Horn Player/Web Developer

Category: Horn

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  • Preparing for All-State – Fundamentals

    If you’re a high school horn player in Kentucky, by now you’ve probably seen the All-State audition music for this year. Although it’s certainly challenging, make sure you spend at least a third to half of your practice time on developing good fundamentals with basic exercises! There are a couple of good reasons for this:…

  • Horn Nerd: Case Edition

    Horn Nerd: Case Edition

      I’m sure that this takes my horn-nerdiness up to just about maximum, but of all the things on my horn equipment wish-list right now, probably the number one or two thing would be a horn case. It’s not just any horn case, though, it’s a case made by Wiseman of London, and on the…

  • 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!

  • Know your Right (Hand Position)

    There are many reasons why I wish I could observe students’ practice habits at home, but one of the biggest reasons is probably one that they think little to nothing about – their right hand position. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen students playing (either in lessons, in rehearsals, or in performances)…

  • Reviving a mute

    I’ve had my Balu mute for over ten years, and for the past 6 months it’s steadily been losing cork. Today I finally took the time to do a little bit of emergency mute repair and recork it. The total time was around an hour – and about 30 minutes of that was just waiting…

  • The Importance of Articulation

    For many horn players (me included) French horn tonguing was a mystery. One of my biggest personal struggles in learning to play the horn and one that I notice a lot in students and younger players is a lack of consistent and strong tonguing or articulation. Since the tongue stroke sets up essentially everything else (timing,…