Maybe I can put a plug in here for Invisalign teeth straightening. After 30
years of playing professionally, my front teeth had shifted to the point where
I couldn't form an embouchure anymore. Very discouraging!
Invisaligns are a series of clear, thin plastic aligners that snap in place
Actually, you can probably get away with a little venturi enlarging on an
H-177. The 179 pipes were made by just opening the venturi larger. It seemed
to me that on Holtons of that vintage ('68) the mouthpiece went in a little
farther than on some other horns. The real issue is probably t
There was an "Elkhorn by Getzen" that was Italian made and was either a
compensating horn, or a full double that looked just like a Conn 6D. That
might be it.
- Steve Mumford
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You might notice that your mouthpieces don't fit as far into the receiver of
the King as they do on your other horns. In the earlier days, until the 70s?,
80s? King had its own unique taper for the mouthpiece shank. The only thing
that will fit right is an older King mouthpiece. About the
Is that one at Dillon's the one shown on his web site? It's a brass horn
that looks just like a Conn 6D. That model is shown in the mid 50s Sansone
catalog that I have.
- Steve Mumford
Valerie wrote:
>message: 2
>date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:16:43 -0700
>from: "Valerie WELLS" <[EMAIL PROT
I have a Sansone catalog from the mid 50s that offers a full line of horns,
just about everything you could imagine including 5 valve single Bb, 6 valve
double. Some of the horns are shown in the older Sansone music publications
too.
I recently got a "Modell Sansone" 5 valve single Bb
No fingerings are written in stone when it comes to stopping. Bb
fingerings can work pretty well below middle C, depending on your horn, hand,
etc., the pitch can be right on and you can get a little more buzz in the sound
if needed. Works for me, might not work for you.
I can be all
Here's a question, perhaps for some of the older members on the list. I do
a lot of work on horns that are 60 - 100 years old and there's one thing I
often see that always makes me scratch my head and wonder.
If there's a patched hole in the bell flare, it always seems to be on the
oppo
Somebody asked about tongueing a little while ago. Put in earplugs and
play. You'll be able to hear your tongeing better. Try some different ways
and you'll be able to tell when it's better and cleaner. Then just do it that
way.
Try to describe what you did in words, and I bet nobo
Regarding whether it's right to insist that students learn different
skills; I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time with Louis Stout and
heard many many stories of his past students.
Louis was a tough teacher if you were the kind who wasn't interested in
working hard. Learn
Like any other refinishing work on a brass instrument, the best candidate
doesn't have scratches, nicks, pits etc. Plating won't cover or smooth over
anything like that. The only way to make a nick "disappear" is to lower the
area around it to the depth of the nick by sanding, buffing, etc
(possibly)Interestingly, the Conn mellophonium was exactly the same instrument
as the circular mellophone that Conn made back as far as the 20s - the one that
looks like a miniature french horn with pistons. They just didn't bend the
bell, so it pointed straight ahead instead of being corno-for
What famous person was it who said a man who always spelled a word the same
way is lacking imagination?
- Steve Mumford
Bill wrote:
>Wow!
>What a revelation! I just had a great idea: Play everything on the F horn,
>pull out all your slides about 5 centimeters, push down all three v
I like that F23 fingering a lot. Very secure feeling!
Another interesting fingering for high Bb is 3rd finger on the Bb horn. You
have to have time to pull the slide a bit to get it down in pitch, but it's a
nice "wide-body" note.
- Steve Mumford
_
Physically, we don't really have a choice about intonation. Our ears
create overtones based on whole number multiples of whatever frequency is being
sounded. We can't escape that. This was understood as far back as the ancient
Greeks. That's why an in-tune interval is so satisfying. Our
For another beautiful experience like that, check out recordings by David
Hykes and the Harmonic Choir.
- Steve
Hans Wrote:
>But there was an interesting experiment at the Brass
>conference in Bloomington 1980, when the brass quintet from
>Budapest played their overtone thing, which consi
I read in one source that originally cornets were, as the name would
suggest, "small cornos", meant to be played by horn players. Trumpet players
would not lower themselves to play such an instrument and kept to their natural
long trumpets. They (literally)had their own union and there was
A lot of people get the 281 with the rose brass (90% copper) bell because
they think it will make them sound darker. The tendency with that alloy
though, is to sound darker at lower volumes, but more brassy-edgy at louder
volumes when compared to yellow brass.
That said, you should stil
While we're on the subject of sound, what's the deal with all the edge? I
hear so many players these days who put edge into just about everything. I
never imagined Mozart concertos with a harsh sound full of edge and, should
every orchestral solo be played forte with edge no matter if it's
Depending on when your 8D was made, there are some possible pitch problems
that can be solved by carpentry. Some years, the entire horn was just built
flat. Usually the 3rd Bb slide was too long, flat even when pushed all the way
in. Often the F side is flat to the Bb side, even with bot
But Angela, you left out the most important part! What did you end up
actually doing? I see the potential for several more pages of discussion!
- Steve Mumford
Angela wrote:
>First of all, I want to thank all who replied and gave
>me ideas and suggestions on fixing this problem. They
>ha
When I was getting ready to go to college, many years ago, I got some tidbits
of advice that I believe, turned out to be true and useful.
If there's ANYTHING other than music that you think you might be interested in,
do that instead. Music takes TOTAL commitment.
Find a teacher who has MANY s
I experimented with less and less material, but still it killed the sound (at
least enough to bother me) each time. Finally, I tried just a tiny rubber band
to hold the strap in place so I wouldn't have to "pick it up" each time. Even
that had an effect, so I gave up and just left the thing fr
Nobody cares about tone these days. The only thing that matters is to not
miss notes. Actually, that's not such a bad thing in itself, I think it was
Phil Farkas who said "after you miss a certain number of notes, it ceases to be
espressivo".
I do know of more than one top US orchestr
The thing I don't like about most of the strap arrangements is that there's
so much material there, it feels confining to me. Also, for me I found that
all that stuff strapped to the horn deadened the sound a bit. I made one that
only attaches at one point and leaves my hand free to move a
I have a friend whose theory is that when the conductor extends "the left
hand of fellowship". It's probably not so much a matter of being too loud, but
more of a tone quality thing. All edge and harshness, and you'll probably get
the hand, round full and heroic, you just get a smile.
Most people tend to focus on one aspect of a horn and think that that
describes it. The 8D has a larger bell throat than most horns, but trace it
back and you'll notice that the bell is smaller in the farther back areas than
most small throated ones. Additionally, the leadpipe starts small
Well, the answer is pretty simple isn't it? They used to sound good. Some
of the greatest orchestral recordings ever were made using 8Ds. The sound
worked in the hall if you knew how to play it. Worked on tape too.
You can call out some drawbacks of the 8D, but obviously, in the right
If considering silver plating just the bell of the horn, again consider the
amount of material that will be removed in preparing the bell for plating. It
used to be popular to plate the inside of the bell to "strengthen" the old
metal and "protect" it from acid hands.
If the buffing a
Alon wrote:
What does silver plating or gold plating do to your horn ?
Silver plating is typically one-half thousandth of an inch thick - .0005
inch. According to Schilke, that's about one eighth the thickness of a sheet
of writing paper. Gold plating adds slightly more, the gold is appl
Does Southern still publish the big books with everything in them, compiled
by Andraud? You get a few of just about everybody's etudes in there and you
can see what you'd like to get more of. And it's a good book to take on
vacation, you only need one book!
I'm with David, I like to explor
I'm not disagreeing with Ken, but I will say that I personally don't put
oil down the slide tubes using any method because I'm blessed with a
constitution that doesn't turn brass green. My valves look like new and they
are fast fast fast!
If you do put oil in there, you do run a good
The "Individualized Instructor", published by GIA, has some "Supplemental
Books" that have nothing but recognizable tunes to play. Supp. Book one is
good for first year beginners, and has some good songs that will hold their
interest. It doesn't have "etudes" per se, but it covers the same
Some other good advice has already been given. On Holtons, the stop arms
can often be loose on their shafts. Just make sure the big screw in the middle
is snugged down all the way. Sometimes even that doesn't help and you have to
swedge the stop arms tighter (repair shop). Check to make
It's going to be hard to tell if the valves are worn out if they won't
move. Even if the valves are working on a used horn, if there's gunk in there,
it can make the valves seem tighter. Get the gunk cleaned out and the valves
working fast again, you find out that they leak. How badly the
Perhaps somebody who has the time could find the story, I heard it on NPR
sometime in the last few months. The computer program produced "new" music by
Bach and other composers and they played excerpts of some of the music. It
wasn't bad at all and it wasn't simple chorales either. If I'm
Actually the feat has been accomplished. There's a fellow with a computer
program that composes new music by Bach fairly successfully. The program
simply analyzes "WWBD", quantifies the tendencies and churns out new music that
sounds like the real thing. No problem.
- Steve Mumford
I'm pretty sure Holton tuned them to A=442 with the slides all the way in, a
reasonable amount of pull should give A=440. You could get the tuning slide
lengthened if it doesn't get there. I'd think about lengthening that little Bb
slide first. Those were sometimes kinda short in the 70s. Wi
I once received a horn who's leadpipe was actually sticking through the side of
the box! It had about 3 pieces of crumpled newspaper in the box, I think for
decoration, certainly not for any functional reason. I've gotten horns that
were just put in the box with no packing material whatsoever.
In the not originally horn category are some of my favorite duets, the
Canonic Sonatas by Telemann. Fantastically beautiful and astonishinly
inventive. There is only one page of music. Player one starts and player two
starts playing the same music after a measure or so has been played (di
You'll get the best results if you get a mouthpiece with the correct taper
so that the mouthpiece goes in the right distance. Not far enough and the
sound will be thin, response tight, and certain notes/ranges will be out of
tune. Too far and you lose focus. You can still play the horn wi
The original taper would have been .040 over the length of the body
(1.400"). I'd expect that would be changed somewhat, or even greatly after a
valve rebuild. Rotors tend to wear more at the bottom. The rotor getting
smaller at that end, the casing getting bigger. The bottom end would h
Marc, I think we're talking about two different things. What I meant was
that if you have any machine make you a nice graph of which harmonics are being
sounded and how much of each harmonic is present, what is shown will only be a
small portion of what any human being would hear.
The h
Any discussion of measuring sound quality by machine needs to contain the
caveat that only a portion of the sound is measured by the machine. A large
part of what we hear is created by our own ears and will not show up on the
graph. Our ears can measure much more accurately than any machin
Over the years, many on the list have said they recopy transposed parts into
F because they aren't quick enough at transpostion to do it on the fly. The
only question that occurs to me is, how will you EVER learn to do it?
I remember my first exposure to the New World Symphony on 4th hor
Here are a couple of simple (difficult) things I heard years ago that got
me thinking about tone.
Hear every single note. Sounds easy, but play a scale up and down, then
ask yourself if your really HEARD every note. Not as simple as it seems it
should be.
Make sure the end of ea
If you have a 4th valve on your single Bb horn, you can use it for all
kinds of things, depending on the particular piece. For instance, if you plug
in a #1 slide from an F horn, you can use it to get a low A. There's an old
recording of Alfred Brain (Dennis' uncle who also played single B
I've seen a lot of people who have valve problems with their newer model
8Ds because they don't oil them enough. Whatever alloy they use for the rotors
corrodes very easily. Get the rotors cleaned by someone who knows what they're
doing, then make a resolution to oil the bearings every day
I agree with Dave Weiner to a point. The scary thing is that there are way
too many shops in this country (not Dave's!) who will destroy your horn in the
process of getting that green crud out of there. I personally have known
people who would put a horn in Brite Dip (powerful acid) and th
I won't get into the physical problems for older players (getting there
myself!) but one thing that a surprising number of older players tend to
overlook is that their horn has gotten much older too! The more leaky the
valves and slides get, the harder it is to maintain a steady tone, and t
Yes, maybe, or you could figure a way to breathe just enough in the eighth
rests to keep it going ad infinitum. I once played a Philip Glass piece
(actually 8 performances - ouch) that was nothing but repeated eighth notes for
page after page with repeats, but no rests. The only hope was t
This thread reminded me of something that Louis Stout once told me. Back
when he was practicing for auditions, he organized all the excerpts that
started on F#, all the ones starting on G, etc. etc. all together, then played
them all in a row so he got comfortable with making entrances on an
1) Absolutely not so, they knew exactly what they were doing, the dipsy doodles
were on purpose.
2) It aint necessarily so (everybody hum along). Hugh Cooper designed the
Puechner bassoons and every one that came into the US went through his hands.
He tweaked them, made sure all the holes were
Pilczuk is another good example of having to fudge the math. When he
developed the horn leadpipe, he figured it out mathematically perfect and made
the mandrel, but bending the leadpipe to shape threw everything off and he had
to completely redo the design. Schilke had a similar story. The
Some people come at the question of horn design from a theoretical
standpoint, others just try to copy existing designs. From over 100 years ago
until today, the trumpet that everybody tried to copy was the French Besson.
Bach, Benge, Holton, they all attempted to match the sound of Besson
The whole cryo debate ignores one important point. 75 years ago there were
makers who could make a horn that sounded fantastic. I'm not talking good, I
mean fantastic. They didn't need cryogenics to do it. There are almost no
makers who can do that today. It's all artificial vanilla flavori
Yes, the early brochures from Thayer mentioned that they were going to
apply their valve to the french horn but they probably got sidetracked by their
success with the trombonists and by the nightmare plumbing that would be
involved to make it work on the horn. I've sketched out a bunch of
Based on some new horns I've seen, you might check any horn you're considering
to make sure the valves have a good airtight seal. I've been seeing brand new
out of the box horns from several major formerly respected makers with very
leaky valves lately. Buyers beware!
- Steve Mumford
That's an easy question to answer, it depends on the horn! Some horns are
improved by cutting the bell, some are absolutely ruined. Most newer horns
don't sound like anything anyway so you might as well cut them. It could only
help!
- Steve Mumford
Dan writes:
>What do you think the differe
Ooops, I mistakenly deleted Dave Thompson's questions but I hope I remember
most of them. I mentioned the thing about doubling most of the time since it's
not something I've run into very often, but I did find it interesting.
Naturally, 2 players doubling at F is not the same sound as one
I have, on occasion played assistant to principals who had me double a
great deal with them on most tutti passages, but not too loudly. In effect,
two people playing comfortable F, rather than one person playing FF. Of course
you have to play in tune and match style and tone, but nobody ge
Since the original question was regarding the mechanical linkage option on Conn
horns, may I venture the opinion that the Conn linkage adds nothing to the
enjoyment of playing the horn. I've changed several over to string after
players got tired of the original linkage.
- Steve Mumford
_
A number of horn makers used hollow rotors back in the early 20th century.
I see that Max Enders was in Mainz and I was going to mention that another
Mainz maker with hollow rotors was Alexander (back in the good old days). A
good chance they used the same supplier for valves? The change
Not only to watch it, but I've had the opportunity to play it! There was a
group that toured around the country showing classic Warner Bros. cartoons on
the big screen. They hired local orchestras to play the music live using a
click track. The Siegfried motiv is in C# in the cartoon. The s
The only drawback I can think of to oiling the rotor faces is that anything
more than a drop or two will wander elsewhere in the horn, melt your tuning
slide grease and transport it back into your valves, which will eventually make
for slow music.
No matter how careful you may be to dr
Those 8Ds with the 2 digit prefix were made in Eastlake (King parts). You
add 50 to the prefix to get the year it was made, in your case 42 + 50 means
1992. They are completely different from the Texas horns. The valves are
better in some ways, hopelessly worse in other ways and are still
A relatively painless way to get any transposition under your fingers and
into your brain is to just spend about a week playing everything you practice
in that transposition. Start with beginner book I and read it from cover to
cover in H. In about a week you'll be comfortable.
I remem
Adam wrote:
ONCE IT HAS OCCURRED
It seems the more attention you pay to the problem the worse it gets. An
apt analogy I read once, if the water in a bucket is agitated, putting your
hand in to calm it only agitates it more.
Look up over the stand and watch others play during your re
I'll second that recommendation of Merlin Grady. He's truly a fine
craftsman and a fine gentleman. Another thought on the other end of the state
is the instrument repair program at the community college in Sioux Falls. I'm
blanking on the name right now, but the fellow who runs the program
of course the problem is that the biggest damage-doers (wow, sounds like W
there) never recognize themselves. My comments are based on 30 years of
undoing bad repairs done by "experts".
- Steve Mumford
Bill writes:
It's interesting that the schedule of repair surcharges is in no way
relat
As you can see from my somewhat overexcited title, one should restrain
oneself from using pliers for any purpose, real or imagined, anywhere on a
french horn. If you (think you) have to use pliers to move the valve, it has
probably frozen up with corrosion and there's nothing you'll be able
The pre 1940s Alexanders were a different animal than the 50s and later
ones. With the post war ones, the horn can be very strangely out of tune with
itself and play tight if you use an American mouthpiece with it. An American
shank mouthpiece won't fit far enough into the leadpipe receive
At first the repair
shop said they received the incorrect part, but today the
parents were told that no part had been sent to the repair
shop because Conn had been bought out.
I didn't see Ellen's email address there but all current Conn parts are
easily available, the company hasn't changed
Hey, what kind of horn is it for?
- Steve Mumford
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Stuck slides are caused by corrosion forming on the metal, usually when
it's been sitting idle. It's the same stuff that forms on rotors when they
haven't been oiled or if the horn's been sitting idle.
Stuck slides have a huge amount of resistance to sliding out in the normal
directio
Also, on a Geyer layout horn the air flow switches direction from the F to
the Bb horn. On Bb, the air goes from bottom to top through the valve section.
On the F horn it goes through the F tuning slide, then in from the top of the
valve section. Some have suggested that's a reason for "W
That's a good thing to remember when teaching horn lessons too. Introduce
the sound before introducing the notation. Especially for younger kids, it's
the most efficient way to cause learning to occur!
- Steve Mumford
Josh wrote:
What good does it do to teach a
young music student how to
This may seem like an odd suggestion, but try some practicing with earplugs
in. It makes it very easy to hear what you're doing with tongueing.
- Steve Mumford
Larry wrote:
I'm having a problem with tonguing cleanly in the
range from about first line E to third space C, with
the start of t
It used to be popular among many of my classmates to say "I don't need to
learn theory, I'm a performance major". It's easy to pick that kind of person
out by the way they play.
- Steve Mumford
Dave wrote:
We spend several hours a day doing harmonic and formal analysis of=
everything fr
Did somebody mention ear training? It doesn't need to be too painful.
Punctuate your practice sessions by just thinking of songs to play by ear and
play them. When you hear something you like on the radio or a CD or TV, figure
it out by ear. Warm up on tunes by ear in addition to mindles
In a message dated 4/29/06 1:00:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time,Rachel writes:
> Although the bell was repaired each time; the horn ended up sounding like a
> garbage can in the end and I had to replace it. At the time it did not
> occur to me that I could have simply had the bell replaced; a mist
Ahh, but for those repair types on the list, an old-school technique
involved using wax paper to protect the finish when burnishing out dents so
there
you go - rub away!
- Steve Mumford
In a message dated 4/29/06 1:00:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Larry writes:
> How many other members o
Here's another way that usually works pretty well to clean out those
screwbell threads. Use an old toothbrush (or your current one if you prefer)
and
scrub out the threads using some valve oil for a solvent. That'll melt most
kinds of goop that might be in there. Then scrub again(gently
In a message dated 4/23/06 1:00:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Larry writes:
> What do music schools teach student music conductors?
I think one problem is that many of the people who become conductors,
especially at the lower levels, never really studied conducting at all.
Sometimes it se
Put it in the case during break!
- Steve Mumford
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Sorry to be picky but it's Elkhart, no d in there. A hart would be a male
elk - is that correct? Gemeinhardt is correct though. They've mostly left
Elkhart though for cheap labor in Indonesia. Selmer woodwinds already gone
there.
Lots of nervous instrument builders in Elkhart these days ju
I've known Richard Bentson for many years and he's an honest guy who
really knows his stuff and an excellent horn player to boot. He'd be the guy
to
ask for if you're dealing with Wichita. I've had bad dealings with a certain
other person there but he's avoidable.
- Steve Mumford
In a
Aha! I and some friends who also enjoy hysterical, I mean historical
instruments actually have just the opposite theory. We see a horrible looking
worn out piece of junk with patches on top of the patches (I have one that has
3
layers of patches) and we say "Wow, that must have been a goo
It's good to realize though that historical value and playing value are
not necessarily in conflict. Those old cats knew how to make a horn that
sounded and played great in the old days. I've seen too many of those great
old
horns "modernized" so that they now sound bland, dead, "digital"
The H-600 was discontinued some time ago and they're nothing special. The
current model is the H-602 (hope I'm getting the numbers right) and that's
really a pretty nice horn. Louis Stout worked with Holton extensively to get a
horn that would play good in all ranges from low all the way up to
As far as I know, all the Kings used the same bell until about the 60s when
they also came out with a larger nickel silver bell to compete with the 8D.
All the brass ones I've seen going back as far as the early 20s have had that
bell. Often the student model singles were made from thicker bra
That 4D bell throat is indeed bigger than the current 10D models.
Historically, the bells for the 4D, 14D, and 6D were all made on the same
mandrel.
Nowdays that bell is used for the 6D,11D and the 9D. The bell on your 10D is
the
bell that King used from the beginning of days and was used o
Good heavens, I miss reading the digest for a couple of days and the whole
thing just spills out into the gutter! Everyone please remember there is only
one person on this list who is authorized to make vicious and cruel personal
attacks against the others. The rest of you Behave!
- Steve Mum
In a message dated 4/3/06 1:00:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Jay writes:
> Unless there is some specific reason such as accumulation of grease, etc.,
> I think that 'snaking' and bathing the horn every 3 months is not
> necessary. Also, it increases the risk of accidental damage. I am sure
> that
In a message dated 3/25/06 1:00:43 PM Eastern Standard Time, Josh writes:
> I'd Suggest playing for 4 hours a day for about a month and see where you
> are. You'd be very suprised!!
>
For that matter, a lot of people might consider expanding their practice
to one hour a day. That would
In a message dated 3/7/06 1:00:41 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> The King 2269 is essentially the King 2270 with a smaller bell
> throat. They are McCracken designs, I think. The 2269 is similar to the
> Conn 9D.
>
I can never remember the model numbers for those
Seth writes:
> It has:
> 157, 158, 159 stamped on the valves and valve caps
Hans writes:
Hello Seth, the numbers have the unique purpose to remind
you which cap to screw on which valve. If there is a
mechanical linkage (like uniball), there is no need for
strings.
The numbers were also used
As far as I know, Getzen never sold a Kruspe style horn but there was one
that looked just like a Conn 6D, you should be able to find a picture of a 6D
on eBay. The other model was a compensating horn. Both were made in Italy
and imported by Getzen (and others). They are spectacularly med
In a message dated 3/4/06 1:00:44 PM Eastern Standard Time, Bill Gross writes:
> Not sure of your point here. The implication is that if not all F horns are
> good, B flat horns might be. Could you clarify it?
>
Nope, just that there are a lot of crummy F horns out there that even
Hans c
Maybe stating the obvious, but it probably doesn't help to start on an F
horn if it's not a decent instrument. There are an awful lot of basically
unplayable F horns out there in the schools and on eBay. I'm with Carberg, a
nice 4D is a good thing but there are plenty of them out there tha
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