My journey on how to play french horn, trumpet, tuba and soprano trombone

[imsevimse]

Hi

In these sad times there are no bands to play concerts with, no bands to hear, no friends to practice with.

What to do?

I have practiced my trombone every day at home since 17/3 but I think I now have lost motivation. In the summer I played about one our a day devided into three sets of 20 minutes. I feel the joy to play the trombone has abandoned me, something I thought never would happen to me. I need to do something else for a while.

I've recently heard that I will work from home the whole autumn and that rehearsals and gigs will be cancelled the rest of the year too. Somewhere in January-February there might be a vaccine ready. How to survive musically until then is the question. I know we all have this problem. We are in this together.

Even though I have all my trombones on my 16 stands and rotate them regularly to stay alert it is not enough.

I need to meet with friends and have a deeper meaning with my music to make the playing fun. It is not enough to just practice. I thought it was, but it isn't anymore. The problem is I can't because of corona so what to do instead to find the pleasure with music again.
Not even my Superbone is fun at the moment.
This was me when I tried that in April. I put it up here in June in case you missed it and have few minutes to listen
https://trombonechat.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=15303

If I'm looking back I have learned that putting me outside my comfort zone is what has help me the most on the trombone in the past. I noticed this when I started to switch between different sizes of trombones and different models and mouthpieces. To jump between alto, tenor and bass frequently has been very fruitful for my playing on any of those instruments. To switch carrer from music to be a system developer also had positive effect on my trombone playing. All that reading and studying and then starting the new carrer. I don't know exactly why this improved me as a player but it did. My belief is it is the changes that does it. Somehow new neurons and thinking new helps everything else too, not just what I'm studying.

I now found this used french horn in a shop here in Stockholm and decided to have a go. It is a Conn 8D, a pro horn even if not from the best period. It is an Abilene from 1978, a horn that is out of fashion by players over here. For what I've heard purists choose not to play it because of certain flaws. I can not find any problems with the horn and I think it could be a good horn to learn from. It made a difference and I now find joy to practice several hours a day again.

I also have my Kanstul 150 soprano trombone ready and switch between those two. For my soprano I use a Wycliffe Gordon crossover mouthpiece. It works.

I start the day with 20 minutes on a trombone before I turn to the soprano or the french horn. I might finish the day on another set on the tenor or a bass trombone.

Well see what happens. I might be a french horn doubler when corona is over. If not, then I have at least tried and it might have done wonders to my trombone playing or other things I do not expect and can not foresee

If I have some progress to show I might do a video or an audio clip to put up here with my playing. It would be on how to play French horn or soprano trombone from experience as a trombone player - my experience that is.

/Tom

[JCBone]

Very cool It's my dream to play horn but I'm always worried that it will mess with my chops.

[TriJim]

I've been playing Swiss alphorn for the last 3 years. Initially I was happy taking the low parts with a 24 mm mouthpiece (compared to my Bach 5G - about 25 mm), but eventually you want need more high notes to play more challenging melodies; particularly when playing solo.
It has taken most of the past year, but I steadily decreased my mouthpiece from 22 - 20.5 - 19.5 - and now 17.4 mm with a horn-shaped taper.
The smaller mouthpiece improved my upper range and endurance on the alphorn, but it hasn't translated to improved range or endurance on the trombone.
That said, musically, it has been an interesting added dimension.
Please keep us informed on your progress and observations.

[imsevimse]

Hello!

This is an update. I have now played the french horn four months. I have practised every day. Each day longer sessions. I play music with no sheet. My repertoire now consists of 17 tunes. I play each twice and every tune is about 2 minutes. I have a musical friend who suggests new tunes for me to play, which is much better than finding songs out myself. She choose more difficult songs than I come to think of. When we speak in phone I may play a couple of songs for her and get a little feedback. It is a fun project. Since I add new songs the sessions becomes longer as I'm getting better. At the moment the songs take about 40 minutes. Rest of the session I play chromatic ascending and descending scales. The improvement on french horn is security. My attacks are much better and I have improved the ability to tune notes with he hand. I have also decided how to tune the valves after reading the Gunter Schuller French horn book.

About a month ago I bought a trumpet too. It is the Yamaha YTR-8310 Bobby Shew model. I do progress on this trumpet too. My register has increased from the # f# to the two ledger C. On trumpet I mostly play ascending chromatic scales and major scales as high as I can get them. I have a couple of songs too in comfortable register; "Amazing Grace" and a couple of hymns. The trumpet is more difficult compared to the french horn.

My goal is to find the correct feeling on my lips on both french horn and trumpet mouthpieces. I know that when I play trombone I do not feel the work I do. I just hold the lips in position and the sound starts just as I blow. It is a quite effortless feeling.

On french horn I have now noticed the feel is similar. I don't feel the rim as a "rim" anymore. It feels more like a coin and I can feel the lips work more natural like on the trombone. The downside is the highest notes have become more difficult. When I began I could easily get the high f and above. I think that emboushure was a cheater. I think this emboushure I'm developing now is more secure and I also hit the notes much better now. I hope the highest octave will return in time.

On the trumpet I had a moment about a week ago when my high register suddenly grew with a fourth. The feeling when it happened was the same as with the french horn. My lips relax more and I feel I only hold them in position and let the air do most of the work. I do not feel the contours of the rim on the lips but it is more like a coin against the lips, and it starts to work. On the trumpet I also found out I need to angle slight to the left to get up above g. I even got the c# and d yesterday.

I play trombone 20 minutes a day and it has not been negatively effected. What I've changed is I now start on the small mouthpieces and go larger. This was how I learned to play alto, tenor and bass mouthpieces. Back in time when I started to double these instruments I could not play alto after bass. It took many years to be able to switch those instruments in any order. I now have decided to go that path again even though today it is possible for me to play the french horn after the trombone I've noticed I do better if I go in the other direction. So lessons learned is I will start on french horn and then trumpet. After this I do the soprano (with Whycliff Gordon 11c-ish crossover), alto (Bach 15E or 12E), tenor (Yamaha Nils Landgen 11c-ish), bass (Hammond 20BL) and finally tuba. I admit I do not always do the alto, bass and tuba.

Now I will have a week of vaccation from work. I have worked from home since 17/3 so not much difference. What to do in Corona? Since I will be by myself the whole week I will just play and take walks. I might try to record something with all my instruments. It would be to have a goal. I might even put it here if I think it represents my current level of all those instruments.

See if I can find something that's easy enough....

/Tom

[bwanamfupi]

Tom, thanks for these posts about your trombone / cornet / French horn learnings. My daughter and I made a bet at the beginning of the quarantine in Indianapolis that she would learn trombone if I learned horn. I have been able to (sort of) play along with a couple of her duets. My range is stable up to the D and E in the staff (same on cornet). F and G is a stretch. Good advice regarding playing on the small mouthpiece first.

[imsevimse]

Update.

I did an arrangement of something easy (I whish). I arranged "Good Bless the Child" for two trumpets, french horn, tenor & bass trombone and tuba. I started to record the tuba part and then did the bass and tenor trombone. It did not take long to realise I have most problems with the tuba. The intonation is all over the place which I noticed when I tried to add the trombone parts. I recorded the whole tune and had the chance to play french horn and trumpet in a brass ensamble for the first time in my life. It was great fun but not good enough. The big problem is the tuba. I have to practice a lot.

Still I learned a lot while I was recording myself.

My progress on trumpet and french horn is good though. Today I got a good high Eb (octava) on the trumpet and I have started to include a lot of Christmas songs in my daily practice and "Jenny with the light brown hair" and a couple of Swedish folksongs. My emboushure on trumpet is getting better and my french horn emboushure and playing also still improves a lot week by week. I now have 25 songs that I play on french horn twice every day. Each song is about 1:15 so the session is about one hour effectively and that takes about one hour and a half. The trumpet is the next hour. Since my tuba playing was the real problem on the first attempt to record I have added an hour of tuba with tuner. I have one 4 valve Eb tuba compensating and a small Yamaha 3 v Bb-tuba and six mouthpieces. Right now I try to find out how to best tune them and what tuba and mouthpiece combination to use.

I still practice the soprano every day and there the progression is in the low register. I've found the factitious notes are real good with the Wycliffe Gordon crossover mouthpiece. I use the crossover because it makes me play more trombone-like and the sound and the characteristics of my playing is more close to a trombone compared to if I use the trumpet mouthpiece. The high register will be suffering on the larger rim but other things will be better. One thing is the slide-move affects the lip contact on the crossover mouthpiece less compared to a small trumpet mouthpiece because the crossover does not "jump" as much on the lips when I move the slide. If there ever will be a need of a few higher notes I could always do a temporary switch to the trumpet mouthpiece.

Well that's the update.

/Tom

[imsevimse]

For about a month I stopped to play the trombone. I thought I needed to focus on the new instruments; french horn, trumpet and tuba. I thought I had played trombone enough to remember the emboushure. I now learned this was a big mistake. After one month of no trombone playing and only french horn and trumpet I noticed I lost my high register on trombone. From high Bb and up there is a double buzz and cracked notes. In that register I have begun to play the trombone with the trumpet emboushure and this does not work. I had trouble to switch to the trombone emboushure in the high register. Below the Bb it was no problem. Sound below that Bb is good and the tongue works. Another thing is I also lost my sqeek register up to high Bb (octava)

I had to repair that. Now I have changed tactics. I start on trombone 45 minutes followed by 45 minutes french horns and then 30 minutes of trumpet. Unfortunately my work takes a lot of time now and I also have as a goal to walk 1,5 hour in the woods every day. I have walked 1.5 h every day since 5/7. I just passed 200 walks. Every walk is 10000 steps.

Now I have played trombone again for a week and the double buzz is gone and my register up to (octava) is back. I could sqeek to high a. I hope this stays now.

It is a problem to find enough time to keep in shape on all those brass instruments. I do believe it is good to concentrate on one more than the others to really explore the new instrument, but to stop to play one instrumen is to loose something on that instrument. Since last update I have also bought a Flugel. That horn is much closer to the French horn than to the trumpet. I think as a second instrument the flugel is to a trumpeter what a euphonium is to a tromboneplayer. To make a sound on a euphonium is real easy for a tromboneplayer. The problem is intonation. The same with the Flugel. I bought a Yamaha and I think they have done a great job with the intonation on this horn. I'm thinking of getting a Bb cornet too. The pandemic will probably last to May so I have about half a year to experiment and learn all these brass instruments I've always wanted to play.

/Tom

[ithinknot]

It's interesting what the face will tolerate! I used to play occasional french horn at school when a part needed covering. My trombone embouchure is somewhat downward tilted and the horn mouthpiece seemed to be a unproblematic swap, with the whole range pretty accessible. (Same with the tiny, thin-rimmed renaissance cornetto, which is often played downhill and off-center anyway. Brutally difficult in other ways...)
Trumpet, on the other hand, doesn't work well at all. I could never get above the treble staff, and I think I'd have to learn a completely new setting to make any progress there.

Nice to hear about your progress. Stay safe and keep up the good work

[imsevimse]

Nothing has helped me more than my resent experiment with other brass. There is a lot to gain to pick up a trumpet, french horn or a tuba to investigate what works and what not works. It was one of my goals to be more efficient on trombone when I decided to pick up other brass instruments during the pandemic. I need something to do, and I have no gigs and no rehearsals so this is the time to experiment. Whats good is I'm rediscovering the fundamentals every time I put any new horn to my face. Maybe this is not for everyone, but for me it works. I'm fully aware I can not teach things based on what I come from because all need to find their path but to experiment must be the way to go. Thats the way we learn as children when we learn how to walk. No adult tells his kids they need to put one foot before the other. As a child you just do it. As an adult on trombone who tries to progress the greatest obstacles can be what you already know. That's why I throw myself on the trumpet, french horn and the tuba. I've found that to try to move certain muscles by will is very difficult. To me I need a different mindset, get a different picture to be able to do the change.

I have bought several minus-one records from Thomann with classical music for trumpet, french horn and tuba and have started to learn from them. Since I could not se all the pages before I bought I got a few surprises when the music arrived. Some of it is too difficult. Maybe I can play them on the trombone until I get better. I also bought the sixth ed. of "Jazz fake book" both for C instruments and Bb instruments with music files. I thought I could try to start to improvise a little on flugelhorn and trumpet too and maybe add even the valve trombone.
I'm still improving on all instruments, but of course progress is now slowing down as I'm getting better. I wonder if I ever will be as good as to sit in a community orchestra on any of those instruments. The people that know me will whish I rather switched to trombone This have me thinking I need to find a new group if I want to ever play these instruments in an orchestra. I need to find a context where not many people know me. That's a challenge after Corona if I decide to continue with this doubling. How to find the right community orchestra?

/Tom

[imsevimse]

I decided to take this pandemic as an opportunity to learn the other brass instruments and see where that road lead me.

This is an update

After a lot of practice on trombone solely from March to June I got this idea to learn all brass. I had an old french horn in Bb that belonged to my grandfather. I tried that one and I found I could play rather easy. I then decided to get a better horn and found a Conn 8D. As this worked a lot better than I could imagine right out of the box I decided to have a go with the other brass I always wanted to play.

My experience is the fingering on valved instruments is not a big problem. To play the fingering as fast as I need to play melodies compared to what it takes to play them with the slide on a trombone was not too difficult.
To play as fast as my goal, as to be able to play in context where I used to play trombone will be a real challenge. As everyone knows the parts of valved instruments make good use of their valves. At the moment I'm not sure my fingers will ever be able to move the valves that fast. I do my very best but my hands are 57 years old and I think my forefinger is a bit slow It could maybe be a beginning arthritis?

I now start every day with 30 minutes on the trombone and continue with 30 minutes of french horn. After this
I play a minus one cd with 21 songs in grade 3-5 on the trumpet. This also takes about 30 minutes. After this I play flugelhorn, bass trombone and/or tuba for about 30 minutes.

I have found I need to play all instruments every day, at least at this moment in progression, because one important issue is to be able to spot and learn the differences when I switch. The more I switch the faster I will learn to find the new instrument. The faster I found the "right spot" on each emboushure where everything feels "just right" the better because the time when I transit to the new instruments is where I'm most vulnerable. This is when my emboushure is hurt most. After I have found the emboushure on the new horn everything becomes more easy and a short recovery starts while still playing. My goal is to be able to reduce that time of transition. To do this I make notes of all progress and what to think of when I transit. What my emboushure needs to do. What the angle need to be on every instrunent, where my jaw needs to be. In short I try to paint a picture that describes my playing on every instrument when it works. I continually update those texts as I progress. I test this now and then to check if I can just grab any instrument with no time to transit - with no warmup between instruments.

The test is:
After doing something else a couple of hours I take the instruments in random order and play one song on each. Instead of playing scales and to fine tune while playing I remind myself the pictures I have drawn and just start to play. I play everything without sheet music of course since that would make me focus on the "wrong" aspects. It is just the emboushure transition that is on focus.

/Tom

[imsevimse]

Update:

After I started to double more frequently and added trumpet, flugelhorn and french horn to trombone and bass trombone I have discovered that I need to practice every type of instrument each day or else I loose what I learn.

Time is limited so I need patience to learn many instruments. At the moment I play trombone/bass trombone and french horn about 30 minutes a day and then I play 50 minutes of trumpet play along grade 3-5.

Trumpet is what is most difficult so I put more time there. My plan Is to add the tuba later, but I need to get more strength on the trumpet first.

For a while I focused only on trumpet, because that was where I had most trouble especially over the staff. I started to practice high at least up to 8va That lead to I lost my high register on trombone.

What I learned is I need to play each instrument in a way it does not negatively affect the techniqe of another instrument and what's very obvious; that emboushure is something I need to earn every day on every instrument. What helps is to practice all the instruments correct and that could mean to practice them gently. Then I mean to practice in a smart way to not get hurt. All the emboushures can then be helped from practice on any of the instruments, but I can't skip an instrument. If I skip the one I think I master unpleasant surprises may happen when suddenly some things does not work anymore. It was a bad mistake I experienced a couple of months ago when I had neglected the trombone. I then had to repair the trombone emboushure. It got me a bit worried too.

What I've learned that I think is important is all my emboushures need to be checked and earned every day.

/Tom

[Savio]

How did this journey affect your trombone playing Tom? Better or worse than before you started doubling? Or fripling...
I wonder to double on tenor, but my high register is poor.

Leif

[baileyman]

It seems a lot of my practice is trying to physically remember what I did yesterday for today. I'm glad that's only for one horn!

[imsevimse]

How did this journey affect your trombone playing Tom? Better or worse than before you started doubling? Or fripling...
I wonder to double on tenor, but my high register is poor.

Leif

As long as I regularly practice trombone the other mouthpieces/instruments does not negatively affect my trombone playing.

What I find strange is I had great difficulties to double when I first started. I started to play trombone 1975 and began to double on alto in 1982 and that was very hard work. It was so hard I put the alto back in the case and did not pick it up again until 1984 when I studied at the Royal Accademy of Music in Stockholm. In 1988 I had a bass on loan and the next year I bought my first bass.

I had hard time to make the different mouthpieces to work at first. It took years to be able to combine both the tenor, alto and bass.

Now that doubling is easy compared to the doubling I do today. I'm getting better, but the trumpet is a challenge.

/Tom

[Savio]

Thanks Tom, some seems to do doubling so easy but I think most people have worked at it like you have done! I tried my pbone tenor today and both high and low register is worse than my bass trombone. Also everything else especially articulation. Sound is in fact ok. So I think doubling isn't for me.

Strange thing about the pbone. Played it some months ago and the slide was so bad. It has been in the bag and today it suddenly was better than ever. Strange?

Leif

[BGuttman]

...

Strange thing about the pbone. Played it some months ago and the slide was so bad. It has been in the bag and today it suddenly was better than ever. Strange?

Leif

The pBone (and other plastic trombones) seem to work best with no lube or water on the slide. Letting it dry out for an extended period probably got rid of some of the stuff that was slowing it down.

[imsevimse]

Thanks Tom, some seems to do doubling so easy but I think most people have worked at it like you have done! I tried my pbone tenor today and both high and low register is worse than my bass trombone. Also everything else especially articulation. Sound is in fact ok. So I think doubling isn't for me.

Strange thing about the pbone. Played it some months ago and the slide was so bad. It has been in the bag and today it suddenly was better than ever. Strange?

Leif

My experience says it is possible to learn to play different sizes with practice, even though it does not work at all in the beginning. It can be learned as everything else. Since you are a basstrombone player first, the right order might be to start practice sessions on bass and later switch to the tenor.
I also think you should not play as much as to get tired on bass before you switch.
In the beginning I felt I had to rest between instruments before the switch. My experience also tells me I should not play if the lip/mouthpiece feel is "wrong". If the feel is wrong it probably is. Therefore it has been my concern to be accurate to find the new emboushure before I start to play a lot, and to never use much pressure on the lips when learning the new mouthpiece. At least until the contact with new mouthpiece size ifeels comfortable and has started to work. Now my lips can take a little pressure, but in the beginning any pressure ruined everything.
I'm no believer in a complete "non pressure" emboushure but when I learn a new mouthpiece I think it is nessecary to not use pressure or else I notice I might ruin the other emboushures. I have a lot of experience from different sizes (rims and cups) of trombone mouthpieces (alto, tenor, bass). I use the same method now when I learn french horn and trumpet. It is a slow process but I' feel I'm getting better.

/Tom