A Bell Front Descant Horn?

One thing I do is periodically look over the search terms that bring visitors to this blog. This time of year the numbers of searches for “mellophone” pick up a lot.

The last few years have seen a number of positive developments for the mellophone due to DCI money but even the best instruments have questionable intonation and mouthpiece issues. Part of the problem is that few horn players or makers seem to have ever been involved with the development of the modern marching mellophone; it is very trumpet and band director oriented. As a follow-up to the horn dare post, I would first challenge anyone teaching horn players who are marching mellophones this fall to actually spend a little time playing one. Don’t complain about it if you have never ever played one! Because I think when you get past the mouthpiece and the intonation actually you have a very responsive little horn that is potentially very much like a bell front descant horn, and if approached as such there is no reason to think it is going to mess up horn players chops particularly.

With that thought in mind, I was very interested to see on the Facebook Fan page for Patterson Hornworks this announcement yesterday:

Patterson Hornworks has begun working on a new leadpipe for a Yamaha Marching Mello. The MP adapter thing doesn’t work and the LP needs an angle so the poor player doesn’t have to tilt his head back. We’re working on the mandrel now, should have a LP in a day or so.

Now this is mellophone/horn news! A fine custom horn maker who really understands the horn making a custom leadpipe for the Yamaha mellophone! This instrument is widely considered to be one of the best mellos out there, this photo being from the WWBW sales page for it. In a follow up Patterson posted that the leadpipe is being designed to use a horn mouthpiece. This general type of instrument has been marketed before (by Kanstul, for example) and is one that really deserves more use. Because really there is no reason that you could not make a mellophone or F marching French horn that feels and plays a lot like a fine single F descant horn with a light, descant horn or Flugelhorn tone and good intonation. I wish Patterson the best of luck in this project and salute them for thinking out of the box. It gives me renewed hope that better marching French horns are in fact on the way.

For more on the mellophone please also visit The Mello Zone in my main website.

UPDATE: The same day as this post a very interesting, alternate approach to horn vrs. mellophone problem was posted in the Horngodess blog of Catherine Roche-Wallace. I can also see her point on this because really, to try to make a mellophone sound like a concert horn is a fight that can’t be won. A mellophone is a unique animal to be sure. Still, conceptually at least, I like the idea of a F marching French horn that is more descant horn related which is the overall point of my post today.