There is no reason not to take a full breath- it's free, it costs nothing!
- Arnold Jacobs
Breathing In
Breathing to play the horn is different from breathing in normal life. The average person uses only one tenth of their lung capacity for each breath while advanced horn players must be able to utilize most of their lung capacity. The rhythm of breathing is also different from what we experience in everyday life. A horn player often must breathe more quickly and (due to the resistance of the instrument) expel air more slowly. Additionally, due to the large volume of air and lung pressure necessary for louder dynamics, a horn player’s respiratory muscles must be conditioned to support the air column.
From the time they are beginners, horn players should develop the habit of utilizing most or all of their lung capacity with each breath. This is accomplished by breathing to the abdomen and imagining the torso inflating from the bottom up. Your abdomen should expand slightly as you inhale.
The ideal breath while playing horn is almost identical to a yawn. Abdominal breathing also happens naturally during strenuous exercise, sleeping, or when taking a breath you intend to hold for a long time (as when diving into the deep end of a swimming pool). Young children and animals take deep, abdominal breaths naturally. Lying supine on the floor is an excellent way to experience diaphragmatic breathing.
Try to inhale with minimal friction by dropping the jaw and keeping the throat open (think "ha" or "ho"). Breathe along the tongue, not the roof of the mouth. Imagine the air going to the abdomen rather than allowing it to be trapped in the mouth.
Concentrate on the sound made by the air as it enters the throat. It shouldn't be a high whistle, but should sound deep and resonant. Try breathing in with your thumb tucked and four fingers straight across your mouth to notice the difference between a "high" breath and a "low" breath.
Make sure to breathe all the way to the top of the lungs, not just the abdominal area. Let the air lead the expansion of the lungs. You shouldn't have to consciously expand the lungs to let the air in.
It’s important that the upper body stays relaxed at the end of the breath. Whatever level of tension you have in your body at the end of the breath is the amount of tension you will be carrying as you begin to play. With this in mind, aiming for 90% of lung capacity on your largest breath may lead to a better result than pushing for 100%.
While it’s inevitable that the shoulders will move slightly during a deep inhale, it’s a good idea to think about keeping them down. This helps keep the upper body relaxed and allows for a relatively frictionless breath. It's helpful to observe your inhalation in a mirror to see if your shoulders and upper body are noticeably tensing. Imagining someone pushing down on your shoulders (or asking a friend to do so) as you breathe can be helpful.
It's helpful to practice breathing exercises away from the instrument to focus on the process and sensation of the deep, abdominal respiration needed for playing a brass instrument. For some people, breathing while lying down is a more natural position to experience abdominal breathing.
When performing or practicing with the instrument, avoid getting overly analytical about the mechanics of breathing. Rather, think about the breath as a feature of the music and intuitively take the kind of breath that suits the music about to be played.
Moving Air Through the Horn
Because it is so difficult to visualize the internal muscles when breathing, an extremely helpful analogue to the way a brass player uses air is the way a string player uses a bow. A string player adjusts the intensity and pressure of the bow to create their desired sound and phrasing. A brass player uses the air column in the same way. A supported air column also helps a brass player change more easily from one register to another, perform a smooth legato and develop a light, flexible staccato.
Blow from the area behind your navel. There's no need to consciously tighten muscles while playing (though a slight firming of the abdomen can be helpful in the high register).
Avoid any internal contraction in the abdomen or throat. Internal tension of any kind inhibits airflow and resonance.
Move the air past the lips (the point of vibration) and through the entire horn. Think of swinging at a ball and following through past the point of contact.
Try to eliminate any significant gap between the inhale and the start of the note.
Habits to Avoid
One of the worst habits a horn player can develop is swelling or “ballooning” notes either at the beginning of an attack or during legato playing. This is also referred to as the “twa-twa” effect. This habit usually develops in beginners as they are getting used to blowing past the initial resistance of the horn when beginning notes. In advanced players (including many professionals), this habit serves as an unconscious way of “testing” the note with weaker air before committing to it fully. Unless there is a music reason to swell the attack, the beginning of a note should generally have as much presence as the sound immediately after the attack. When working on long tones, imagine the sound of an organ to practice this effect. Notice how the speed of the air affects the presence of the note. When slurring through valve changes, concentrate on moving your air past the back pressure of the rerouted tubing. Looking for smoother valve combinations and pressing the keys more gently can also help smooth out slurs.
Closing off the airway with the throat muscles while attempting to blow out (also known as the Valsalva Maneuver) is another problematic habit. This habit often manifests due to anxiety over exposed entrances. A helpful antidote is to move the air to the lips, not the tongue.
BREATH CONTROL
How do we adjust this air column? It is done neither with the lips, whose sole function is to vibrate like a double reed, nor with the diaphragm, which only maintains constant pressure. We are going to use the phonatory organs, principally the tongue and glottis (the opening between the vocal cords). It may seem difficult to control the opening of the glottis. In fact this can be done very easily by using vowels, as in speaking or singing. We shall do it essentially with the tongue, the most flexible and mobile of all organs. Its importance in producing sounds is so obvious that the word is also used to mean language.
The vowels can be roughly grouped in three categories :
Low: "ah" (as in awe)
Middle: "eh" (as in bed)
High: "ee" (as in machine).
Each of these vowels (ah, eh, ee) is produced by a particular position of the tongue in the buccal cavity. If we take the vowel "ah" as a starting point, the tongue is almost flat in the mouth. In this position, the two resonators formed by the mouth and pharynx have the same volume.
When we proceed from "ah" and then from "eh" to "ee", the tongue gradually rises towards the palate, reducing the volume of the mouth and increasing that of the pharynx. The use of vowels in playing serves two purposes - it increases pressure in the high register and at the same time it opens the pharynx more widely.
The different positions of the tongue in pronouncing vowels and the volumes of the resonators in each position. We shall therefore use these vowels with these exercises in flexibility in all the registers, taking "ah" as a starting point for the low register and "ee" for the high. The change from one vowel to the other will be made gradually and imperceptibly via the mid-vowel "eh".
In the high register it is also essential to think of these vowels as though they were being sung falsetto. This has the effect of contracting the uvula and thus closing the nasal fossae. It saves energy and gives the air column extra pressure. In addition, in this action, the soft palate lifts, increasing the volume of the pharynx.
The tongue should be behind the teeth. It acts as a valve, releasing the air at each emission. The movement must be quick and flexible, particularly for staccato. This movement of the tip of the tongue must therefore be a downward one, and not from front to back.
In the pronunciation of vowels, the tongue is raised towards the palate, but the lip remains motionless behind the teeth. In falsetto singing, the uvula prevents the air from entering the nasal fossae. Start each of these exercises by singing. This will give you experience of faster and clearer performance by vowel change, particularly for trills and wide intervals.
Continue the exercises with the mouthpiece alone, observing yourself in a mirror. Find the ideal angle between the mouthpiece and your lips, giving the greatest vibration. The facial expression shows what the performer feel when he plays. A frown, and looking upwards during a rising phrase often show a contracted throat (this can be remedied by changing to falsetto). It is by concentrating on yourself that, through breath control, you will gradually achieve more relaxed, flexible, precise playing, opening the way to a more expressive performance.
from Gunther Schuller: Horn Technique
Inhaling should be done, especially at phrase beginnings, in a very relaxed yet lung-filling manner. The hasty, jerking breath tends to tighten neck, shoulder, and stomach muscles.
In general (and this is one of the most important factors in correct breathing) the taking in of air should always occur in time to the music being performed. This will insure relaxed inhaling, and will give to the breathing process a musicality specifically identified with the music being played. After a while, it gives the player an instinctive sense of timing in the several coordinated actions necessary prior to attacking a note, which will enable him almost to guarantee a note.
The end of the inhaling process should be as closely connected as possible to the beginning of the breathing out of air. Both inhaling and exhaling should be thought of as a single uninterrupted act.
Hesitating between breathing in and expelling the air again serves no purpose other than to tighten various body muscles which should remain in a state of "relaxed tension" for free, natural playing. There is one exception, however. In the upper register, most players on an initial attack like to hesitate for the purpose of tightening the diaphragm into a strong supporting position. However, I wish to emphasize that this momentary hesitation is measured in fractions of a second, and is not long enough to choke back the air stream, unnecessarily tightening the neck and shoulder muscles.
At this point I must digress for a while to speak about the role of the 'diaphragm' in breathing. This term is bandied about a great deal, but in general many teachers and players still do not properly understand the nature and function of the diaphragm.
The diaphragm is a muscle which is situated in a horizontal position directly above the waist, and is shaped somewhat ike a shallow round tent. The '"dome" of this tent is flattened out when we inhale, thus allowing the lower lungs to fill with air. And like all muscles, the diaphragm muscle, once contracted or expanded, must return to its original position and natural degree of tension. It is this natural tendency of the diaphragm to contract, after having been expanded, that is the prime factor in achieving what we call "breath control". The diaphragm is the only muscle with which the release of air from the lungs can be controlled, since the diaphragm is the only major muscle touching the lower lungs. This is also why breathing by filling only the upper part of the lungs(chest breathing) is dangerous in horn playing. There are no muscles in the chest which can exert pressure on the lungs with relaxed control. Therefore the air issues from the lungs in an uncontrolled haphazard manner. In horn playing the process of inhaling and exhaling is actually a more or less intensified version of normal everyday breathing, which even the casual observer will note as a slight alternating in-and-out of the abdominal muscles.
In horn playing these movements are larger and more intense. But beyond this intensification, it is well to remember that the basic procedure is exactly the same as in normal breathing.
In normal inhaling only the lower section of the lungs is filled. The diaphragm muscle (tangent to the lungs) and adjacent abdominal muscles are thus expanded. The natural contraction of these muscles applies gentle pressures on the lungs, thereby expelling the air. In horn playing, since largeamounts of air are necessary, all these processes are magnified.
1) The entire lungs (not just the lower part) are filled with air. However, at this point I must emphasize strongly that one of the prerequisites of correct breathing is that the lower part of the lungs is filled first. Otherwise "chest breathing" will result. I have found that the suggestion to breath along the bottom of the mouth (or tongue) helps students to fill the lower lungs first. Conversely, I have noticed that breathing along the roof of the mouth leads easily to chest breathing.
2) The diaphragm and abdominal muscles expand considerably more than in ordinary breathing, to the extent that one can feel expansion almost around the entire circle of the waist, including the back. This is what has led to the popular misconception that the 'diaphragm' is a circular ring-like muscle around the waist.
3) The entire process from the moment of inhaling to the expulsion of most of the air takes
correspondingly longer than in ordinary breathing.
I would also like to point out that the intake of air required for horn playing is so considerable, that this inhaling does (and should) become audible- -as when sucking in air. Often students feel that this is wrong and try to inhibit this audible intake of air. It stands to reason that if the lungs are to be filled, and if the inhaling process is to take only a short moment, the 'rush' of air through the lips will produce a sound. Students should therefore not shrink from this, and should rather cultivate reasonably audible inhaling. As I have said, in actual playing, if the breathing is musically timed and not too jerky, it will not disrupt musical phrasing unduly. The breath will become a part of the music.
We have now inhaled and are ready to expel the air into the mouthpiece and horn. As in normal exhaling, the abdominal and diaphragm muscles will return to their original state of relaxed tension. For purposes of horn playing, however, an extra degree of control must be imposed. Different phrases will require different ways of expelling air, in large to small amounts and at slow to fast speeds. We can now really appreciate the importance of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, since they alone can control pressure on the lungs and, therefore, the amount and speed with which air is expelled. These muscles act as a kind of bellows. The return of the muscles to their normal positions can, in other words, be delayed or accelerated, thus affecting in a parallel manner the flow of air into the horn through lips and mouthpiece. At first, these muscles will be found to be weak, too weak at any rate to exercise absolute control over the flow of air. But over a period of months, with practice and conscious application of these muscles, they will gain in strength and control.
So far I have discussed only one aspect of the breathing out process. There is, however, another area which is part of the overall process of producing and controlling a horn tone. That is the control exercised upon the air stream by the embouchure. If the diaphragm is the motor and driving power in this process, the embouchure can be said to act as a rudder or steering device. It directs the air and controls the speed with which the air enters the mouthpiece. Both of these factors control the speed of vibration in the lips and the horn, and in turn the pitch and tone quality. If we think of the lungs as the source of air, the embouchure (and at a further stage the horn itself) represent not only the destination of the air but a wall of resistant and controlling pressure.
The principle involved is a very simple one: the flow of a steady unchanging stream of air fed by the source (the lungs) can be increased by closing the opening through which it issues (the embouchure), just as, in a stream, a sudden narrowing of the river bed will cause a relative acceleration in the flow of water.
As the lungs gradually empty, the stream of air thins out. To compensate for this loss of air, the diaphragm muscle has to increase its pressure on the lungs, so that the flow of air may be kept steady and undiminished. If it is not thus sustained, the tone will naturally decrease in volume and probably in pitch. This is why students (and even professionals) find the ends of long phrases harder to control than the middle. The degree of pressure exerted by the diaphragm and embouchure is dictated by the ear, which is presumably listening the sound as it is produced. The more sensitive the ear, the more demands it will place upon the diaphragm and embouchure.
The air stream, and in turn, the tone, are also controlled by another organ, the larynx, which functions as still another element in this four-way chain of pressure I am attempting to describe. The larynx (situated in the trachea) is used in horn playing almost to the degree that it is used in singing. And of all the points of control I have mentioned it is probably the most versatile. The larynx is a valve-like organ which at one extreme can shut off the air from the lungs completely, at another (when open) can let the air rush out entirely unrestrained, and can, of course, adopt all gradations between these two extremes. To illustrate its function briefly: in playing a loud sustained note the larynx must be wide open; on a very soft sustained note it must close sufficiently (again the ear is the final judge) to slow down the flow of air to the proper volume. The larynx's other important function is to end a note. This is achieved by closing this valve still further to the point where the air stream being allowed to pass is not sufficient to vibrate the lips and horn. This feeling can be easily practised by singing a sustained "ahh" syllable and gradually choking the sound off with the larynx. Obviously, the degree of abruptness with which a note is to be stopped can be easily controlled through a parallel abruptness in the closing of the larynx.
Breathing to play the horn is different from breathing in normal life. The average person uses only one tenth of their lung capacity for each breath while advanced horn players must be able to utilize most of their lung capacity. The rhythm of breathing is also different from what we experience in everyday life. A horn player often must breathe more quickly and (due to the resistance of the instrument) expel air more slowly. Additionally, due to the large volume of air and lung pressure necessary for louder dynamics, a horn player’s respiratory muscles must be conditioned to support the air column.
From the time they are beginners, horn players should develop the habit of utilizing most or all of their lung capacity with each breath. This is accomplished by breathing to the abdomen and imagining the torso inflating from the bottom up. Your abdomen should expand slightly as you inhale.
The ideal breath while playing horn is almost identical to a yawn. Abdominal breathing also happens naturally during strenuous exercise, sleeping, or when taking a breath you intend to hold for a long time (as when diving into the deep end of a swimming pool). Young children and animals take deep, abdominal breaths naturally. Lying supine on the floor is an excellent way to experience diaphragmatic breathing.
Try to inhale with minimal friction by dropping the jaw and keeping the throat open (think "ha" or "ho"). Breathe along the tongue, not the roof of the mouth. Imagine the air going to the abdomen rather than allowing it to be trapped in the mouth.
Concentrate on the sound made by the air as it enters the throat. It shouldn't be a high whistle, but should sound deep and resonant. Try breathing in with your thumb tucked and four fingers straight across your mouth to notice the difference between a "high" breath and a "low" breath.
Make sure to breathe all the way to the top of the lungs, not just the abdominal area. Let the air lead the expansion of the lungs. You shouldn't have to consciously expand the lungs to let the air in.
It’s important that the upper body stays relaxed at the end of the breath. Whatever level of tension you have in your body at the end of the breath is the amount of tension you will be carrying as you begin to play. With this in mind, aiming for 90% of lung capacity on your largest breath may lead to a better result than pushing for 100%.
While it’s inevitable that the shoulders will move slightly during a deep inhale, it’s a good idea to think about keeping them down. This helps keep the upper body relaxed and allows for a relatively frictionless breath. It's helpful to observe your inhalation in a mirror to see if your shoulders and upper body are noticeably tensing. Imagining someone pushing down on your shoulders (or asking a friend to do so) as you breathe can be helpful.
It's helpful to practice breathing exercises away from the instrument to focus on the process and sensation of the deep, abdominal respiration needed for playing a brass instrument. For some people, breathing while lying down is a more natural position to experience abdominal breathing.
When performing or practicing with the instrument, avoid getting overly analytical about the mechanics of breathing. Rather, think about the breath as a feature of the music and intuitively take the kind of breath that suits the music about to be played.
Moving Air Through the Horn
Because it is so difficult to visualize the internal muscles when breathing, an extremely helpful analogue to the way a brass player uses air is the way a string player uses a bow. A string player adjusts the intensity and pressure of the bow to create their desired sound and phrasing. A brass player uses the air column in the same way. A supported air column also helps a brass player change more easily from one register to another, perform a smooth legato and develop a light, flexible staccato.
Blow from the area behind your navel. There's no need to consciously tighten muscles while playing (though a slight firming of the abdomen can be helpful in the high register).
Avoid any internal contraction in the abdomen or throat. Internal tension of any kind inhibits airflow and resonance.
Move the air past the lips (the point of vibration) and through the entire horn. Think of swinging at a ball and following through past the point of contact.
Try to eliminate any significant gap between the inhale and the start of the note.
Habits to Avoid
One of the worst habits a horn player can develop is swelling or “ballooning” notes either at the beginning of an attack or during legato playing. This is also referred to as the “twa-twa” effect. This habit usually develops in beginners as they are getting used to blowing past the initial resistance of the horn when beginning notes. In advanced players (including many professionals), this habit serves as an unconscious way of “testing” the note with weaker air before committing to it fully. Unless there is a music reason to swell the attack, the beginning of a note should generally have as much presence as the sound immediately after the attack. When working on long tones, imagine the sound of an organ to practice this effect. Notice how the speed of the air affects the presence of the note. When slurring through valve changes, concentrate on moving your air past the back pressure of the rerouted tubing. Looking for smoother valve combinations and pressing the keys more gently can also help smooth out slurs.
Closing off the airway with the throat muscles while attempting to blow out (also known as the Valsalva Maneuver) is another problematic habit. This habit often manifests due to anxiety over exposed entrances. A helpful antidote is to move the air to the lips, not the tongue.
BREATH CONTROL
How do we adjust this air column? It is done neither with the lips, whose sole function is to vibrate like a double reed, nor with the diaphragm, which only maintains constant pressure. We are going to use the phonatory organs, principally the tongue and glottis (the opening between the vocal cords). It may seem difficult to control the opening of the glottis. In fact this can be done very easily by using vowels, as in speaking or singing. We shall do it essentially with the tongue, the most flexible and mobile of all organs. Its importance in producing sounds is so obvious that the word is also used to mean language.
The vowels can be roughly grouped in three categories :
Low: "ah" (as in awe)
Middle: "eh" (as in bed)
High: "ee" (as in machine).
Each of these vowels (ah, eh, ee) is produced by a particular position of the tongue in the buccal cavity. If we take the vowel "ah" as a starting point, the tongue is almost flat in the mouth. In this position, the two resonators formed by the mouth and pharynx have the same volume.
When we proceed from "ah" and then from "eh" to "ee", the tongue gradually rises towards the palate, reducing the volume of the mouth and increasing that of the pharynx. The use of vowels in playing serves two purposes - it increases pressure in the high register and at the same time it opens the pharynx more widely.
The different positions of the tongue in pronouncing vowels and the volumes of the resonators in each position. We shall therefore use these vowels with these exercises in flexibility in all the registers, taking "ah" as a starting point for the low register and "ee" for the high. The change from one vowel to the other will be made gradually and imperceptibly via the mid-vowel "eh".
In the high register it is also essential to think of these vowels as though they were being sung falsetto. This has the effect of contracting the uvula and thus closing the nasal fossae. It saves energy and gives the air column extra pressure. In addition, in this action, the soft palate lifts, increasing the volume of the pharynx.
The tongue should be behind the teeth. It acts as a valve, releasing the air at each emission. The movement must be quick and flexible, particularly for staccato. This movement of the tip of the tongue must therefore be a downward one, and not from front to back.
In the pronunciation of vowels, the tongue is raised towards the palate, but the lip remains motionless behind the teeth. In falsetto singing, the uvula prevents the air from entering the nasal fossae. Start each of these exercises by singing. This will give you experience of faster and clearer performance by vowel change, particularly for trills and wide intervals.
Continue the exercises with the mouthpiece alone, observing yourself in a mirror. Find the ideal angle between the mouthpiece and your lips, giving the greatest vibration. The facial expression shows what the performer feel when he plays. A frown, and looking upwards during a rising phrase often show a contracted throat (this can be remedied by changing to falsetto). It is by concentrating on yourself that, through breath control, you will gradually achieve more relaxed, flexible, precise playing, opening the way to a more expressive performance.
from Gunther Schuller: Horn Technique
Inhaling should be done, especially at phrase beginnings, in a very relaxed yet lung-filling manner. The hasty, jerking breath tends to tighten neck, shoulder, and stomach muscles.
In general (and this is one of the most important factors in correct breathing) the taking in of air should always occur in time to the music being performed. This will insure relaxed inhaling, and will give to the breathing process a musicality specifically identified with the music being played. After a while, it gives the player an instinctive sense of timing in the several coordinated actions necessary prior to attacking a note, which will enable him almost to guarantee a note.
The end of the inhaling process should be as closely connected as possible to the beginning of the breathing out of air. Both inhaling and exhaling should be thought of as a single uninterrupted act.
Hesitating between breathing in and expelling the air again serves no purpose other than to tighten various body muscles which should remain in a state of "relaxed tension" for free, natural playing. There is one exception, however. In the upper register, most players on an initial attack like to hesitate for the purpose of tightening the diaphragm into a strong supporting position. However, I wish to emphasize that this momentary hesitation is measured in fractions of a second, and is not long enough to choke back the air stream, unnecessarily tightening the neck and shoulder muscles.
At this point I must digress for a while to speak about the role of the 'diaphragm' in breathing. This term is bandied about a great deal, but in general many teachers and players still do not properly understand the nature and function of the diaphragm.
The diaphragm is a muscle which is situated in a horizontal position directly above the waist, and is shaped somewhat ike a shallow round tent. The '"dome" of this tent is flattened out when we inhale, thus allowing the lower lungs to fill with air. And like all muscles, the diaphragm muscle, once contracted or expanded, must return to its original position and natural degree of tension. It is this natural tendency of the diaphragm to contract, after having been expanded, that is the prime factor in achieving what we call "breath control". The diaphragm is the only muscle with which the release of air from the lungs can be controlled, since the diaphragm is the only major muscle touching the lower lungs. This is also why breathing by filling only the upper part of the lungs(chest breathing) is dangerous in horn playing. There are no muscles in the chest which can exert pressure on the lungs with relaxed control. Therefore the air issues from the lungs in an uncontrolled haphazard manner. In horn playing the process of inhaling and exhaling is actually a more or less intensified version of normal everyday breathing, which even the casual observer will note as a slight alternating in-and-out of the abdominal muscles.
In horn playing these movements are larger and more intense. But beyond this intensification, it is well to remember that the basic procedure is exactly the same as in normal breathing.
In normal inhaling only the lower section of the lungs is filled. The diaphragm muscle (tangent to the lungs) and adjacent abdominal muscles are thus expanded. The natural contraction of these muscles applies gentle pressures on the lungs, thereby expelling the air. In horn playing, since largeamounts of air are necessary, all these processes are magnified.
1) The entire lungs (not just the lower part) are filled with air. However, at this point I must emphasize strongly that one of the prerequisites of correct breathing is that the lower part of the lungs is filled first. Otherwise "chest breathing" will result. I have found that the suggestion to breath along the bottom of the mouth (or tongue) helps students to fill the lower lungs first. Conversely, I have noticed that breathing along the roof of the mouth leads easily to chest breathing.
2) The diaphragm and abdominal muscles expand considerably more than in ordinary breathing, to the extent that one can feel expansion almost around the entire circle of the waist, including the back. This is what has led to the popular misconception that the 'diaphragm' is a circular ring-like muscle around the waist.
3) The entire process from the moment of inhaling to the expulsion of most of the air takes
correspondingly longer than in ordinary breathing.
I would also like to point out that the intake of air required for horn playing is so considerable, that this inhaling does (and should) become audible- -as when sucking in air. Often students feel that this is wrong and try to inhibit this audible intake of air. It stands to reason that if the lungs are to be filled, and if the inhaling process is to take only a short moment, the 'rush' of air through the lips will produce a sound. Students should therefore not shrink from this, and should rather cultivate reasonably audible inhaling. As I have said, in actual playing, if the breathing is musically timed and not too jerky, it will not disrupt musical phrasing unduly. The breath will become a part of the music.
We have now inhaled and are ready to expel the air into the mouthpiece and horn. As in normal exhaling, the abdominal and diaphragm muscles will return to their original state of relaxed tension. For purposes of horn playing, however, an extra degree of control must be imposed. Different phrases will require different ways of expelling air, in large to small amounts and at slow to fast speeds. We can now really appreciate the importance of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, since they alone can control pressure on the lungs and, therefore, the amount and speed with which air is expelled. These muscles act as a kind of bellows. The return of the muscles to their normal positions can, in other words, be delayed or accelerated, thus affecting in a parallel manner the flow of air into the horn through lips and mouthpiece. At first, these muscles will be found to be weak, too weak at any rate to exercise absolute control over the flow of air. But over a period of months, with practice and conscious application of these muscles, they will gain in strength and control.
So far I have discussed only one aspect of the breathing out process. There is, however, another area which is part of the overall process of producing and controlling a horn tone. That is the control exercised upon the air stream by the embouchure. If the diaphragm is the motor and driving power in this process, the embouchure can be said to act as a rudder or steering device. It directs the air and controls the speed with which the air enters the mouthpiece. Both of these factors control the speed of vibration in the lips and the horn, and in turn the pitch and tone quality. If we think of the lungs as the source of air, the embouchure (and at a further stage the horn itself) represent not only the destination of the air but a wall of resistant and controlling pressure.
The principle involved is a very simple one: the flow of a steady unchanging stream of air fed by the source (the lungs) can be increased by closing the opening through which it issues (the embouchure), just as, in a stream, a sudden narrowing of the river bed will cause a relative acceleration in the flow of water.
As the lungs gradually empty, the stream of air thins out. To compensate for this loss of air, the diaphragm muscle has to increase its pressure on the lungs, so that the flow of air may be kept steady and undiminished. If it is not thus sustained, the tone will naturally decrease in volume and probably in pitch. This is why students (and even professionals) find the ends of long phrases harder to control than the middle. The degree of pressure exerted by the diaphragm and embouchure is dictated by the ear, which is presumably listening the sound as it is produced. The more sensitive the ear, the more demands it will place upon the diaphragm and embouchure.
The air stream, and in turn, the tone, are also controlled by another organ, the larynx, which functions as still another element in this four-way chain of pressure I am attempting to describe. The larynx (situated in the trachea) is used in horn playing almost to the degree that it is used in singing. And of all the points of control I have mentioned it is probably the most versatile. The larynx is a valve-like organ which at one extreme can shut off the air from the lungs completely, at another (when open) can let the air rush out entirely unrestrained, and can, of course, adopt all gradations between these two extremes. To illustrate its function briefly: in playing a loud sustained note the larynx must be wide open; on a very soft sustained note it must close sufficiently (again the ear is the final judge) to slow down the flow of air to the proper volume. The larynx's other important function is to end a note. This is achieved by closing this valve still further to the point where the air stream being allowed to pass is not sufficient to vibrate the lips and horn. This feeling can be easily practised by singing a sustained "ahh" syllable and gradually choking the sound off with the larynx. Obviously, the degree of abruptness with which a note is to be stopped can be easily controlled through a parallel abruptness in the closing of the larynx.