Horn Matters is the leading online resource on the French horn, co-founded by John Ericson and Bruce Hembd. The mission of Horn Matters is: to encourage, inspire, inform, and challenge horn players, and; to promote the best musical instrument ever, the French horn. (More.)
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Most Recent Articles
Geyer Update: Engravings, Serial Numbers, and More
I could also have titled this article “Things I got wrong” in the Geyer Dreaming series (which starts here), or the related article published...
Revisiting the Art of French Horn on LP Records
The past year the vast majority of my actual classical music listening has been to LP records. With the recent passing of Hermann Baumann...
Brief Review: The Horn. The Book You Need
To open this brief review, I’ll start with a money quote:
The Horn by Renato Meucci and Gabriele Rocchetti is the most significant book on...
Accuracy Encyclopedia: Well Duh!?! and More
Continuing our look at accuracy and the letters D and E, our first topic is the descant horn, which can certainly help accuracy in...
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Featured Articles
Horn Etudes by Female Composers
Many Horn Matters readers will be familiar with the Works with Horn by Female Composers website by Dr. Lin Foulk. If not, this is...
Julius Watkins, jazz French horn pioneer
Talking with colleagues recently, a topic that came up was how some great players of the recent past are unjustly neglected today. In terms...
Overview of Trusted Brands in French Horns
A survey titled "What Brand Names Do You Trust?" collected the opinions of 392 participants. The results are in and while it may take...
Choosing a French Horn Mouthpiece (I): The Basic Parts
Part I: The Rim and Preliminary Thoughts
Part II: Cup, Throat and Bore
Part III: Weight, Plating and Shopping Tips
For the past decade...
French Horn Transposition Chart
A complete reference.
Transposition Chart (PDF) (updated 2012)
Over the past few months, I have been posting various transposition tricks, including how to transpose:
A and...
Farkas on Stagefright (and more)
In the world of horn there have been few that made as much impact as Philip Farkas (1914-1992). The Art of French Horn Playing...
Random Articles
Block those betas
Of interest in the news:
Block those betas
An article at The Minnesota Daily with the provocative title "Better music by prescription" dives into the...
Hornmasters on Average Tonguing, part II: Schuller and Yancich
Gunther Schuller in Horn Technique has a rather different take on the tongue and tonguing than Farkas.
Introducing the concept of varying the contact point
He...
Arranging chorales, like painting by numbers
For myself as a conservatory undergraduate, four-part chorale writing was slow and sometimes laborious. It was a learning curve fraught with rules and clams.
Later...
Let’s talk about … rotor bumpers
Back in the day we called them “corks” because they were always natural cork (and fell apart pretty regularly), but today “bumpers” seems to...
A Blind Test of Horns at IHS Denver, the Results
A post on the Pope Instrument Repair site/blog points to the results of the blind test of horns done at the 2008 IHS Denver...
“Each instrument has a different personality,” or, different horns are in...
There is a big amorphous topic that is rarely discussed related to horns and repertoire. Over the years it has become more and more...