John Ericson
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Posts by John Ericson
On Rankings of Schools
I spent several days off the Internet this summer, when visiting my mother in Kansas. She subscribes to a lot of magazines and it is a good time to catch up on a bit of reading in the free time that comes up. An article, “Are rankings over-rated?” in an advertising section in the June, [...]
From the Mailbag: Trumpet to Mellophone–an Easy Switch
I was recently contacted by a parent who had a child that had been asked to switch from trumpet to mellophone for marching band. The youngster is an incoming high school student, and had an audition coming soon on mellophone. In short, it won’t be very hard for a student at this level to adjust [...]
From the Mailbag: Bore
Another recent question that came in had to do with bore of horns, as in what is actually meant when people say a horn is large bore? Where this gets confusing from the start is that most horns are about the same bore. Most horns today are either .468 inch, 12 millimeter, or a size [...]
From the Mailbag: Hollow Valves
I was recently asked a question about what exactly is meant when a horn has “hollow valves.” To understand the term in a general way you first need to know how rotary valves are made. Normally the valve itself is turned and machined from a solid rod of brass. The valve itself is one piece [...]
Hornmasters: Merewether on Right Hand Position
Richard Merewether, as a horn designer, has an interesting perspective on hand position in The horn, the horn…. In the day-to-day activity of assisting players of many nationalities and every stage of attainment in the choice of an instrument (whether of our own or other make), PAXMAN are in a unique position to have observed [...]
Long Before Farkas: Horn Mutes and Other Advice for Brass Players from 1813
Way back in 1813 a comprehensive method book with sections on all the instruments was published, the Vollständige Theoretisch-pracktische Musikschule [Complete Theoretical-practical Music Method] of Joseph Fröhlich. The various instrument methods published inside this work are reasonably well known to scholars (they were also published separately from the full Musikschule), but as described in the [...]
Auf dem Strom and the Natural Horn
People by nature try to categorize things and find notable “firsts.” One “first” often given to Schubert, incorrectly, is that Auf dem Strom (1828) is for valved horn and the first such work by a major composer. Actually, it is quite playable on natural horn. I have had a longer article on this topic posted [...]
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