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Joseph Meifred and Teaching Valved Horn Technique

PUBLISHED: January 6, 2011, John Ericson

One thing that has probably come through in Horn Matters is that an interest of mine is the history of how the horn has been taught. I find old method books to be especially interesting, and one of the best but almost completely unknown today is the method of Joseph Meifred. I have a brief [...]

A Very French Villanelle

PUBLISHED: September 25, 2010, John Ericson

One thing not often encountered today are the very different “schools” of horn playing of days gone by, one of the most distinctive of the recent past being the French school with small bore, piston valve horns and a wide vibrato. If you have never heard this school of playing, the following recording of IHS [...]

Gottlob Benedikt Bierey: Excited about Valves

PUBLISHED: May 4, 2010, John Ericson

Bruce sent me a link to a very interesting post yesterday from the site Wired.com. The title of the post was “May 3, 1815: Blown Away by Horn With Valves” and it had to do with the first published notice on the valved horn. The article itself is compiled from “various” sources and I am [...]

Why was the Valve Invented?

PUBLISHED: February 10, 2010, John Ericson

A question that comes up periodically is that of why was the valve invented. There is a myth that is repeated often that they were invented as a crook changing device and only later did players realize that they could use them to play chromatic passages. Myth? Yes, this is absolutely a myth. I wrote [...]

The Gumpert Project

PUBLISHED: January 16, 2010, John Ericson

While this is a post from my original HTML blog from 9/16/05, it is very timely now as one of my DMA students, Derek Wright, is working on a recording project related to these transcriptions; video shot this past week is embedded at the end of this post. All fine teachers strive to teach effectively. [...]

Thinking Over the Daily Regime

PUBLISHED: January 2, 2010, John Ericson

As you start the New Year it is always a good time to re-evaluate your daily routine. Two recent posts on other blogs caught my attention for their comments on the daily regime. The more recent of the two posts is from the blog of Michael Gilliand, who is Adjunct Professor of Horn at Missouri [...]

“Improvement, not Perfection”

PUBLISHED: December 4, 2009, John Ericson

Another article from the original HTML Horn Notes Blog dated 2/7/05. In my entry for 1/20/05 Three times or a thousand times? I address a presentation I recently heard that seriously pushed the concept of attempting to play things correctly 1000 times in a row. At the time I felt that this was, in short, [...]

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