Horn Matters is the leading online resource on the French horn, co-founded by John Ericson and Bruce Hembd. The mission of Horn Matters is: to encourage, inspire, inform, and challenge horn players, and; to promote the best musical instrument ever, the French horn. (More.)
- - Please visit: International Horn Competition of America - -Most Recent Articles
Some PDFs unavailable, many broken links
It has come to my attention that all links to materials in my ASU faculty website (my original Horn Articles Online site, online for...
Sabbatical horn update: improved details
Back in the spring of 2021 I was on sabbatical from Arizona State, and, as reported here in Horn Matters, my project involved horn...
Fundamentals 16. Muted horn: tonal control, responses, projection, noiseless manipulation of...
Mutes?!? It is very interesting to me that Douglas Hill included in his list of fundamentals (found in his Collected Thoughts book) a special...
Fundamentals 15. Stopped horn: tonal control, responses, projection, F and B-flat...
Continuing our series on fundamentals (using, as prompts, the list of fundamentals found on pages 92-93 of the Douglas Hill book of Collected Thoughts),...
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Horn Etudes by Female Composers
Many Horn Matters readers will be familiar with the Works with Horn by Female Composers website by Dr. Lin Foulk. If not, this is...
Julius Watkins, jazz French horn pioneer
Talking with colleagues recently, a topic that came up was how some great players of the recent past are unjustly neglected today. In terms...
Overview of Trusted Brands in French Horns
A survey titled "What Brand Names Do You Trust?" collected the opinions of 392 participants. The results are in and while it may take...
Choosing a French Horn Mouthpiece (I): The Basic Parts
Part I: The Rim and Preliminary Thoughts
Part II: Cup, Throat and Bore
Part III: Weight, Plating and Shopping Tips
For the past decade...
French Horn Transposition Chart
A complete reference.
Transposition Chart (PDF) (updated 2012)
Over the past few months, I have been posting various transposition tricks, including how to transpose:
A and...
Farkas on Stagefright (and more)
In the world of horn there have been few that made as much impact as Philip Farkas (1914-1992). The Art of French Horn Playing...
Random Articles
Foulk on Sexism and Things to Not Say in a Master...
In updating the Events page recently I noted in the website for the 2012 International Women's Brass Conference an article by co-host Lin Foulk...
The Mouthpiece Wheel of Doom
The topic of Episode 94 of The Mellocast is the Mouthpiece Wheel of Doom. It is a term jazz hornist Mark Taylor uses relating...
Lady of the Lake, with Hornistic Twist
A fantastical twist on an old legend.
I love the imagery and symbolism in Pre-Raphaelite works.
This piece is an experiment with some new Photoshop techniques...
Mailbag: Can I use a Single F to Practice Natural Horn?
A question I have been asked a number of times is along the general lines of can I use a single F horn to...
Revisiting the Art of French Horn on LP Records
The past year the vast majority of my actual classical music listening has been to LP records. With the recent passing of Hermann Baumann...
Mailbag: “Wolf” Notes on the Horn
A question recently came in relating to “wolf” notes on the natural horn, but it also relates to valved horn as well. The question...
