Horn Matters is the leading online resource on the French horn, co-founded by John Ericson and Bruce Hembd. The mission of Horn Matters is: to encourage, inspire, inform, and challenge horn players, and; to promote the best musical instrument ever, the French horn. (More.)
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Mailbag: The Top 3 Horn Concertos
A question came in earlier this year asking generally what are the top 3 horn concertos. With the end of the semester for my...
Ultrasonic Cleaning and your Horn
You know that you need to keep your horn clean. If you are proactive about maintenance you will hardly ever need to have your...
Geyer Update: Engravings, Serial Numbers, and More
I could also have titled this article “Things I got wrong” in the Geyer Dreaming series (which starts here), or the related article published...
Revisiting the Art of French Horn on LP Records
The past year the vast majority of my actual classical music listening has been to LP records. With the recent passing of Hermann Baumann...
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Horn Etudes by Female Composers
Many Horn Matters readers will be familiar with the Works with Horn by Female Composers website by Dr. Lin Foulk. If not, this is...
Julius Watkins, jazz French horn pioneer
Talking with colleagues recently, a topic that came up was how some great players of the recent past are unjustly neglected today. In terms...
Overview of Trusted Brands in French Horns
A survey titled "What Brand Names Do You Trust?" collected the opinions of 392 participants. The results are in and while it may take...
Choosing a French Horn Mouthpiece (I): The Basic Parts
Part I: The Rim and Preliminary Thoughts
Part II: Cup, Throat and Bore
Part III: Weight, Plating and Shopping Tips
For the past decade...
French Horn Transposition Chart
A complete reference.
Transposition Chart (PDF) (updated 2012)
Over the past few months, I have been posting various transposition tricks, including how to transpose:
A and...
Farkas on Stagefright (and more)
In the world of horn there have been few that made as much impact as Philip Farkas (1914-1992). The Art of French Horn Playing...
Random Articles
The “Right” Fingering (II)
Continuing from Part I.
To recap the general rule-of-thumb for tuning pitches within a chord:
The tonic or root note should be relatively "on pitch."
The third...
Exercise: Scale/Flow Studies (I)
More flow/scale studies.
I am not sure where I picked these up - this printout is not copyrighted so I am making them available here....
Holiday Gift Ideas for the Horn Player
Miscellaneous trinkets and baubles.
Looking for cool gifts for yourself or that horn player in your life?
Here are a few ideas:
Put Your Face on a...
Block those betas
Of interest in the news:
Block those betas
An article at The Minnesota Daily with the provocative title "Better music by prescription" dives into the...
Hornmasters on the Low Range, Part II: More Recent Resources
In part I of this series on the low range, quotations from a number of older horn texts were presented that in brief give...
On Playing the B-Minor Mass (on YouTube)
This past week was my week to become a YouTube star, as in addition to the Konzertstuck from the Southwest Horn Conference my performance of...
