So we did a thing!

183 horn players from the facebook "Horn People" group, filled out a survey about their relationship with high register playing.

Let's dive in...

Who took the survey

This was optionally anonymous, but enough folks identified themselves that I can say for sure we have a range from top professionals (e.g. NY Metropolitan Opera) to college students, adult amateurs, and even total beginners.

94% the players have been playing at least 5 years. 

80% have played at least 10 years.

And almost half (45%) have played 20+ years. 

So, put simply, these folks have had a chance to figure out how to play high.

And, gladly, the most common answer for “1-10 Overall level of ease & skill in high register” was an 8/10, so pretty good.

85% of players are above average?

In fact, 85.2% of players ranked between a 6 and a 10 on this scale. 

Only 14.8% of players ranked a 5 or below.

But interestingly, you might expect more of a normal curve here.

It reminds me of the finding that more than 50% of people rank themselves as “above average intelligence”. 

This phenomenon is called “illusory superiority”. 

65% of Americans, according to this study, believe they are above average intelligence. 

So that’s probably in play. 

If you ranked yourself an 8 in this survey, are you really an 8 in the grand scheme of what’s possible?

If I had put measurable metrics here, that might have skewed things.

QUESTION: What are the real endpoints here?

For me, a 10/10 means you can play a 4 octave arpeggio up to F above high C....

or maybe playing Siegfried Long Call up a 4th, 3x through without endurance issues.

(I should make a video of this, to prove the point, or nobody will believe me...)

Highest comfortable notes

This is cool. So 50.8% of players have a high C and beyond, that's great!

On the low end, 5% of respondents said up to around top line F.

Again, I suspect this might be a little skewed, depends on definition of comfort.

Based on my real world experience, there are probably 1/3 to 1/2 of all players who have "figured out" the keys to playing high.

And that makes high C and above relatively accessible for them.

Then there are the other 50%.

These are the folks who struggle to get up to high C. Some max out around A, Ab, Bb, etc... All have something in common: high C is not considered a comfortable note.

[Spoiler alert & shameless plug: nobody needs to live in a reality where they can't comfortably play high C. If you're a brass player who wants help with that, reach out].

Daily Effort in High Practice

Here I found that nearly half (45.9%) of respondents practice 10+ minutes a day on high range.

I should have clarified that this means deliberate practice to improve your high playing, not just "ok now I'm practicing music that happens to include some high notes"

I love looking at this breakdown. It really tells a story....

And there were a number of "other" responses, captured here:

• Only when practicing for a gig
• No specific difference between high playing and regular playing. If I feel tight, I tend to try sitting in the upper register.
• Infrequent practice
• I practice 2-3 hrs per day, across all registers.
• I don’t really set aside time to just practice high or low playing anymore
• I don’t practice specifically on high range
• As needed
• An hour or more but not every day

Case Study

The (anonymous) person who said "I don't really set aside time to just practice high or low playing anymore" has the following attributes:

• Played 20+ years
• Range above high C
• Overall level of skill: 9/10

This is as it should be.

When you figure out how to play high, you really don't need to practice it much if you don't want to.

For example, I personally do 2-5min of deliberate high range practice about 3 days/week, which keeps me able to play easy strong F above high C and slowly working towards a clear double C.

I actually think that practicing high range exercises for 40+ minutes a day is crazy.

That's based on my own experience trying to build my high register as if I was building my bench press.

News flash folks!

Playing a great high C is not like training to bench press twice your body weight.

It's more like learning to run with good form, in a few ways actually:

• Most of us can naturally run with good form
• ....But constricting shoes, desk jobs, and lack of physical awareness often lead to terrible running form
• ....Which leads to injuries and difficulty
• All you need to do is learn the correct range of movement, listen to your body
• And you can run, sprint, ultramarathon, etc. without much issue.
• Once you have great form, endurance and strength stop being concerns.

Endurance, a much more normal curve...

I asked "1-10 Rate your high range endurance".

42% of folks were square in the middle (a 4,5, or 6 on the scale 1-10).

And then another 45% were in the upper bracket (great!)

And only 11% are in the lower bracket. Meaning probably 1 in 10 of respondents REALLY struggles with endurance.

This sounds about right to me.

41% of players here ranked a 5 or below.

That reflects less extreme problems.

Maybe it's the kind of player that generally does ok but would struggle to crank out the high horn part finishing Mahler 1...

Based on my experience playing in professional (and amateur) orchestras over 3 continents, I'd wonder.... if being able to successfully play the high horn part of Mahler 1 without endurance-induced failures is a mark of having good endurance, can 60% of players do that?

Maybe? I think these stats are pretty ballpark, actually.

#StruggleLife

I asked two questions to find out the impact and prevalence of high range struggles.

23.5% identified as struggling

30.6% were in the middle

45.9% identified as not really struggling

This also matches my intuition.

About 1/4 of folks have some level of struggle with the high range.

Four horn players in a section, probably one of them has high range difficulties. cough cough 4th horn players....

Well that's legit. When I played 4th horn in the Hong Kong Philharmonic I was definitely barely able to meet the call of duty in occasional high tuttis.

(And fast-forwarding, thanks to numerous sources of help, wisdom, and healing, I got over that).

Make sure you read this chart correctly. 5 is "strongly disagree".

So 8.7% of players (again almost 1 in 10) really feel that their high playing is a huge obstacle.

And only 46.4% actually disagree with the statement.

That means that more than half of players believe that their high chops are some kind of obstacle in their career and/or musicianship.

What a bummer!

The good news

To quote Ryan Holiday, "The Obstacle is the Way"... it's a best-selling book title for a reason!

If you have high range issues, this is the obstacle that points the way forward in your musical development.

There are easy and effective strategies for mastering the high range, no matter what the shape of your lips.

And the best time to start making those changes... is now. (Well, actually the best time would have been when you started playing horn. But the 2nd best time is now).

What can I do?

I created a 25 minute video masterclass on high playing that you can watch for free here:

--> The 3 basic ingredients of high range mastery <--

Also, as of today August 24 I have just a couple slots left for my High Range Magic 7 week bootcamp. You can set up an interview call here.

Or contact me if you have questions!