Tag: horn problems

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Reducing Frustration and Rage Quitting During Practice

Like I mentioned in my post a few days ago about optimizing your practice sessions by using ship dates, the All-District auditions for Kentucky are happening over the next couple of weeks, with lots of playing tests and chair auditions occurring around the same time (and usually on the same music). Right after Thanksgiving, those students…
The Theory Behind Stopping The Horn

In honor of releasing his newest CD, “No Limits”, Frank Lloyd has put together three different videos describing his playing and I thought his video about hand-stopping was quite interesting. Hand-stopping – How AND Why In the video, he describes a bit about the specific technique of hand-stopping, but he goes into quite a lot…
Minimum Viable Warm-up – Never Feel Unprepared for Playing!

Most brass players know the importance of a good warm-up. This is probably the single most important session of playing that you do each day since it gives you a chance to focus on the basics of playing. If you’re curious about some of the exercises that I use with my students, I have some…
Not Even Horn Mouthpieces Are Safe From Internet Scams

If you’ve done much buying or selling online, then you probably don’t have to be told that there are hundreds of potential scams that you have to watch out for. It turns out that (unsurprisingly) even smaller websites dedicated to selling horn-related material are a target for some scam attempts. Despite my pretty obvious interest-bordering-on-obsession with…
Erik Ralske Interview: Playing in the Met and the Dangers of Over-Hydration

The International Horn Society website has just posted an interview with Erik Ralske, former 3rd horn and then Associate Principal with the New York Philharmonic, and now principal horn with the Met Opera Orchestra. In addition to playing with the NY Phil and the Met, Mr. Ralske has also played with Houston (Associate Principal), Vancouver,…
The Beginnings of a New Chamber Ensemble

These days, chamber music comes in all sorts of ensemble sizes and instrumentation, but here’s one that I haven’t seen before. Bonus: Finally, the horn is freed from the inanity of playing the upbeats in a waltz! Now if someone would go ahead and make a Sousa chair. I hope composers (and instrument makers) are paying…
VerMeulen Video: Six Quick Fixes to Horn Playing

This year the International Horn Society (yes, that’s a real thing!) is holding their International Horn Symposium at Ithica College in Ithica, New York from June 13-18. Horn workshops happen around the world. There are at least four regional workshops that happen every year in the US: the Northeast, Southest, Mid-South and Mid-North horn workshops…
Horn-Timpani Interaction: Confirmed

The Acoustical Society of America recently helped out horn players the world over by publishing an article in 2014 in their Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) titled: The effect of nearby timpani strokes on horn playing. This study, performed by Jer-Ming Chen, John Smith, and Joe Wolfe from the School of Physics, The University of New South Wales…
Horn Player Problems, Vol. 1

I guess this is payback for all the great Brahms, Mahler, and Strauss horn parts.