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Performance & Playing

The physical side of playing the horn ... beyond the embouchure

Best Invention Ever: Pencil Clips

One of my younger students was fascinated by my pencil clip. This is really a must have item for the horn player. It is...

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...

Stopped Horn: Up or Down? Does it Matter?

In a past tongue-in-cheek article -- "How to Provoke a Horn Geek" -- I poked a little fun a some hot button issues in...

A few words on the warmup, your condensation, and sensitivity to...

In this time of separation during the coronavirus, it is a good time to rethink your warmup, to experiment, to work to improve technique,...

On Holding the Horn and Tendinitis

Bruce Richards posted an article very recently to Living the Dream on the topic of horn player tendinitis. Richards and I go way back...

Stepping Up Your Mozart Horn Concerto Performance

A recent master class with Javier Bonet at ASU brought up some great topics in relation to Mozart 3, with the following two main...

Mailbag: Tuning Various Models of Double Horns

This very good question just recently came in, from a music educator: I am seeking any resources on French horn tuning, including diagrams with slides...

Fingerings and Notations for the Single B-flat Horn

Exactly how to think of fingerings and notations for the single B-flat horn is a point of confusion for many music educators. I believe...

The best French horn fingerings in the low range

A topic that comes up pretty often teaching is that of what fingerings to use in the low range, specifically in the range from...

Mailbag: On Oral Cavity Shape and Pitch Level

Recently on the Horn People group a question was posted that related to pitch centering, and what it was getting at I believe was...