Haydn Horn concerto no. 1 First movement Alexander Perathoner

My favorite horn peice! Great tone quality for the horn! Listen!

Adagio and Presto

This is Jessica Ammon playing the piece I have to learn for area and region band trouts. My accuracy with braces is suffering, but I found an emboucheure where I can get the high notes. I guess I will just have to work on my accuracy a bit. I'm geting better at playing this piece, although I play many bad attacks.

Thank You Trumpet!

I came back from vacation on tuesday and decided that instead of playing the french horn, I would play the trumpet for the first time on trumpet. My range and tone quality before braces wasn't as good as the were on the french horn, so I thought, "hey, I'll do longtones for my range and tone quality at the same time. Might as well get a better tone quality now than have to fix it later." At the beginning of the practice session, I couldn't get the C on the staff. At the end, I got up to the Gright above the fifth line. Sadly, I couldn't get the C above the staff like I could before braces, but I'll get there! Back to french horn. On wednesday, I picked up the horn and tried the same thing, and by the end of the session, I sounded a little bit better than I did without braces. Of coarse, I'll still have to memorise the new emboucheure position, but I'm really close! I played the portion of my solo I'd been practicing with almost no mistakes! The soft notes were in tune, the high notes except for the high G and above were open and strong. There were still a few bad attacks, but loads less than before!
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I officially love long tones!

How French Horns Work

Because this looks boring so far, here is a picture of the magical frech horn!

This is a conn 14D double horn. This isn't the typre of horn I have. I couldn't find a picture of a conn 2 double horn. My horn was my mom's so it is 36 years old. Conns are professional level horns and they have an amazing sound.

When we tighten our aperture while buzzing, it causes the frequency level of the sound waves to rise. Think about blowing into a bottle, a tighter aperture is like having more water in the bottle, so when you blow, you will get a higher pith, as opposed to when you have a looser aperture ( less water in thebottle) and when you blow into it you get a lower sound. The 3 finger valves chand the pitch of the instrument by changing the air path to travel different lengths through the horn. Together, the tightness of the aperture and which valves are pressed down determine which note will come out of the instrument. In case you were wondering, the thumb valve on the double horn changes the key of the instrument from F to Bb to help the player play the high and low notes.