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
Who Wrote Mozart’s Horn Concerto K. 412?
This may seem a bit like the old joke, “who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?” but an article in the 2004 issue of the Historic...
How Loud is too Loud?
This post is from the original HTML Horn Notes Blog; this particular post dates to 8/6/05, and was from the end of a summer...
A Masterclass with Philip Farkas on Musicianship
This summer I am presenting three sessions at the IHS symposium in Memphis, and this week the major project was organizing my materials for...
Introducing Volume II of the Horn Matters PDF Excerpt E-Book
Following up on the original volume (more here) is volume II of The Horn Matters PDF Excerpt E-Book. The content of volume I was...
PSA: Strauss 1 has No Exposition
In recent years I have seen repeated references to an “exposition” of the first Strauss horn concerto. What makes it very puzzling is the...
Understanding Wagner and the Horn (my best article)
Most every semester people working on research projects contact me about various topics related to the horn in the 19th century. This spring in...
