to. (If you are feeling cheeky, you could do both). I like this approach as it gets us out of our usual scale routine. The use of the 10 sided dice is as to determine major or minor, make one odds and one even, then roll and go. One side goal is how fast can you go from rolling to playing. Working scale fluency is a big thing for me.

At times, to mix it up I'll use a 4 sided dice to determin how many octaves to take the scale through. Really, the sky is the limit with this. If you can assign a variable to it, you can get after it. 

Other ideas for dice use

As I said there are tons of possibilities, so here is a quick list of things I have been doing in the past little while.

  • Scales using dice to determine range etc.
  • How many times to attack a note for accuracy (vs the usual do it 10 times in a row.)
  • How many harmonics to ascend in lip slurs.
  • How many times to repeat a passage or exercise. 
  • What dynamic (like scales, we assign dynamics to each face of the dice I usually use a 5 sided (pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff)
  • What articulations or articulation patterns to use.

Again, these are just things I have done in the past week or so, there are plenty of things you can do.

I usually stream a 11am MDT on http://www.twitch.tv/matjamhorn as long as the schedule allows. If not, I'll change it.