Tag: horn technique

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Timothy Jones & LSO Section Horn Hangout

This Horn Hangout was recorded the day after the Tony Halstead video, again at Paxman’s horn shop in London. This video features the members of the London Symphony Orchestra horn section: Timothy Jones – Principal horn Angela Barnes – 2nd horn Alexander Edmundson – Co-principal/3rd Jonathan Lipton – 4th Hugh Seenan – Former principal horn,…
Tony Halstead Horn Hangout

Sarah Willis’ most recent Horn Hangout video to be archived is her discussion with acclaimed natural hornist Anthony Halstead. As someone who has done very little with the natural horn, this was a very interesting chat, and makes me wish I had some spare change to put toward a real valveless instrument! Anthony Halstead –…
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…
Increasing Productivity in Practice

For most students, practice recommendations are often given in minutes, since that is by far the easiest way to quantify practice (especially if you are teaching a large ensemble!), but one thing that is often overlooked by beginning and intermediate students is their practice productivity – making the minutes count, instead of counting the minutes!…
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…
App Review: Official Quality Tones App

Accuracy is probably the number one concern for most beginning to intermediate horn players. Until your ear, embouchure, and air become well developed, hitting the correct note – especially the first note – can seem like a crap shoot. That is precisely what the developer of the Quality Tones app wants to improve. What Are…
Transpostion – The Skill That Keeps on Paying

Like I mentioned over on my transposition page, lots of students are very resistant to the idea (and challenge) of learning to transpose. It’s not a particularly easy skill to learn – the basic idea is quite simple (see one note, play another note) but some keys are more difficult than others, and doing it…
Michael Thompson: Elegant Simplicity of Horn Playing

Michael Thompson, a British horn player, is probably best known for his (along with fellow British horn player Richard Watkins) fantastic CD t, but in this Youtube video, he gives some great tips for horn players of all ages: You should definitely watch the whole video, but if you don’t have time (make time!), here…
How Long Should I Practice?

It’s likely one of the most common question asked by both students and their parents – how much time should they be practicing? While I was in high school, I read Phil Farkas’ Art of French Horn Playing, and in it, he advocates for around 3 hours of practice per day. As an undergraduate, I tried…
Horn Playing From the Inside

Sarah Willis, the first female brass player in the Berlin Philharmonic, an incredible low horn player, and the host of several music- and horn-related TV and internet shows, has done an incredible experiment on what goes on inside the mouth while playing horn by playing a specially-made horn inside an MRI machine!