Horn Matters is the leading online resource on the French horn, co-founded by John Ericson and Bruce Hembd. The mission of Horn Matters is: to encourage, inspire, inform, and challenge horn players, and; to promote the best musical instrument ever, the French horn. (More.)
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Most Recent Articles
Geyer Update: Engravings, Serial Numbers, and More
I could also have titled this article “Things I got wrong” in the Geyer Dreaming series (which starts here), or the related article published...
Revisiting the Art of French Horn on LP Records
The past year the vast majority of my actual classical music listening has been to LP records. With the recent passing of Hermann Baumann...
Brief Review: The Horn. The Book You Need
To open this brief review, I’ll start with a money quote:
The Horn by Renato Meucci and Gabriele Rocchetti is the most significant book on...
Accuracy Encyclopedia: Well Duh!?! and More
Continuing our look at accuracy and the letters D and E, our first topic is the descant horn, which can certainly help accuracy in...
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Featured Articles
Horn Etudes by Female Composers
Many Horn Matters readers will be familiar with the Works with Horn by Female Composers website by Dr. Lin Foulk. If not, this is...
Julius Watkins, jazz French horn pioneer
Talking with colleagues recently, a topic that came up was how some great players of the recent past are unjustly neglected today. In terms...
Overview of Trusted Brands in French Horns
A survey titled "What Brand Names Do You Trust?" collected the opinions of 392 participants. The results are in and while it may take...
Choosing a French Horn Mouthpiece (I): The Basic Parts
Part I: The Rim and Preliminary Thoughts
Part II: Cup, Throat and Bore
Part III: Weight, Plating and Shopping Tips
For the past decade...
French Horn Transposition Chart
A complete reference.
Transposition Chart (PDF) (updated 2012)
Over the past few months, I have been posting various transposition tricks, including how to transpose:
A and...
Farkas on Stagefright (and more)
In the world of horn there have been few that made as much impact as Philip Farkas (1914-1992). The Art of French Horn Playing...
Random Articles
On Holding the Horn and Tendinitis
Bruce Richards posted an article very recently to Living the Dream on the topic of horn player tendinitis. Richards and I go way back...
Bad Audition=Quit Horn? (Updated with a short story)
A post from the archive of the original HTML Horn Notes Blog dated 9/4/06. With a 2021 UPDATE and story at the end
Every fine...
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....
Getting Serious about Upcoming Performances and Mouthpiece Choices
There are some things in horn playing that truly are mysterious. One is the interaction between lip and mouthpiece and horn.
As I mentioned in...
From the Mailbag: Is Using the Assistant Horn Cheating?
I had a question come in recently on the use of the assistant first horn. I actually wrote a full article on this topic...
Memories of Horn Calls Past: My First Issue of The Horn...
Part one of this series touched on the 1979 Annual Horn Workshop but there were several reports in the October, 1979 issue of The...