Home > Articles by: Bruce Hembd

Articles by Bruce Hembd

Indexed in reverse chronological order.

Choosing a French Horn Mouthpiece (II): Cup, Throat and Bore

PUBLISHED: July 30, 2009, Bruce Hembd
French Horn Mouthpiece Cutaway Diagram

In Part I, the main focus was on the mouthpiece parts closest to the embouchure. For this reason alone, it seems entirely logical that the rim, bite and mouthpiece diameter are a good place to start in choosing a mouthpiece. Worth mentioning too is that these parts are clearly in view. They are easily discerned [...]

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Teachers

Choosing a French Horn Mouthpiece (I): The Basic Parts

PUBLISHED: July 29, 2009, Bruce Hembd
French Horn Mouthpiece Cutaway Diagram

Part I: The Rim and Preliminary Thoughts Part II: Cup, Throat and Bore Part III: Weight, Plating and Shopping Tips For the past decade I have stayed with one type of mouthpiece, but over the years I have gone through a number of different makes and models. The picture above shows a few that I [...]

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The Physics of Brass Instruments, A Cabbage Lecture

PUBLISHED: July 28, 2009, Bruce Hembd

Horn geek alert! A fascinating video lecture presented by Brian Holmes at a Fermilab* Colloquium Series explains the physics of brass instruments and some of the basics of sound production. As a physicist and a French horn player, Mr. Holmes presents an intimate knowledge of the subject, all done in good humor. People that subscribe [...]

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Teachers

Random Monday: In the Factory, Dorothy’s Shoes and Barking with the Big Dogs

PUBLISHED: July 27, 2009, Bruce Hembd

Navel gazing … ooh look … some lint! Horn Manufacturing From Facebook fan page called “Conn Horns” I discovered a neat video on the manufacturing process at the Conn-Selmer factory. Regardless of your instrument preference, this video is fun to watch. The entire process is shown from beginning to end. It always amazes me how [...]

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Update: Copy, Paste and Steal

PUBLISHED: July 24, 2009, Bruce Hembd

Stealing is not owning. (from the old Horndog Blog) Last May I posted a two-part series on a phenomena that I dubbed “copy and paste culture.” It was an essay on how students are using the Internet to copy text and paste it into assignments. It concluded with some statistics on the amount of material [...]

Review: A Resource For Playing Horn in Brass Quintet

PUBLISHED: July 23, 2009, Bruce Hembd

Another excellent online resource. One great thing about the Internet is that scholarly materials once hidden away in dusty library shelves have become more readily available to the public. Some researchers publish their works online as full-fledged web sites, making them freely available at the click of a mouse. A few examples already noted here [...]

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Chamber music, James Boldin

Top 10 Ways to Provoke a Horn-Geek

PUBLISHED: July 22, 2009, Bruce Hembd

How to get a horn geek riled up. Horn aficionados and geeks as a general rule, are a pretty easy-going breed. But if we get riled-up, watch out! We absolutely will not stop arguing until every last point that we can think of has been exhausted — at least twice. So, what jibes can you [...]

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Conn, Geyer
John Ericson & Bruce Hembd
on the French horn, brass related topics, and the field of classical music.