Horen Lezen & Spelen
The first method I will discuss is "Horen Lezen & Spelen," which means "Hearing, listening & playing."
I believe this is the most used Dutch method, not only for French horn but also for other wind instruments.
About the methodbook
On websites selling this method, I find the following information: ''Horen Lezen & Spelen is a successful series released for 13 different instruments. The method aligns well with the requirements for music education and related music exams. Each volume contains various exercises that make it even more enjoyable to work with. Additionally, each volume includes some background information about the respective instrument. The "Hear, Read, Play" method is suitable for individual or group instruction. A play-along CD is included with each volume.
Hear, Read, Play: The Complete Method for Wind Instruments is published by De Haske Publications. The authors worked under the guidance of saxophonist and teacher Jaap Kastelein. Jaap Kastelein is the author of Easy Steps and Learning Together.''
As you can see, it is published for 13 different instruments and therefore not specifically designed for the horn. I have compared the book with those for the clarinet, flute, trumpet, and trombone, and apart from the cover, information about the instrument, and the fingering chart, there are few differences.
About the author
The method is written by Jaap Kastelein. His LinkedIn profile provides the following information about him:
''Owner Jaap Kastelein Educational Music & Media
Lead Alto Sax Big Band Cue
Conductor/teacher of youth training Advendo Franeker
Freelance saxophonist (classical and jazz)
Product developer and head of educational publications department De Haske Publications/Hal Leonard MGB
Saxophone teacher and big band/workshop leader CVK Sneek, Ritmyk and jazz club Tytsjerksteradiel.''
When I look closer, I see more experiences in saxophone playing, but none with brass instruments. This surprises me, since he published methods for all wind and all brass instruments, thirteen in total.
Below I will discuss some lessons from the method and give my opinion on them. On the left, you will read about the content, and on the right, my reflection on it.
Content
Introduction
The book starts with a little introduction that explain that you can play the songs with or without the CD. Both is possible, but they say that with CD it is more fun because you have the feeling of playing in a real band.
Then there is a picture of the instrument and all the parts. The mouthpiece, the valves, the bell, etc.
There is a little introduction about buzzing. They say buzzing is like ‘’dry swimming’’ on the instrument. It is important to do it every day before you start playing.
Personal Reflection
Introduction
I think that cover of the book looks nice.
I am missing the step that explains that you should insert your mouthpiece into the instrument in a rotating motion.
Also, I miss the warning never to hit the mouthpiece.
I do not know why children like to do this, but from years of experience I can tell you that this is often their first reaction as soon as they put the mouthpiece in the instrument.
This can cause the nozzle to draw vacuum and become stuck, requiring it to be pulled out with a special nozzle puller.
It is described that to produce sound on the mouthpiece, you should press your lips together as if saying an 'M', then place the mouthpiece against them and set the air in vibration by blowing a 'pfffff'. (Press your lips together slightly as if you are saying the letter M. Now, place the mouthpiece against your lips and set the air in vibration by blowing 'pffffff'. Make sure you don not blow with puffed cheeks. The sound you're making now is what we call a 'buzz' because it resembles the buzzing of a fly.)
I consider this to be a poor explanation and even harmful.
The tongue is supposed to determine the start of the note, not the lips. These should be set in vibration by the tongue and not initiated by this process itself.
In other words, it should start with a 'T',
(or, for broader attacks, a 'D') and certainly not with a 'P'.
Although these sounds may seem similar, they make a huge difference. With the 'P', the tongue is not involved, leading to the habit of initiating the note with the lips instead of the tongue. It is challenging for teachers to perceive/hear this difference because they cannot see well what is happening inside the mouth from the outside.
I myself once learned this incorrectly, and even halfway through my bachelor's degree at the conservatory, neither the teachers nor I realized exactly what was going wrong with my articulation and why I could not play tongued notes properly. The answer turned out to be quite simple: because my tongue had not been doing what it should have been doing for many years.
As a result, this has become something I am very vigilant about myself, and in my teaching practice, I have encountered several instances where students have shown to have the same issue. it is really difficult to unlearn once it is been incorrectly taught, so I would like to propose that this is taught very clearly from lesson 1 onwards to prevent any unnecessary confusion.
The image of the seated posture surprises me because the elbow appears to extend beyond the backrest of the chair. This is not a correct posture. In fact, it does not even seem possible to sit like this in the example, and you should not want that either.
In the standing example, I notice that the elbow is rotated outward. This also seems incorrect; the elbow should be relaxed and kept as close to the body as possible.
There is a picture of the playing position and pictures of the mouth position when its normal and when you are playing. Also, there is a picture of the mouthpiece when playing.
Then there are a few words about breathing and blowing technique.
They tell you to put your hands on the belly, breath out completely and inhale about half.
Then they tell us to cough a few times and feel the tension in your abdominal muscles.
Next you have to blow through the instrument. If all goes well, you will feel the same muscles.
the first exercises follow on the next page.
There is a song that can be played with two notes.
The book says that the student must look at page 56 and ''find the next two notes'' there. With this he must try to play the next song.
A brief explanation of the staff notation follows.
This consists of:
The stave, the G clef, the time signature, a bar, a barline, a final bar line, whole notes, half notes and quarter notes
They also say that the position on the staff determines the pitch.
I do not think it is correct that a new student should have to look up which notes he should play on a fingering chart with 21 different notes. This is very confusing. Moreover, different answers are possible, since there are several notes that use the same combinations of fingers.
I would keep this much more compact and just say: With these fingers you play the C and with these you play the D.
If the student looks for notes with valve 1 and 2 pressed down, they will encounter all the blue circled possibilities. If nothing is pressed, they will find the notes circled in red.
As you can see it can go in any direction and provides no guarantee of a particular outcome.
Then it is stated that if you write "note by note" from the previous page in musical notation, it looks like the picture below, consisting of the C and the D. (''Als je 'noot voor noot' (zie vorige bladzijde) in notenschrift noteert, ziet het er zo uit''. Translation: ''If you notate 'note by note' (see previous page) in musical notation, it looks like this'')
It could be that the student has looked elsewhere in the fingering chart and is now surprised because he thought that these fingers were for F# and F, or for A and F, or for one of the many other possibilities.
I find this confusing. You cannot assert on the French horn that pressing certain fingers results in a specific pitch. (In this case, the combination of 1 and 2 is expected to be a D, and 0 is a C)
With every possible grip, there are numerous different pitches possible. For a horn player, it might be logical that these had to be a C and a D, but for a child who has to look up these fingers themselves from a fingering chart, it is not, given the many other possibilities.
Jeffrey Agrell, horn professor and author of the book "Horn Technique, A New Approach to an Old Instrument," says the following about this: ''Beginner's method books typically mislead both students and teachers from page 1 by starting not with learning to control the pitch on one "horn," but with the valves. The first note is typically a middle C whole note [...] The second note is usually a D whole note directly above that [...] Thus: With the first two notes, the beginning student already misunderstands how the horn works. The implied (but false) assumption is: To change the pitch, just push the right valve(s). It is wondrous that it never occurred to any of us - not me, not you, not any student - to protest, "wait a minute, if I can do this ... that means... that valves are not primarily responsible for pitch change. Something else is making the change. If the valves are secondary in this process, then what should I be learning first? What is the real, most fundamental basis of horn technique?''1
Lesson 1
Every lesson commences with the introduction of new notes and other new things, such as new rhythms. In the initial session the student learns the D, C, and F. The student leans a 4/4 and 3/4 time signature, the repeating sign and the dotted half note.
In the first exercise, students play sustained notes with rests in between. They play the same note four times in a row and go to the next note. This is followed by finger gymnastics in which the notes are alternated.
In the next song they have to play different notes in a line at different rhythms. The next song is called ''Let's Rock, doc!''. It has a solo moment where the student should improvise.
Lesson 1
I find myself questioning why we do not start with CDE; this sequence seems more logical to me. Children seem to find it confusing that they have to play both the C and F without pressing any valves.
Moreover, many children struggle with playing the F. The F requires significantly more physical strength than the E.
Normally this is the first moment I tell them about air support, hoping this will make it a little better, but even then it is still difficult for them. There is no further explanation given about the rhythms. Of course, the teacher can also explain this, but I think it would be useful to explain the length of the notes again, especially so that students can easily read it back when they are practicing at home.
Also, I think it would be better to practice first to change between the different notes without a rhythmic challenge.This is practiced in the next song. I think it would be better to change the order of these two exercises.
In my view, the approach to improvisation feels somewhat forced, which often seem to make my students uncomfortable. It lacks the sense of permission to experiment freely; there is a certain pressure associated with it: having to play for a specific number of bars until the bell rings. Consequently, students frequently express uncertainty about whether they are doing it correctly. I believe that a different approach, such as presenting a piece of music and encouraging students to improvise based on what comes to mind, would foster a more relaxed atmosphere. In group lessons, there is usually someone willing to take on this challenge, but it generally does not work as well during individual lessons.
Lesson 2
The lesson kicks off with a reminder for students to do their daily buzzing exercises. Following this, students play long tones with rests between, followed by an 'Echo exercise.' Two new notes are introduced: E and G. Then there is an exercise where the students have to clap. According to the book, a bold note is loud, and a thin note is soft. The so called ‘’fat’’ note has the same size as all the other notes in the book. Some pieces follow in which the CD already has a quite fast tempo.
Lesson 2
I find the addition of E particularly beneficial as it opens up the possibility to play additional songs beyond the book, such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Clair de Lune." However, I believe the introduction of G comes too soon, because children lack the physical strength. This takes time and needs to be built up.
Most of my students can not play the F well yet, so more time is needed before it is wise to learn to play even higher.
I think that the clap exercise is misleading and confusing. The bolded notes in this exercise have the same size as all the other normal notes in the rest of this book. Thanks to this exercise, I have had to explain several times that the rest of the lesson should not be played loud. To avoid this confusion, I now skip this exercise or explain in advance that the size of the note does not indicate the volume.
Lesson 3
While this lesson may seem easy (except for the B, nothing new is taught) in my opinion the reality is quite different.
Personally, I welcome the addition of the B. However, despite being introduced in this lesson, it is rarely played in the material provided this lesson. There is only one exercise featuring only the B. In the five songs that follow, we play the newly learned B only twice. This is not enough repetition to get in control. The high notes do come back all the time, so there is insufficient rest from them. High notes are physically more demanding, and the lips do not get time to recover from this.
Below, you can see that the B is hardly played, except in the finger gymnastics and twice in 'schaatsenrijden'
Lesson 5
The idea of playing ''Advocaatje ging op reis'' by heart is nice, but I think that the current generation of children no longer knows this song, so they can not play it without having an example first. There are no rests on this page, which makes it heavy for the embouchure.
I think my students like to play ''Ode an die Freude'' because they have heard it before. They all make the same rhythmic mistake since the piece is written with only quarter notes. I would have waited with this piece a little longer and used it later in the book to explain a dotted crotchet followed by a quaver.
Lesson 6
In my experience, this lesson has even amazed the adult students in my teaching practice over the past few years, due to the large amount of material that suddenly comes and is not more evenly distributed over this, and the previous lesson.
All in all, there is a significant amount of new information, some of which could perhaps have been introduced in the previous lesson.
Lesson 7
This B seems to come too quickly for me, considering that the A in the previous lesson is already a challenge for many students, given the physical strength required for this.
While descending is often manageable, many children do not yet have the strength to ascend. Little attention is given to the newly learned F#; it only appears in 1 out of the 10 exercises and is played only 3 times.
(the same thing happened earlier with the B from lesson 3) I question whether that is sufficient for students to remember it well.
Furthermore, students are tasked with transposing for the first time. In my opinion, this is introduced too early.
Simply playing what is written is still challenging for many students at this point, so I wouldn't make it more difficult than necessary. Transposing is important for horn players, but I wouldn't start with it so early on.
Lesson 8
In this lesson, the student learns a flat, namely the Bb. They also play eighth notes for the first time and learn about fermatas. For the first time since lesson 2, there is a reminder to do the daily buzzing exercises.
again lipslurs (these are slurs where the fingering remains unchanged. They are produced solely by the method of blowing, without the assistance of other pressed fingers) are introduced.
The songs suddenly start to get more bars.
Lesson 8
Given that the F# hasn't been repeated enough, this introduction seems rather fast and confusing to me.
In my experience many students still struggle with the strength required for the lipslurs.
The songs get more bars, but I would recommend expanding the lenght of the pieces first in the low register before adding more bars in a high register.
I would have chosen to use "Ode an die Freude" to explain this new rhythm. (See lesson 5)
Personally, I would wait a little longer before introducing the transposition, this, as it is already challenging enough.
I have also experienced that the task is not always clear to students, and you really have to explain it as a teacher. It is written: ''Once you know the song, try playing it starting from a G (= the extra small note at the beginning)''. I had students thinking that the first note would change to a G, but they did not realize that the entire song needed to be transposed because they had not heard of transposition before.
Fortunately, there is sufficient variation between high and low notes.
Lesson 19
Personally, I would have preferred to write the chromatic scale down for the first attempt. It does not seem wise to me to immediately play the chromatic scale by heart, but rather to learn it first from sheet music. This is because students cannot yet see the logical sequence of the chromatic tones. So far, they have learned both flats and sharps mixed together, making it difficult to understand a consistent order. They have not learned: C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C. What they know is: C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, Ab, Bb, B, and C. They struggle to visualize these in a specific sequence, so I would prefer to write it down first.
My overall impression of book 1 from this method:
Overall, my opinion of the "Horen Lezen & Spelen" method is mixed. There are aspects of the book that I find both positive and concerning.
Positively is the structured progression of lessons introducing new notes, rhythms, and musical concepts. I find the layout beautiful, and it is enjoyable to be able to play along with the CD. Many different styles are covered.
However, there are several areas where I have reservations. One major concern is the introduction of new notes and concepts sometimes feels rushed, without sufficient repetition or reinforcement, which could hinder students' progress and confidence.
Another issue I find is that the method is physically unattainable for many students. This problem is not only present for me; it has also been evident from interviews with other teachers.
I personally think that if the method had simply been extended by 10 lessons, and much more time had been taken, the results would have been much better.