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Horn Pedagogy Week 8: Rapid Tonguing, Staccato, Multiple Tonguing
With the topic of tonguing introduced last week, this week the focus is the more “advanced” forms of tonguing including rapid tonguing, staccato, and multiple tonguing, all being topics that advanced...
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Tip of the Week: Improving Transposition Skills with ‘I-IV-V-I’ Practice
One of the most popular PDF downloads from the Horn Matters site is a transposition chart, located within our Resources area. Roughly defined, music transposition in performance requires a player to...
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Hornmasters on Stopped Horn, Part III: Various Tips
Moving on, William R. Brophy in his Technical Studies for Solving Special Problems on the Horn notes that “the place at which the bell is closed” and complete closure of the bell are critical to...
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Why Does my Hand Turn Green?
It was a long weekend of playing, as evidenced by a green-stained right hand in the picture below. Have you ever wondered why this happens? Why, on un-laquered horns, do some people get the notorious...
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Readership Poll: What is Troubling U.S. Orchestras?
The list of troubled U.S. orchestras seems to get longer and longer. It feels as if a dam has burst and we are being hit by wave after wave of negative publicity. Last season, it was messy dealings in...
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Horn Pedagogy Week 9: Tone Quality, Chords, and Musical Phrasing
By this point some readers following the course are probably feeling that the focus has been on technical minutiae. I can relate to that thought, as even putting the course together and reading the...
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Thoughts on Cognition, Bias and the ‘U.S. Orchestra’ Readership Poll
To get a pulse on what our readers might be thinking in terms of current affairs in the American symphony orchestra scene, a poll was posted last Wednesday with one simple question: What do you think...
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Ask Dave: How Do I Shop for a Reliable Horn Cleaning?
Rachel asks: I am located in Europe and looking for someone to do a routine clean on my horn. What kind of cleaning do you recommend and what would you stay away from? If the shop repairs all kinds of...
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Brief Review: Bowermaster, The Horn in Song
I have several items stacked up to review, and to get the ball rolling again I would first like to briefly review a CD that was released this year, The Horn in Song featuring Tod Bowermaster, horn, and...
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Random Wednesday: Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Brain Memes and Random...
Last week it was noted here that in the U.S. orchestral world, increased labor tensions and lockouts seem to be the flavor-of-the-month this year. Rumblings of a conspired effort of some kind are...
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Horn Pedagogy Week 10: Range Development
Finally it is to discuss building up the high and low ranges of the horn, a topic on which every horn teacher has thoughts. The readings this week are from the Hornmasters series. Understanding Range...
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Transposition Update: A New Transposition Chart and Resources for Study
In a few weeks John will be covering the topic of transposition in Week 12 of the University of Horn Matters pedagogy course. In the meantime, I decided that the transposition chart created about 4-5...
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On Purchasing an E-Book from Horn Notes Edition
As noted in a prior article, E-Books are a major trend in publishing and they are on the rise in the horn world. We are pleased to announce that this past week Horn Notes Edition launched two new...
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Playing Natural Horn Today, a new E-Book
One of the purposes behind the original Horn Notes Blog was to promote my publications. This purpose has been minimized as Horn Matters has developed over time from blog content to an online magazine...
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Playing Descant and Triple Horns, a new E-Book
Following up on the article yesterday, the second new E-Book (PDF format) publication from Horn Notes Edition is on the topic of Descant and Triple Horns. Back in 2007 Horn Notes Edition released...
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Random Monday: A new Search Engine, plus other Sundries and Persiflage
Updated search engine Horn Matters to-date houses over 1,900 articles. With a little digging around in the Archives it has been fairly easy to find specific topics of interest without too much bother....
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Hornmasters on Stopped Horn, Part IV: Hill and Beyond
One of the best know publications of Douglas Hill is Extended Techniques for the Horn: A Practical Handbook for Students, Performers and Composers. This is an extremely comprehensive resource, and...
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Mixed Nuts: Halloween Frights and Other Things that go Bump in the Night
Halloween is upon us and soon, little ghosts and goblins will be knocking on our doors to rob us of our precious sugar-coated candy treats. Hours later, after the vast quantities of candy, spinning in...
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Horn Pedagogy Week 11: Endurance, Use of an Assistant Horn, Dynamic Range,...
This week we have a variety of topics to cover, generally related to solo performance and orchestral playing. As to the orchestral side of it, the first reading is from Horn Articles Online: The...
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Hornmasters on Performance Anxiety, Part I: Farkas
The final major topic touched upon in The Art of French Horn Playing is performance anxiety. Farkas kicks it off by noting When a student has gained enough proficiency to play moderately difficult...
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