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
Transposition Tricks: Old vs. New Notation
A detailed description of bass clef notation for French horn.
Since posting a blog on concert-pitch bass clef transposition, I have been getting a lot...
Mailbag: Why does Another Player in my Section Sound Loud, Bright,...
Another question that came in recently was that of why a person in a horn section sounded bad. In the E-mail it mentioned the...
The Birth of the Cool and the horn in the Miles...
Miles Davis Birth of the Cool-- this 1957 album is considered one of the most influential jazz albums ever. It is a compilation of singles...
Hornmasters on Staccato, Part II: Fox, Berv, and Hill
Staccato tonguing is a problem for many horn students. In part I of this article Farkas and Schuller laid out their approaches to teaching...
Hornmasters on Trills, Part IV: Tuckwell
One book that is not that well known today is Playing the Horn by Barry Tuckwell. It was written by Tuckwell in much the...
Trompes de Chasse vs. Telemann
Recently a video link was posted to the Horn People group that caught my attention, a group of Trompes de Chasse performing Telemann with...
