You have heard it already. Attend a horn workshop or camp. Summer horn study is good for you; make a semester of progress over the summer if you are serious about making it.
Those Horn Matters folks keep a pretty up-to-date events page going. It is actually much more comprehensive than any other print or online resource I know of, making it another reason to check Horn Matters often. However, as comprehensive as their list is there is one camp they don’t have listed.
The motto today seems to be along the lines of come to my camp and hang out with the really famous horn players, get inspired by soaking up my good karma, etc. Bah. Let me tell you, back in t
he day there was only one horn camp and it was the idea of my father the late Ichabod F. van Horn III. Every event today is merely a pale imitation.
It was a camp designed to immerse horn students in the deepest horn experience. Based on developing accuracy at all costs, his philosophy was not 100% or 110% accuracy but 111% accuracy! Old school study of articulation and F horn was part of it but there were lots of excerpts and secrets that were shared with those that proved worthy, much of it flying in the face of conventional wisdom. The book of 49 etudes he developed at the camp are also truly a key toward becoming a complete artist that just happens to play the horn.
Alas, that camp does not exist and the etudes are just a myth; dad just made me practice really hard at home; etudes, excerpts, the like. But if you can’t get to a real horn workshop or camp this summer (quite a few things are only one week — do look the list over — and tell them you heard about the event/camp on Horn Matters!) there is no reason you can’t work out your own horn camp of the mind, drawing from some of the great online resources available now. Someday I bet soon someone will even have a virtual horn camp or summer horn course. Feel free to steal the idea Horn Matters guys—and I may even have a bit of straight talk to add in the conversation when you do.
Image credit: Introducing the “Corno Ultimo” Quintuple Horn, the official horn of Professor Corno.
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