when i play the french horn for he first time of the day i play terribly and playing just feels uncomfortable me and my band teacher call it morning lips. i usually play scales and arpegios to get rid of them but they still slow you down. i need help, what do you guys do to get rid of your "morning lips". i need help playing loudy ,advice thank you.
Morning lips is exactly that. Morning lips. Your lips are not warmed up and ready to go. Playing loudly when you are not warmed up is like running a 100 yard dash at competetion level. You are going to not be that good and you are going to hurt yourself.
You need to get things moving. You can buzz freely or on the mouthpiece on the way to school, just lightly. I also sugests flossing (I know it seems silly but when you floss before you play it gets the tongue and lips moving and stretching - it works).
It takes most people about 20 minutes to warm up correctly enough to play decently. If I have to play a rehearsal or concert in the morning I buzz lightly as soon as I get up out of bed for 2 or 3 minutes while I am walking around the house or taking a shower. I will buzz again after breakfast for a few and then on the way to the rehearsal. THen I only need a few minutes to get used to the horn and mouthpiece I am using.
Mier Rimon has another method. He practices every 4 hours. Yes, every 4 hours. So at night he sleeps for a bit then wakes up 2 or 3 in the am and practices. He believes he never has to warm up, because he is always ready to play.
I'm with John on this. I buzz randomly throughout the day and when I pick up my horn I have no problem warming up quickly. (Most of the buzzing is just to annoy my sister, though.)
Fredrick,
Be careful. I found out two things I didn't know before.
1- Your sister can have a lot of influence on and with any girl you date in the future. It's amazing and scary what a sister can do to your relationship with girlfriends.
2- I thought I was buzzing randomly just now and then. And found out I was doing it like all day. I would be listening to people and if they got boring the next thing I would hear is them aksing me what I was doing; I was buzzing when I got bored listening to them.
But it does keep you warmed up all day and you get to practice a good embouchre without having to sit in a small room.
It takes most people about 20 minutes to warm up correctly enough to play decently
Most horn players I know would find a 20 minute warm up inconvenient. I don't mean that after a 5 minute warm up they play at their best but if it takes more than a few minutes to obtain either range or agility then you might benefit from reviewing the embouchure you are using. As an amateur I rarely have to play much in the mornings so that getting the lips flexible and responsive within an hour or so of waking tends not to be necessary. In my limited experience reducing pressure and tension has helped my playing ability and made me much less dependent on having good days, long warm ups etc.
I know exactly what you mean. I feel like my mouthpiece is stuffed with cotton wool first thing in the morning! It's not a nice feeling =(
It may sound stupid but I do tongue twisters (Peter Piper, She sells sea shells etc) to get my mouth moving, then the buzzing as John said. There was an incident where I caught myself buzzing in a physics exam though... I think that was a sign I really did buzz too much...
Was lounging around on YouTube and ran across a suggestion by a rather reputable horn player (don't remember which one) and he just said play Siegfried if you're in a hurry and by the time you're done you'll be all warmed up and ready to go. Usually works for me, but damned if I could nail the first couple notes without blasting some middle and low C's to get everything into my head first.
I don't usually do scales... in warming up I try to go straight for flexibility and try and loosen myself up. With scales you go up and down by diatonic steps, I play arpeggios instead in all keys for as much of the range of the instrument I can. It's a lot better at getting everything loosened up so you can continue into the rest of your warmup routine. I also just do a random rip. As loudly as possible, from as low as I can to as high as I can and back down. Usually go well above high C, but it's just an atrocious rip that really shocks the lips into loosening up and flexing again. I reckon a lot of people would recommend against it though, I'm self-taught. >.>
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