Schools Using Introducing the Horn

I brought out my publication Introducing the Horn in late 2007. Since that time I know that three universities do actually use this book in their methods classes for music educators, which was a primary market for this publication. I wanted to put together a brief resource, sort of a mini Farkas book without the transposition by clef and such, that would help a music educator understand the most essential elements of how to start and convert horn players successfully.

In spite of what advertising I have done I suspect that a lot of the people teaching this course out there don’t even know this publication exists. It gets at the topic of who actually teaches the course. If it is a younger horn faculty member they may have seen reference to the book and read my writings on the Internet. But a lot of schools use the Whitener book for all the brass instruments and a lot of schools also don’t have horn faculty teaching horn methods classes. It can very easily be a member of the music education faculty who has used more or less the same syllabus for years. “Old syllabus syndrome” keeps horn teaching stuck in the past and keeps producing music educators who are not well equipped to teach the horn which has very specific challenges.

While there are exceptions, overall our horn numbers are low. Really, the big picture is that there should be a lot more horn players in the public schools. If you are the horn teacher at a college and wish to get a copy of Introducing the Horn into get in the hands of the people who teach your methods classes contact me privately, I will get one to you. And if you are a band director who wants to start and convert horn players better, feel free to contact me privately as well, I would love to know more of what you feel you did not learn in your methods courses well and will try to address them in further blog posts. Finally, I recently tweaked my article on “Getting Started on the Horn” in Horn Articles Online, which has a number of tips for new horn players and their teachers. I will post some more thoughts on this topic next week.