John Ericson

A blast from the past, a brief look at the G Mellophone Bugle

An element of the mellophone puzzle, and understanding where we are today with the modern marching mello, is the G mellophone bugle. For those that...

Background on the new publication, Playing the Wagner Tuba

When I started thinking out of the box after turning in my tenure file and considered launching a publishing venture I really got going...

Background on the new publication, Playing High Horn

Over the summer of 2007 I worked very hard toward the completion of four book projects and launching a new publishing venture, Horn Notes...

Two Ways to Warm-up, and a Great Quote from John Barrows

Today in our horn pedagogy class the topic was the warm-up. One aspect of this that is little commented upon is there are essentially...

8 Quick Tips to Improve Your Accuracy on French Horn

There are many ways to work on accuracy, but these eight are all important elements to focus upon. 1. Buzz more often on the mouthpiece...

Background on editing The Brass Gym for Horn

Very early in my tenure at ASU I realized that Sam Pilafian was accomplishing some very interesting things with his breathing/warm-up class and warm-up...

Thoughts on Playing a Double Wagner Tuba

I am playing extra horn this week with The Phoenix Symphony, seventh horn and Wagner tuba on The Rite of Spring. It has made...

Remembering Milan Yancich (1921-2007)

Over the weekend I learned of the passing on Friday of Milan Yancich at the age of 86. A longtime faculty member at Eastman,...

How do you Clean the Leadpipe if there is a Valve in the Middle...

This question was posed to me today and I realized there is nothing in my writings that address this question, one that does come...

Developing a Summer Excerpt Project

A recent E-mail from David Wakefield reminded me a summer where I had a “special project,” an excerpt project, a great project for any...