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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Accuracy Encyclopedia: F is for F Horn
There are so many topics that fall under the letter F that this is the first of four articles relating to “F” topics, with...
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...
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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
Horn Repertoire Week 5: The Descant Horn and Approaches to Baroque...
One goal this semester is to use repertoire as not only a broad overview of history but also to look at performance of literature...
Konzertstück: A Four-Minute Mile — Especially on F horn!
One of our most loved works for horn is the Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra by Robert Schumann. A staple of recent horn...
Hornmasters: Merewether on Right Hand Position
Richard Merewether, as a horn designer, has an interesting perspective on hand position in The horn, the horn….
In the day-to-day activity of assisting players...
Mailbag: Hand Horn Technique and the Baroque Horn
I recently had several natural horn related questions forwarded by a blog reader, one of which was about if right hand technique was used...
Background on editing The Brass Gym for Horn
Very early in my tenure at ASU I realized that Sam Pilafian was accomplishing some very interesting things with his breathing/warm-up class and warm-up...
The Audience Thought You Were Nervous
About this time of year I always find some students are getting rather stiff in the chops, which leads to a discussion of how...
