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Articles by John Ericson

Indexed in reverse chronological order.

Horn Event Promotion 101: A Letter from the Host

PUBLISHED: January 12, 2012, John Ericson

Continuing this series, another thing a very organized host does is be in contact with participants. The Southwest Horn Conference for 2012 is this coming weekend, and this week this final E-note went out from the host, which she has allowed Horn Matters to reprint in full. It is a great example of what should [...]

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Start the Year with a Mission

PUBLISHED: January 10, 2012, John Ericson

Late last year I was challenged to think about the topic of mission statements, and specifically a mission statement for my teaching. At first I was resistant to the idea, as for some teachers the mission seems to be to break you! Show you just how little you know. I actually not long ago saw [...]

Horn Secrets: Putting Conventional Wisdom to the Test

PUBLISHED: January 8, 2012, John Ericson

A week from today I will present a session at the 2012 Southwest Horn Conference with the title “Horn Secrets: Putting Conventional Wisdom to the Test.” The following was turned in for the program book: Many elements of a conventional approach to horn playing were put forth by Philip Farkas in his 1956 text The [...]

Scale Goals: High School

PUBLISHED: December 27, 2011, John Ericson

Depending on the state you are in, regional honor band auditions at the high school level may have either recently happened or are coming very soon. Besides music that you are required to prepare you will be asked to play scales, and it should at the audition never sound like a surprise. “F# major! AAAK!” [...]

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Tips

Hornmasters on Double and Triple Tonguing. Part III: Brophy, Tuckwell, and Reynolds

PUBLISHED: December 20, 2011, John Ericson

To conclude this series on double and triple tonguing, we turn to William R. Brophy, who suggests in his Technical Studies for Solving Special Problems on the Horn to focus on cutting off the ends of the syllables with the tongue as an aid to double tonguing. The first step is to focus on the [...]

Hornmasters on Double and Triple Tonguing. Part II: Yancich, Fox, and Berv

PUBLISHED: December 16, 2011, John Ericson

In part I Schuller and Farkas ultimately come across as not being big advocates of multiple tonguing. Today we turn a corner however and arrive at sources a bit more committed to learning the skill. Milan Yancich in A Practical Guide to French Horn Playing has a section of exercises to develop triple and double [...]

“Not Like Kopprash”

PUBLISHED: December 15, 2011, John Ericson

Way back on 7/13/06 I had a short article in reference to playing jazz on my original HTML blog under the title, “Not Like Kopprasch.” The thought comes back periodically, and came back recently as there are some great jazz arrangements on the brass band Christmas concert I am playing this weekend with the Salt [...]

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