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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Fundamentals 9. Ranges: extremes, clear controlled sounds (high, middle, mid-low, low)
Ranges are fundamental. This prompt from the Douglas Hill book is pretty broad, but focuses on two elements; extreme ranges and good control in...
Fundamentals 8. Tone quality: centered resonance, consistency in all registers, varieties...
Tone quality is a very important fundamental! If you have a good tone, you are likely doing a lot of things correctly. Strive for...
Revisiting the Moosewoods
I’ve made some equipment changes recently. As I noted in this article, I recently found a particular passage I was recording to be VERY...
Fundamentals 7. Slurring: various intervals, various dynamics, register changes
Slurring can be a problem, even a major problem. The question you should be asking is this -- is the problem you, or is...
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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 Bonding with your Horn
Up today are two topics. First, making the rounds of social media the past few days was an article on the topic of the...
Horn Repertoire Week 15: Final!
Congratulations! You have made it to the end of an epic year.
As I wrote when this was first posted in 2013, it was a...
A New Major Horn Quartet
The number of truly great horn quartet pieces can pretty much be counted on one hand ... okay, maybe two hands. Thomas Bacon wants...
At the Opera, Guns and Pills Don't Mix
From backstage at a production of Don Giovanni.
When I wandered backstage at the current Arizona Opera production of Don Giovanni and saw the props...
How to Clean Your Horn
The topic of cleaning your horn has come up a few times in Horn Matters, Dave Weiner addressing the topic of having a shop...
Screen time versus your horn playing (and everything else)
This past week I noted an article, “Study: Too much screen time harmful on molecular level.” Likely you have heard that overall, it is...
