Friday, January 29, 2010

IMEA Conference: Day 2 Clinic 1

After a long afternoon in the 408, dubbed the "tech" room. I heard the Libertyville Wind Ensemble last night it was amazing. More on all that later...

"Help for Your Young Horn Players" Clinicians: Rachel Maxwell and Meghan Fulton
It's 8AM and I'm very excited to be in my first clinic of day 2, this one is "Help for your Horn Players" by clinicians Rachel Maxwell and Meghan Fulton from Oswego. They brought their JH 6-8 horns(there's at least 16 of them) They sounded great during their warm up. This will be a good one!

Talking about right hand position, put masking tape in the bell to help them fix hand position. Great way to help them get good intonation from the start. I like that one. I have a handout on this so I won't type it word for word, but the tricks will go right here. No need to type needlessly right?

I didn't know this tip either, when playing stopped horn always play on the F side, no trigger. Want the kids to have better accuracy? Stay on them breathing through the corners. Get them mirrors and "free buzz" to make sure both lips are buzzing.  Good for all Brass players put the shank of the mouthpiece to teach the openness needed to play with a more beautiful tone. I'll be using this. To set before we play try this: Play pitch, off face, play pitch...do this ten times to create that sense of attack. "Slow motion" playing I wonder how my kids would adapt to that...is subdivision an issue with this? They also use the B.E.R.P. a lot I remember having one as trumpet player, but I didn't care for it. Might worth checking out. Another way to do that is leadpipe buzzing, I had heard of that one.

When teaching tonguing put your tongue on top teeth and try blow, you have to move it. Help them understand tonguing in that way. "Toh" to "Doh" syllables for horns. This seems to me to promote that open throat. She also uses the older kids as teachers, I mean 8th graders helping 6th graders! I love having my students work that way. When empyting spit turn to the right...

Starting kids on double horn makes sense, but if they start on a single F that's ok. Switch them to double as soon as they overblowing it and have an octave range. Note to self: Check out the packet on tuning individual slides. Where to place horn in the ensemble, that I can use! I'm always moving my horn section around. I've been validated, by this teacher(she says horns in front of saxes!!) Help them both: saxes learn to blend, horns get help hearing their pitches. You know I'd forgotten about Fansler's "Horn Shields" maybe I'll construct some for my bands.

I'm glad these ladies have their email addresses listed. Maybe I can recruit for the tech side. They must be cool they wore t-shirts to the clinic that says "French Horn Hero" with flames and such. Time to shut my computer and find out where I'm off to next!

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