Mid-South Horn Workshop 2010, part 2

Saturday morning we were greeted by about three inches of new snow! This impacted the rest of the workshop I am sure but most of the participants who were there on Friday stuck around for at least part of the day Saturday.

My day started with my “Beyond Farkas” session at 9 AM. This went well and I had a good audience of toward twenty at the session (thanks to Tony Cleeton for the photo from the session). I opened up to the audience about some of the areas that had started me on the road to some recent changes in my teaching, changes that move my pedagogy away  from using illustrations that are not physiologically accurate. I will get to this topic further in an upcoming publication at some point but again to get some ideas about what my session was about check my outline in this post and the Mellocast for more.

Right after the session I was able to try a mellophone that had been outfitted with the new Patterson custom mellophone leadpipe, brought to the session by a regular Mellocast listener. You read that right, a Patterson leadpipe on a mellophone! It is a conversion pipe to upgrade a Yamaha mellophone to take a standard horn mouthpiece and to improve intonation and playing qualities. My initial impressions were that the playing qualities were easy but this particular instrument seemed to go a bit flat in the upper register. But this particular instrument was the older model Yamaha so on a new one it might be better. It had a very nice sound something like a cross between a Flugelhorn and a descant horn, at least for the light testing I did, and the intonation overall was way above average for a mellophone. This is a product to watch which I will try to feature in more depth at some point in the future.

After that I poked my head out and checked the weather again and it was snowing steadily. I made a decision that while I had originally planned to make a late night drive to Kansas staying as late as possible at the event on Saturday, instead I should leave early enough to get there before dark. So my main, final destination at the event was the vendor’s room.

I will post more about the music I purchased sometime soon, mostly horn ensemble music, but would at this point mention one very interesting new publication for three horns and piano, Hornsongs Vol. 3 (music of Mozart) by Verne Reynolds. It is so hot off the press that it as of this moment is not even in the website of the publisher. I also purchased six mouthpieces, two Vienna Horns CDs, and tried a bunch of horns.

To elaborate on the horns, for many people being able to try a lot of different horns in one place is a prime reason to attend a horn workshop. I gave both of the triple horns at the event a good test and they were very nice, a Durk and a Ricco Kuhn. And basically every horn that priced out at over $7,000 I liked but some more than others. But the differences were not so much that one was really better than another, they were just different flavors of great and would appeal to different players. To mention one specific brand, I liked the new version of the Medlin horn which is a recently introduced custom Geyer style horn. An example from their website is in the photo.

I also tried mutes at the event and would say the Ion Balu stop mute reviewed in this prior post is crazy good! It looks like a mute designed by Dr. Seuss but it is quite powerful. According to Ion they are selling very well, and finally trying one in person I can totally understand why.

With that I hit the road home. Snow was drifting onto the road near Stillwater and it snowed like crazy most of the four plus hours I drove north to my mom’s house. I missed most of the Saturday events and I expect that a number of other people also left early. I hope the event still broke even and also hope they have another event in the future, the venue worked well for a regional workshop. Thanks again to Lanette Compton and her studio for their efforts to host a great event.

LINK TO PART I