hornplayer.net Information archive

1. Jaw vibrato - accomplished with a downward motion of the jaw while a note is sustained as if you mouth "ya ya ya" or "yo yo yo", etc. Some people do a variation of this, using the tongue while keeping the vowel formant constant. This is one of the most easily controlable forms of vibrato
2. Instrument vibrato - accomplished by a gentle rocking of the instrument back and forth into the lip flesh (eg. putting slightly more pressure on the lip and releasing it) Can be easy to control, however for horn, this is a dangerous method because it affects pitch accuracy. This method is mainly used by trumpet players
3. Lip vibrato - a very subtle vibrato, more effective in the upper 1 1/2 octaves of the instrument. The lips will slightly increase and decrease the aperture size as if saying the syllable "woo woo woo." This gives a slight vibrato effect
4. Diaphramatic - this is accomplished by a periodic intensification of the abdominal wall muscles. If you put your hand on your abdomin and clear your throat, you will feel this firmness. Next, vocalize an "ah" while pulsing with these abdominal muscles. After that, play a note on your instrument, getting the same effect. This is the only form of vibrato that does not affect pitch. Instead, it is a pulsation of INTENSITY. However, because the pitch intensifies, there is an aural perception that the pitch does get LOWER. It is an acoustical phenomenon.
5. Finger vibrato - As you play, bend the tips of your fingers back and forth (those fingers that are inside the bell, of course) I've heard that this method was used very successfully by Morris Secon when he was with the Rochester Philharmonic. The effect is subtle, very similar to the lip vibrato method.

1. play a straight tone
2. decide on which method to use
3. as you continue the straight tone incorporate the vibrato slowly, going from quarter notes, to eighths, to triplet, sixteenths, etc.)
4. when this has been accomplished, go back to a straight tone, then gradually incorporate vibrato, sneaking it in slowly, but accelerate quickly. Then decelerate the oscilation, gradually moving into a straight tone

I'll be playing some Mozart for an audition in the not-to-distant future, and in selection of Mozart CDs with mostly German and Slavic players, I've noticed a charisterictic fast vibrato that all of them seem to use. I don't think that this is always the case in all of their playing, (I'm being really general her, I know!!), in terms of using this technique with music of all composers. This is not a playing quirk, or so far as I can tell, it isn't... if it is, it's simply more subdued when the play pieces like Krups and Mahler.

Maybe Mr. Pizka can help me with this, because I love this style of playing!! It is brisk, but the notes are very defined, in that "bubble", or "pearl" fashion that Mozart always requires. However, my problem is that of being able to execute this technique; I can do slow vibrato fairly well, but this fast stuff fools me. Any tips?

A good player, a good conductor, a good orchestra will be sensitive to the audience. If the chairwoman of the fund raising commitee, who is known to prefer a wide vibrato, is in the audience with fifty of her closest friends, it is a percentage wager that her listening experience that night will include some wide vibrato. But the player will still base his/her playing on all the factors that are at work at that time - what kind of horn, the conductor, the style and skill of the orchestra, the characteristics of the hall, the style of the music and, yes, the decision to use, at the appropriate places, pure tones or vibrato.

But to state, as explicitly as I am able, what I mean by my objection to the objection to the presence of vibrato, I say again that it is irrelevant. Whether it is "up your nose because you think it sounds vulgar" has no bearing on the decisions of the musicians involved as to how they will perform [unless you are on the fund-raising committee with Madame Chairwoman, and, no, I will not use "chairperson." Talk about vulgar!] My own opinion on the subject of tone and vibrato is that I do not like the limp dick style of horn tone as used too often by Brain and others. It is all too common, is used too often and results in dull, lifeless tones. Vibrato is as much misused , but as a tone quality, is to be preferred.

The distinction to be made in this discussion is that the only judgments we can make are those of potential consumers, who may or may not purchase a version of a work based on these factors, as listeners to music which is available to us and as horn players and the sound which we desire to come out of our own horns. This basic right to iindicate our preferences here on the "list" is what makes it interesting and enjoyable. Thanks for your viewpoint. Keep it up. [No pun intended.]

I feel that it not only makes the sound sound as I want it to be, but it also allows me to blend with the other instruments I am playing with if that's what I choose to do. Now sound quality is a matter of taste. LISTEN TO OTHER PLAYERS. Do they sound as you'd like to sound? Can you sound like them? Can you avoid sounding like the players you don't like? Listen to a lot of players. Recordings are good. Live concerts are better. You may listen to the recording of the Poulenc and say YUK! That's cool. I have had the occasion to hear a recording I made played over the radio without knowing that it was my recording because I didn't tune in in time to hear the announcement of who was playing. Halfway through the recording - of the Stravinsky Symphonies of Wind Instruments - I began to get a funny feeling or hunch. Sure enough 'twas me. Some 40 years before!! That was weird.

On a trans-atlantic flight to Europe at the start of a NY Brass 5tet tour I was sitting next to Bob Nagle, one of our trumpet players. I put on the headphones, turned to the classical channel and got a recording of Petrouchka conducted by Stravinsky himself. Good playing all around. At the first big trumpet solo, I got that funny feeling. It sounded like the trumpet sound I was so used to. It was the guy sitting next to me!

Your sound is like your voice, and it's a signature of sorts. Make it just what you want it to be.

1. http://www.hornplayer.net/

   This topic has been covered here before, and I believe is indexed in Robin Moffat's collection. [I wish it was! I've managed to lose it somewhere! RNM]

2. http://www.public.asu.edu/~sirtomas/museum/vibrato.html An article by Tom Bacon.

;-)

Me - if it sounds good, it is good, and I like it.

The move away from vibrato was, he suggests, a mostly German thing in the second half of the nineteenth century (Wagner and his conductor-acolytes most prominently), from where it migrated along with German horn players to England and America.

If Fitzpatrick is right (and he has more evidence than anyone else, at least), then all of that literature, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, etc., should be played with vibrato, but a vibrato very closely modelled on the vibrato of the best vocalists, i.e., quite variable as to speed and amplitude and applied from this range of choices with what was once called -- how quaint it now sounds! -- taste.

Listen to John Barrows playing Mozart K. 407 and you'll see what I mean -- of course, you may not like it ....

I can understand where you're coming from, but I think that you misunderstood me; I suppose it really isn't a vibrato in the strict sense of the word liek I was mentioning... it's so fast and lacy-sounding that it's almost a sound quality! "Vibrato" brings up conotations of belching sopranos and things of that sort; I'm talking about Hermann Baumann sound - not that whaa-oh-whaa-oh kind of thing but a barely noticeable timbre vibration. Baumann does this with great effect in his solo stuff. He has a recording of La Grande Chasse which is very convincing, to say the least. I would love to be able to reproduce this, if possible, because it's so beautiful! Perhaps this is an entirely different school of horn playing, and thus out of my reach, but it's worth a shot!