French Horn Patents

I played two rehearsals recently as a sub with the ASU Sinfonietta, our second orchestra; they are working on a concert that includes a movement of Holst The Planets and more. I enjoyed especially getting out on the Gammage stage yesterday and playing in the hall, what a great venue. A few random notes: 1. [...]

Cows and horns. Eliana Burki attracts the young, hip crowd with her alphorn. Frances Jones attracts cows with hers. As an aside in the second part of my tale “Carmen Full of Bull,” I remarked about cows and their strange attraction to the horn. At last I found proof. At the Amazing Alphorn, Ms. Jones [...]

One thing you figure out pretty quickly is that some students don’t practice and others don’t practice effectively. Part of the problem is they don’t know how to practice. Especially for beginners, the music they study is all very short selections of only a line or two of music. The selections are short enough they [...]

More on Eliana Burki. Not only can alphorn be cool, but it can be… uhm… sexy? Judging by the amount of television appearances that may be found online, Eliana Burki seems to be making a name for herself with her unique approach to the alphorn. At the very least she is to be commended for [...]

Today I got my parade fix for the year at the Tempe Veteran’s Day Parade. It is very much like the small town parades I grew up with in Kansas– but longer–with antique cars, politicians throwing out candy, Shriners driving around in little cars, Cub Scout troops, and of course marching bands. In the bands [...]

Continued from Part I. What about the much maligned “clam” – the common term used for cracked notes on the French horn? Of course if you haven’t seen it already, a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek YouTube video “The Lexicon of Clamology” covers all the known terminology in detail, including demonstrations. We have countless malapropisms for missed notes [...]