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.)

Most Recent Articles

Geyer Update: Engravings, Serial Numbers, and More

I could also have titled this article “Things I got wrong” in the Geyer Dreaming series (which starts here), or the related article published...

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...

Brief Review: The Horn. The Book You Need

To open this brief review, I’ll start with a money quote: The Horn by Renato Meucci and Gabriele Rocchetti is the most significant book on...

Accuracy Encyclopedia: Well Duh!?! and More

Continuing our look at accuracy and the letters D and E, our first topic is the descant horn, which can certainly help accuracy in...
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Featured Articles

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

Rethinking Creativity and Thoughts on Trying Softer

Where does it come from? Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love gives an inspirational talk about creativity in this embedded video from TED. I particularly...

Farkas on Lip “Curling”

I spent the summer looking at many different books on horn playing in depth. Farkas in print was not into the whole concept of...

The Space Between the Notes

Improvement -- a process of subtraction. Music is the space between the notes. This well-known quotation attributed to the Impressionist composer Claude Debussy can have many...

The Birth of the Cool and the horn in the Miles...

Miles Davis Birth of the Cool-- this 1957 album is considered one of the most influential jazz albums ever. It is a compilation of singles...

Lessons in Vienna, part II: Till Eulenspiegel

This series of articles expands on notes taken by Nicholas Smith in lessons with Roland Berger in 1977. He told me to pull out Till...

Mailbag: Is a Heavy Mouthpiece Better?

A blog reader, a high school student, wrote in after reading the recent mellophone mouthpiece series asking about heavy mouthpieces. Are they better? The...
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