horn practice

In years of working with students on the horn, one of the most difficult concepts to teach (at least for me), has been the idea of musical phrasing. I imagine that this is (at least in part) because getting a strong set of fundamentals took me so long. I don’t […]

Teaching Musical Interpretation: Learn, Listen, Count

27 Feb, 2019 in Horn tagged horn playing / horn practice / horn problems / horn teaching / horn technique / music / practice / recording by Colin Dorman (updated 37 days ago)

So I’ve really been enjoying using my tablet as a digital music reader. It’s certainly been an adjustment (I’ve written about some of those here), but overall I really have been enjoying it. One recent upgrade that I made was for a relatively small and compact stand/tablet holder setup to […]

Upgrade to Digital Music Reading: New Stand!

13 Feb, 2019 in Horn tagged android / apple / chromebook / horn equipment / horn playing / horn practice / music / practice by Colin Dorman (updated 42 days ago)

Intonation. Almost everyone who has played any instrument with flexible intonation has been told that they are out-of-tune. In some of the middle and high school bands I work with, the director will go up and down the rows with a tuner, telling students that they are flat or sharp, […]

How Important Is Intonation? It Depends.

30 Jan, 2019 in Horn tagged horn playing / horn practice / horn teaching / music / orchestra / orchestra music / practice / rehearsal by Colin Dorman (updated 82 days ago)

Seth Godin’s blogs and podcasts have been a relatively frequent topic on this blog (and they’ll probably continue to be in the future), but his Akimbo podcast episode from October 10, 2018 really stuck with me. Entitled “You’re It”, this episode has the overarching theme of how the internet has […]

The gate is open. Don’t wait to be chosen

16 Jan, 2019 in Horn tagged horn playing / horn practice / horn teaching / practice by Colin Dorman (updated 88 days ago)

Yo-Yo Ma is one of the most iconic classical musicians of the last 30-plus years. His recordings of the Bach Cello Suites (made in the early 1980’s, the late 1990’s, and in 2017) have shown an incredible ability to capture the musical essence of Bach, and they also serve as […]

Yo-Yo Ma and Doug Yeo on Changes and Choices

9 Jan, 2019 in Horn tagged horn playing / horn practice / horn problems / horn teaching / music / practice by Colin Dorman (updated 75 days ago)

The is an old “rule” that’s commonly used in business, but I think that it has some great application in the music world too. The 80/20 Principle: In Brief The basic idea of the 80/20 Principle (also called the Pareto Principle) is that in most cases, 80% (or so) of […]

Do More in Less Time: 80/20 Your Practice Next Year

26 Dec, 2018 in Horn tagged horn playing / horn practice / horn problems / horn teaching / horn technique / practice by Colin Dorman (updated 92 days ago)

I’ve put up a new article in my French Horn Bootcamp series! This time the topic is everyone’s favorite – lip trills! Whether you’ve been playing for a year or a decade, learning the technique(s) involved in a good lip trill is an important technique. Even if you never use them in public, […]