Can You Play Trumpet and Horn?

I received a question from a reader that noted I taught horn and trumpet when I taught in Taiwan for a year. He was asking what I did in terms of mouthpieces and doubling? This type of question comes up pretty often and I don’t believe I have put anything down about it yet. What I did to teach trumpet was really easy on my horn embouchure; I did not play trumpet at all that year. I played every example I played for any student in a trumpet lesson on the horn. I have not performed more than just a few random notes on a trumpet since 9th grade. I really do not sound good at all on trumpet at this point.

The short answer to the question is in my opinion this double cannot be done. The embouchure is really different. The player attempting to do this will find that on the horn they have a tight, harsh tone; this is because the “center of gravity” of their embouchure is too high. The horn really requires a lot of low range work to be played with a great, characteristic tone. When you have the embouchure at that place where the horn sounds really good you will sound just awful on trumpet, with a very “soggy” tone and even the mid range feels really high and difficult.

I know there are quite a few people out there that try to do it, to double trumpet and horn. I am sure that there are people who claim that it can be done too. There are probably even teachers who think trumpet playing might help develop the high range of their horn students. But to try to double the two instruments is very hard on a low level and, in my opinion, impossible on a high level. To achieve a high level of performance, you will need to pick one and develop an embouchure around the range of that instrument.

UPDATE: For a different perspective–that it can be done–read this article by Tom Varner. I have played a little trumpet these past few years (methods class and in teaching a beginner) and it is interesting, I can reach a reasonably high level on the instrument. I prefer using a mouthpiece with a horn inner diameter on it, a Curry 1HTF to be specific.