Tag: horn teaching

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Hooked on (Horn) Phonics

Vowels are a crucial part of every brass players technique. These references can help!
You’re Only As Good As Your Ears

While practicing is necessary to improve, you can only improve what you hear!
No Time To Practice

“I didn’t have time to practice this week, I had too much to do.” It’s an excuse that everyone who has been teaching for more than 15 minutes has heard. It’s also an excuse that almost everyone who has played an instrument for more than a week has made. But it’s a lie. And no…
Deciding On A College? 2 Things To Consider

Deciding on a college is stressful, no matter what your major is going to be. Especially if you have multiple schools offering competing scholarships. John Ericson over at HornMatters.com has written a great article about two things to consider when you’re finalizing your college choice: Being pushed to respond to scholarship offers before the May…
Top-Notch Resource for Any Horn Ensemble

As I write this, it’s just after the yearly Solo and Ensemble festival for my students, and so, of course, I just stumbled across an excellent resource for next year! The Kumamoto Horn Ensemble (KHE) The Kumamoto Horn Ensemble has been an active horn ensemble for almost 20 years, and their website is an outstanding…
New Podcast for Music Education

It’s no secret that I may have a podcast problem. One new podcast that may be of interesting to music teachers and music educators that I’ve recently come across is the Music On Purpose podcast, with host Bryan Crisp. Bryan is a trumpet player in northern Kentucky and has an active career as both an…
Teaching Musical Interpretation: Learn, Listen, Count

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 know if this is true…
How Important Is Intonation? It Depends.

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, or simply telling students to…
The gate is open. Don’t wait to be chosen

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 removed the big gatekeepers from…
Yo-Yo Ma and Doug Yeo on Changes and Choices

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 a great example of different…