Summer is Heating up and the Mellophones are Coming Out

Mellophones are a topic horn teachers don’t talk about much. Especially in print. It is not that we don’t have thoughts on the subject.

Among horn teachers I am probably more supportive than most of marching band in general. I played in marching band all four years of my undergraduate degree in fact. Back at Emporia State we used double horns in marching band, so really it was good chop time. There was no problem at all transitioning between the marching field and the concert hall. Most horn players today don’t have it that lucky.

This morning I was checking a link I received directing me to a photo of an unusual 19th century horn on a forum I had not heard of previously (Horn-u-copia—interesting forum on brass history and instruments) and there found a link to a series of podcasts (!) on mellophones! They are at The Mellocast. A quote from the summary of one of the podcasts really hits the problem on the head for me:

“Aside for the fact that they play in the same key and are brass instruments, the similarities end there.”

This is really the problem with mellophones for the horn player.

Why do ensembles use them at all? So far as I can tell the use of mellophones is driven almost exclusively by marching band directors. They are certainly really handy in the modern drum corps. Imagine this scenario. A corps has a few too many “trumpet” players and not enough mellophone players. Point at the bottom three, and say “you, you, and you, play mellophone.” And three more mellophone players are born. The mellophone uses trumpet fingerings and a mouthpiece similar to a trumpet mouthpiece; they are good to go.

Another thing I constantly hear as a benefit of using mellophones is that their sound “cuts through” on the marching field. How often does one describe a good horn tone as being one that cuts through?

There is another option; B-flat marching horns. Many horn teachers feel that this instrument is better for horn players in marching groups. They are much more horn-like than the mellophone with a rounder sound and use a normal horn mouthpiece. Sure, they won’t feel as good as a mellophone to a trumpet player, but, again, this is an instrument geared to horn players, not trumpet converts.

In any event mellophones are here to stay. While on one hand with some seriousness I would tend to suggest three options for horn players playing in marching groups that use mellophones (percussion, guard, or drum major), there are things you can do to cope. I found in my surfing this morning an interview by Scooter Pirtle in another mellophone related website, The Middle Horn Leader, with Texas Tech horn professor Christopher Smith who marched French horn bugle with the Belleville Black Knights and the Madison Scouts. His suggestion is pretty on the money.

SP: Many French horn players who are marching drum corps are being required to switch to mellophone bugles and to also switch to the mellophone “trumpet-styled” mouthpieces. For those players who make the switch, how can they best limit the damage of switching back and forth between concert French horns and mellophone bugles?

CS: The only thing I can say is that it is going to be more difficult for a player to switch over to a mellophone mouthpiece all summer and then try to pick up a French horn mouthpiece and try to sound like a French horn player. They need to take their mouthpiece, that new B.E.R.P. thing, or even an adapter to practice back and forth so they can keep the same feel of the French horn mouthpiece…Because the embouchure is completely different from a mellophone to a French horn.

One final suggestion would be to keep doing low range work on the mellophone when warming up and focus on blending with the lower brass. A mellophone will never sound like a horn but try not to sound like a trumpet.

UPDATE: This was the first major post in my mellophone series as I began working toward the publication of A Mello Catechism. Check out the finished product at www.hornnotes.com.