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Setting Goals: 3 Tips for ‘Keeping it Real’

PUBLISHED: October 19, 2011, Bruce Hembd

Are you are feeling a little lost in the woods with your music-making? A great way to reign yourself in is to set specific goals. Goal setting is a great tool to plan for the future, and for motivating oneself to do the necessary work in order to achieve the goal. From the Mind Tools [...]

9 Ways We can Tell that a Composer or Arranger Does Not Know how to Write for the Horn

PUBLISHED: October 15, 2011, John Ericson

Periodically we at Horn matters have touched on the topic of bad horn writing. Horn players reading this already have a good idea, intuitively, what is characteristic for the horn (especially heroic lines) but it is something that is not necessarily intuitively understood by composers and arrangers. In this article I brought up these topics: [...]

Five Tips for Staying Focused When Freaking Out in College

PUBLISHED: September 21, 2011, Bruce Hembd

I have fairly fond memories of my experiences in both graduate and undergraduate school. That being said I did have the occasional odd and frustrating experience and sometimes, it was a challenge to turn those experiences around into positive learning. Some lessons are not learned until many years later. College is for many students the [...]

Four Tips for Getting Back in Shape after Taking a Break

PUBLISHED: July 29, 2011, Bruce Hembd

Recently I picked up my horn again after a 4-week break. I like to take summer breaks for several reasons many of which I spelled out previously in “Taking Time Off from the Horn.” One of the biggest benefits from taking time off is that it provides an opportunity to hit the reset button and [...]

Preview: Six Upcoming Themes for the Horn Matters Site

PUBLISHED: July 13, 2011, Bruce Hembd

Regular visitors to the Horn Matters web site may have noticed a change recently in how the site looks up top. The logo and “Horn Matters” title are more-or-less the same, but the color scheme has changed and an additional background element has been introduced. This update is an example of something that I am [...]

5 Quotations on Work and Success

PUBLISHED: June 29, 2011, Bruce Hembd

A few years ago when Horn Matters first launched, we had a random quotation feature that appeared at the top of the site. After a few months I removed the random quotations in an effort to simplify and subtract from the overall design; looking at that list a few days ago, and I was struck [...]

How to Annoy and Alienate Colleagues in 11 Easy Steps!

PUBLISHED: March 23, 2011, Archibald Noodlefish
The Jaded Clam Award

Quirky personalities are more-or-less a fact of life in the classical music profession. For non-musicians and students, it can almost seem like a dirty secret when the dramas behind-the-scenes are discovered. A prevailing thought among spectators is that because music is performed so harmoniously, professional musicians must all get along like peas in a pod. [...]

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