by Félix Dervaux
I have adhered to the following principles since the beginning of my career. They are the foundation of my horn playing: the way I achieved the quality of my sound, the accuracy, the resistance, etc., follows these tips. I have written a brief summary of these principles. (The complete list is very long, so I won’t list everything.)
Know yourself. It is very important that you get to know the strengths and weaknesses of your horn playing as accurately as possible before anything else, so be honest with yourself. This will help you to know where you are starting before moving forward. Each bit of progress is like a long trip, and not knowing yourself is like booking a flight without knowing which airport you are leaving from.
Have very precise goals. Once you know your starting point, it’s time to decide exactly where you want to go. In your journey to become a better horn player, it’s important to know which airport you are leaving from, but it is crucial to know where you want to go. If you are uncertain about this, you won’t get anywhere—you will be a rudderless ship. This means, for example, you must know what kind of sound you want to produce (that’s why it’s important to listen; knowing what is already out there can give you a clear idea of what is possible and thus a clear target to set for yourself). If you don’t establish that as a goal first, you will never actually get to it (the same goes with all your personal goals). You also need deadline goals: concerts, exams, lessons, etc., anything with a deadline. Once you have goals and deadlines, it will be much easier for you to identify if you are on the right path or not. And this leads to the next tip….
Always be in progress. Every evening, at the end of the workday, ask yourself, “Did I make any progress, no matter how small?” And the answer should be yes. Thinking this way will force you to discover your own reference points, and it will teach you to focus everything that is blurred. This may sound like a trivial task but remember that there are only two possibilities: at the end of each day, you improved, or you didn’t. As a horn player, there is no middle ground, no “neutral progression;” your level is always evolving, either for better or for worse.
Stay healthy. Since the horn is a very demanding instrument both physically and psychologically, be healthy! Exercise is good for your posture, your concentration, your resistance, your morale, etc., so don’t ignore this.
Absorb. Never forget that your brain is like a sponge. That means that for each of us, whatever we do, experience, or think, our brain will record it somewhere in the subconscious—even if it doesn't feel like it. Your “brain recorder” is kind of stupid and will not, most of the time, register the difference between something that is wrong and something that is right—it merely records what happened. If you practice a piece of music, and you don’t care about the mistakes you make when you play, you can be sure your subconscious will remember the good as well as the bad, and that will lead to confusion in future performances. Think of it this way: the level you can expect each time you play a piece is the average level of all the previous times you played it, whether you are practicing at home alone or performing on stage.
Remain lucid. Practice with a crystal-clear mindset. Be in control of your thoughts and of your playing. If you think, “I can’t do that, this will never work, I’m bad, etc.” every time you arrive at a specific place, your subconscious will note: “OK, I’m here,” and this will slowly become reality. Instead, try to keep your thoughts in control and try to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
Build new skills. Start with something that is easy for you. You can only master new skills (have a better tone, clearer articulations, more nimble fingers, etc.) if you build them on top of the those which have already been mastered—on top of the things that are now easy for you. You actually can decide to practice pieces that are too difficult for you right now, provided your work can be broken down into smaller steps that are easy (by practicing slowly or in small sections, for example).
Learn from your mistakes, especially the little ones. The default mindset when something little happens—a wrong note, for example—is: “Oh, that’s too bad, but that was just something meaningless. Let’s move on…that won’t happen next time.” When those little things occur, this is the best time to stop and think again about what happened. There is so much to learn from those tiny accidents! Was it poor airflow? Are you playing too timidly? or too aggressively? Did you hear the melody before you played it? Are you thinking too vertically? How consistently are you phrasing? Are you tired, and should you take a break? Each little accident can be seen as a mini riddle you have to solve before moving to the next riddle.
Visualize. Contrary to what the word implies, visualization does not only involve sight—it can include all the senses. Visualization is the act of being mentally conscious of as many parameters as possible, away from the horn, just in your mind. I used to learn all my new pieces this way, from memory, and then only afterward play the piece on the horn. This forces you to imagine as accurately as possible, in advance, how you want to play, from the sound to the style to the mastering of technical difficulties, while saving practice time on the horn for later. Visualization is also important even when you are actually playing. Before I play each note, I am mentally playing it. That way, when I begin to play for real, it’s like playing for the second time, except nobody heard the first one but me. If there is such a thing as “horn technique,” to me it would be this visualization process. This can’t be replaced by any other technique and is one of the most important aspects of horn playing. Many of us do it naturally some of the time but being aware of it all the time is even better. Think about it next time you must play a big solo or a dangerous entrance; visualization will make you much more efficient!
Simplicity. Contrary to what you might think, becoming a more skilled horn player does not mean making things more complicated. Keeping it simple takes time and real skill. The biggest difference between a beginner and a seasoned professional is that for the former, every element of an interpretation will be a novelty; every tiny indication, fingering, nuance, articulation, technical parameter (lips, air flow, posture, tongue, breathing, etc.) will be something new and overwhelming that the beginner will have to think about. Professional horn players, on the other hand, will have learned to simplify their thinking and playing. This does not mean that you should play as blandly as possible: everything is in the nuance. Two quotes summarize this principle very well. The first is from the abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann: “Simplifying is eliminating the superfluous in order to let the indispensable speak for itself.” The second quote is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to subtract.” This is what you must aim for. Horn playing is so perilous that you must learn to think more simply, and the good news is that simplicity will serve your artistry.
Don’t go it alone. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having someone at your side who can give you feedback, even if you have been a professional for many years. Believe me: I know what I’m talking about. There are things I would never have achieved without my teachers and friends, but also things that could have gone even better if I hadn’t decided to go it alone.
Be open to new experiences. Read, go out, go to concerts and shows, and explore the world. In the end, your job as an artist will be to entertain people, to make them think and dream. You have got to find inspiration somewhere!
