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, […]
Horn
Since I’ve started this website, I’ve been slowly (very slowly) trying to write down exercises and other materials for my students and other horn players to use. While I was doing this I quickly realized that trying to do it by hand wasn’t going to work – my handwriting is […]
2018 Music Notation Software Options
Here in Kentucky, it’s time for All-County and All-District auditions, and coming up next month is All-State. One of the things I hear quite a bit from more advanced students are questions about how to plan out your day (or days) when you have an important performance or audition. While […]
Performance Day Preparation Template
For musicians, some anxiety just before and during performances is an all-too-familiar problem. Some musicians feel twinges of excitement, while others can suffer almost-crippling sensations. Getting nerves during a performance seems to be especially common for classical musicians, and while nerves can be distracting in any context, they can be […]
3 Quick Tips to Reduce Nerves in Performance and Auditions
So, it finally happened. I have long lusted after a fancy and very cleverly-designed Wiseman horn case. Although there has been a tiny renaissance of horn cases over the past 15 years or so, with lots of different case designs from companies like Marcus Bonna, Protec, Cardocase, and quite a […]
Wiseman Horn Case Review
An interesting blog post over on BulletProofMusician.com takes a look at the difference in levels of performance anxiety between traditionally-trained classical musicians and musicians in other genres. The blog article looks at two different studies. One study by British researchers used 244 musicians, of which about half were classical musicians […]
Performance Anxiety: Classical vs. Pop Musicians
Every year the University of Louisville puts on a clinic to help high school players around the state with the All-State etudes. Each instrument has its own instructor (usually the University professor for that instrument), but this week the UofL brass faculty are doing a tour of Japan, so I […]
2018 KY All-State Horn Clinic Notes
Although it seems like the school year just started a few weeks ago, this a pretty crucial time for the rest of your semester (and year). To me, it seems, that these next few weeks determine how the rest of your school year will go. For students here in Kentucky […]