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A question recently came in relating to “wolf” notes on the natural horn, but it also relates to valved horn as well. The question included also information that in exploring the problem note the owner had the horn and crooks cleaned well and they also made sure the horn had no unrepaired dents, but still there was a major problem note that remained.
It is a problem I have experienced and has been mentioned in this site. In a prior article I wrote for example about the rough high B-flat seen on some Geyer style horns and also I mentioned the bad high F on a vintage Hawkes valved horn, which I was able to mostly fix by choosing the right crook. (And not the one that came with that horn, that crook was about the worst option).
More to the specific point of the question though, I also had an experience last year working out a work on natural horn for a recital that relates to crooks and a wolf tone. At that time I wrote that
…I had at least four reasonable ways that I could put this horn into F, as follows:
1. The E crook mentioned above
2. The F crook actually made for this horn
3. The F crook made for the Hawkes piston horn in this article
4. The G crook and a F coupler as made for the small natural horn.A few trials showed me that the “E” crook I was using on the small horn made the best F crook for the big horn and had an even better top G on this horn than it had on the little horn.
So what was the problem? On several occasions over the years I have had extended talks with natural horn player and maker Richard Seraphinoff, who made the horn body in the photo, on this very topic. In the case of his horns I know he is very careful about the exact placement of the joint between the first branch and the bell tail as it impacts the E-flat crook. But also there is an element of mystery to it, related to crooks. The way he tells it, sometimes he will make a crook and it will have an unstable note on a certain natural horn corpus. He will hang it on a hook and make another crook for that horn. Later, making another horn, he will try the problem crook again and it will work fine on that horn. In the end the issue was there was some very subtle acoustical unhappiness between that crook and one horn body but not another.
Wolf notes are much less common on modern production valved horns than they were in the past. In particular that high B-flat, makers have made a goal to work that note out, and my recently purchased horn I am happy to say has the best high B-flat of any horn I have ever owned. But again, to close, if it is a natural horn or an early valved horn that takes crooks, try other crooks, this may solve the problem pretty dramatically. Good luck!
