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 13. Concentration: ability to mentally focus for long periods
Concentration is not a topic touched on directly by many horn teachers. However, the ability to focus is a key fundamental for effective practice...
Fundamentals 12. Endurance: ease of production at all levels of fatigue...
Sometimes I think of batteries when I think about endurance on the horn. Batteries run down with use, and as they deplete the energy...
Revisiting a Geyer single horn
During my sabbatical in the spring of 2021 I rebuilt four horns of interesting designs, the third of those being a Geyer single F....
Fundamentals 11. Accuracy: initial attacks at all dynamics, consistency hearing entrance...
The proverbial elephant in the room in horn playing is accuracy. In the prompt from Douglas Hill (this series is based on a list...
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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
Index for The Horn Matters PDF Excerpt E-Book series
Recently we introduced a series of three, concise (around 20 page) horn excerpt E-Books that print and display easily on a computer or tablet...
Podcast: Talking about Horn Etudes
Etudes. Studied systematically or in more of a free form manner they a great way to work on technique and to keep your chops...
A Conch Shell Horn
With summer upon us it is a good time to step back and switch things up with something different.
Often horn players make use of...
Accuracy Encyclopedia: F is for Fundamentals
As we continue with the letter F, a third elephant in the room is the whole topic of fundamentals, or the study of fundamentals...
Hearing Under Siege
Under siege
For about 10 years now, I have been faithfully using custom musician ear plugs whenever a rehearsal dynamic exceeds 90 decibels. I do...
From the Mailbag: A Horn Curriculum
A question came in from a reader who is enrolled in a horn pedagogy class, and I asked if I could answer it...
