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Occasionally I like to peruse Google Patent Search, looking for cool and far-out concepts in horn design. A complete article last year uncovered some interesting designs.
A recent find is Patent 6207884 from the year 2000 – a single B-flat French horn designed with an adjustable valve lever cluster. I like this sentiment of this patent very much and hope that it might be realized someday.
The basic idea is an adjustable horn that can fit both child and adult hands. Support elements associated with the left hand — the entire valve lever section, pinky hook and “duck’s foot” — are all adjustable. A beginning student could feasibly use an instrument like this from primary school through to high school.
Endorsing the single B-flat horn for beginners
Worth noting too is that this design is a single B-flat horn and not a single F horn. (Gasp!) In the old-school tradition, students are typically expected to begin on F horns.
I am a strong advocate of abandoning the F horn teaching model in favor of a more practical method. Getting a student excited with easier and more accurate playing is infinitely more conducive towards long term retention than maintaining an outdated teaching tradition.
Some might have us believe that the F horn method is one to separate the wheat from the chaff; that if you cannot master the F horn as a beginner you are not worthy of this noble and time-honored tradition.
The F horn tradition for beginners is like showing someone how to use a computer by starting them on a mechanical typewriter.
Yes, as mature horn players we strive for an ideal tone quality based upon this tradition. Myself, I do F horn studies on a regular basis as a part of a daily regime. F horn study has great value.
Yet, enforcing the single F horn with an iron hand on the average beginner is putting the cart before the horse. In American public schools especially, it is a method that needs to be re-examined.
A field example
A few years ago I taught band at an elementary school where all the horn students had single B-flat instruments. Even though they had been playing for only a few short months, they were technically adept and perhaps more importantly, excited about playing the instrument.
Children in public school music programs absolutely need short term rewards in order to maintain a strong interest in music. Only a minority of the most patient and adept learners excel on the F horn. For the rest, it is a path riddled with potholes and frustration.
Most beginning F horn students that I encounter are very inaccurate and as a result, unexcited by music in general. There is a direct cause and effect between the F horn method and long-term retention in music.
Any efforts to make beginning horn playing easier — a smaller mouthpiece, a compromised hand position, a B-flat horn, a Pip stick device, or this new Patent 6207884 — are to be applauded.
These ideas are not so much crutches as they are tools, leading students from broad, general principles towards those more specific and fine-tuned.
