Sometimes starting a note on the horn can sometimes feel like a battle. Many times even professional horn players tense up, overthink, or approach their first notes with anxiety. This tension often leads to a "horn face"—a tight, strained embouchure that makes producing a clear, relaxed sound difficult. What if there was a simple exercise, inspired by archery, that could help horn players develop a relaxed approach to beginning notes? The technique of practicing "hay bales" o

Every musician has met the passage that refuses to settle. You slow it down. You loop it. You mark the part. It improves for a day, then falls apart when the tempo comes back. Backwards practice is one of the most reliable ways to fix that. The idea is simple: take a difficult passage, break it into small chunks, and learn it from the end toward the beginning. Instead of always starting strong and hoping the hard part survives, you build the passage so every new piece leads i

Range and flexibility often improve fastest when the exercise is simple enough to repeat, but rich enough to reveal problems. The “elevator” is exactly that kind of exercise. On brass instruments, the elevator is a harmonic series exercise where you move up and down through the partials without changing valves, slide position, or fingering. You ride the natural notes available in one harmonic series, like an elevator stopping at different floors. It is simple on paper. In pra

Warmups often get a bad rap as repetitive, mechanical routines meant only to "warm up" your embouchure. But what if warmups could be much more? What if they became your first line of defense against technical and expressive challenges in your playing? I invite you to reframe your warmups not as mere preparation but as active tools for diagnosing and solving problems in your music. Rethinking the Purpose of Warmups Many musicians approach warmups with the goal of simply gettin

Playing the French horn can be a demanding physical and mental task. Tension in the face, jaw, and body often limits a player’s ability to produce a smooth, lyrical sound. Integrating relaxation techniques with vocal exercises offers a powerful way to ease these tensions and improve overall horn playing. Using the vocal exercises of G. Concone alongside specific relaxation methods helps me (and can help you) to perform with greater ease and expressiveness. Why Relaxation Matt