A little advice?

[Geoff]

Find a baritone, attach a 5 lb. ankle weight to the bottom, hold it up as long as you can, rest.

Repeat.

[AlexL]

The best way to get good at holding your horn up is to do just that. Hold your horn up. Try this - get a horn, and time yourself to see what's the absolute longest you can hold it. Then, the next day (or maybe try every other day), hold it for that long again, but add on 10 seconds. Continue to add on and add on, and you should be pretty solid come November.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

This. And also add weights.

[liebot]

Find a baritone, attach a 5 lb. ankle weight to the bottom, hold it up as long as you can, rest.

Repeat.

If you can't find weights, try tying your shoes together and putting them on the end of your bell.

[soccerguy315]

You need to get a horn, and hold it. Keep doing pushups, because you will probably do lots of them as punishment and such, but don't think they will help you hold your baritone up.

See how long you can hold it... then try to improve. Hold it for multiple tv commercials... then the entire commercial break, then the commercial break + as long as you can after the show comes back on. Then during the show and rest during the commercials. Or you can skip the tv part, and just hold it.

Hold it up multiple times a day. Multiple reps are good. 1 minute, rest, 1 minute, rest, etc. Add 10 seconds a day, and you will be in good shape. You can improve pretty quickly. I made tremendous improvement in horn carriage endurance in 3 weeks between camps in 2006 when I took the horn home.

[a marching trumpet]

Or as our brassline consistantly says, if you drop below 10 degrees is 15-25 pushups and if you fully drop its a lap, as we tell them, dont be as ####### wimp and a few other things we utter to each other

[a marching trumpet]

Basically we say get over it and after 2 weeks of band camp were all good

[TheClutch]

Push ups do help. They make you stronger... maybe not directly with holding your horn but every bit of strength helps.

Workout our core...a lot... it will help.

Push your shoulders down. It will hurt either way but stand in front of a mirror and hold it.. this way you can see how you look. If your shoulders look tense and up at all, push them down. Eventually they will start to stay down because you will be thinking of it.

and not just one time a day. when i first went to camp, I was fine.... at first....but then it wears and wears and wears.

So i could hold my horn for 5 minutes.....but i couldnt do 3 then 2 then 2 then 1 then 2 then 3 then 2 then 1 then 1 then 1 then 2 then etc. for four hours.

Edited September 7, 2009 by TheClutch

[cavalry37]

hold up horn.

repeat regularly.

[84BDsop]

At the OP....simple....switch upper brass! (plus, if you play trumpet or sop, you can actually see where you're going!)

EDIT: I played those cruddy imbalanced DEG 2Vs that were bell-front heavy; I envied the guys in BD that played the better balanced Kings!

You could've easily gone a few miles north, y'know!

[JGuy1288]

I'm going to say holding your horn will get you the results you want, and holding the horn completely correctly will get them to you even faster, though it'll hurt more in the short run. Things I've done that have worked are holding the horn in different angles: flat, 10 degrees, box, then all those with extended arms, and then all those with only the left hand.

Contrary to what most people are saying, I did have success with pushups. Regular, then arms spread wider, then a few diamond ones, then "shoulder raises" (for lack of a better name. The idea is to be in pushup position, then drop your weight at the shoulders and push back up).

I say give it all a try, and then do more of whichever works the best for you.