Archived under: Pet Peeves | Stopped horn & other effects
Stopped Horn: Up or Down? Does it Matter?
In a past tongue-in-cheek article — “How to Provoke a Horn Geek” — I poked a little fun a some hot button issues in the horn world. One of those is the ongoing debate of stopped horn and whether the pitch actually raises or lowers upon closing the bell with the hand.
Archived discussions at the HornPlayer.net site illustrate this debate and its dogma:
An article at the Music Animation website reprints some information from an August 1976 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Author and acoustical expert John Backus offers logical explanations for either theory.
Smoke and mirrors
All acoustical and theoretical discussion aside, stopped fingerings are generally the easiest to figure out and play on the F-side of the double horn. Simply finger the stopped note down one-half step below the written pitch.
This is not to say that B-flat fingerings will not work for stopped horn. It is just that they might take some experimenting to figure out what works best. B-flat stopped fingerings generally do not fit into a neat pattern like those on the F-horn.
Stop mutes
When it came to stopped horn, “flesh is best” was the advice from a former teacher of mine. Yet, not everyone has the hand size to stop the bell in order to get the proper effect. In these cases, a stop mute can be a big help.
Bruce Richards has (or had?) an excellent series on stopped horn on his blog “Thoughts on Playing the Horn Pretty Well.” Unfortunately at the time of this writing, his blog cannot be found. The RSS feed is still working , but the site is (one hopes temporarily) down.
He recommended the use of the wood stop mutes, expressing a preference for its sound over brass mutes. He makes (made) a convincing argument.
This video advertising the Balu stop mute also makes a fairly convincing sales pitch for a very unique design.
Another interesting product that I have never tried is the non-transposing stop mute. In the best of both worlds, I would love to own all three types.
A makeshift solution
A simple solution that I am experimenting with resembles a product invented by Pip Eastop, the “EaseStop.” (The last time I checked the pictures were missing from his site.)
A large gum eraser — held as pictured below — might help individuals with smaller hands achieve a better stopped effect. A few of my students have had good luck with this makeshift solution.
A video primer
This YouTube video by Katherine Liesener gives a good overview of the stopped horn technique. I like how she just focuses on the technique itself without getting into the pithy (and perhaps irrelevant) issue of whether stopped notes technically go up or down.
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