by Payton Grotewiel

The task of buying a personal horn can be daunting, especially with a four- to five-figure price tag attached. Luckily, purchasing a second-hand horn can provide you with a manageable, lower price. Finding a quality used horn can be easy if you know two things: where to look, and what to look for.

Instrument manufacturers and suppliers, such as Yamaha Corporation, and retailers, such as Houghton Horns or local music and instrument shops often sell online. These shops usually contain a dedicated page or filter for “pre-owned” or “used” horns, allowing you to narrow your search on their website.

The second place you can search is in online community markets, like Facebook Marketplace. Advantages of purchasing from these markets include the ability to ask about the instrument directly with the owner and inspect it in person before buying. As these markets often require little verification from their sellers, know in advance exactly what to look for when buying.

Once you find a horn that fits your needs, note the price, damage, any accessories, as well as the seller’s credibility. If you do not make your purchase from a credible seller, there is a chance you could lose a lot of money or purchase a horn different from what was listed. To verify a seller’s legitimacy, check their reviews both on the site and on other online venues. If a website requests too much personal information or has a vague return policy, avoid them. To ensure reliability, stick to familiar and popular sellers that allow returns on products.

Price is another key factor to consider before purchasing your horn. Used horn prices will vary, but you can expect a price of $2,000-$7,000 depending on the model and condition. If the price is over $8,000, you should be looking at a high-quality model with minimal damage. If a price seems extremely low, it could be due to damage to the horn, which is why you should closely inspect all photos of the horn. Any dents or scratches to the bell of the horn will not likely impact the instrument's sound, but damage to the leadpipe, main branches, or tuning slides will require costly repair. Remember that it is okay to request additional photos and to negotiate the price before purchasing.

Accessories included with the horn will also affect the price. Many instrument companies will not sell a mouthpiece with a preowned horn due to sanitary concerns. Additionally, some sellers may not include a case or maintenance supplies. Thoroughly read the description of the product so that you can re-adjust your budget for the remaining items.

Owning a horn is a significant milestone in a player’s musical journey, so it is important to be cautious when selecting yours. If you shop online and apply these crucial guidelines, you should not have any trouble finding a horn that suits your needs. Good luck!

by Matthew Haislip, DMA

Hello, everyone! I am Dr. Matthew C. Haislip, Associate Professor of Horn at Mississippi State University. I currently serve the International Horn Society as Media Reviews Editor for The Horn Call and as Mississippi Area Representative. I am a founding member of Quintasonic Brass and am a contracted member of the Starkville Symphony, North Mississippi Symphony, Meridian Symphony, and Missouri Symphony. Additionally, I serve on the faculty of Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan during the summer months and have performed with ensembles across the nation, including the Cincinnati Opera, Opera Naples, Omaha Symphony, West Texas Symphony, and Billings Symphony, among others.

The International Horn Society has filled me with a strong sense of community ever since Shawn Hagen, retired hornist of The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own,” bought me a three-year membership to the IHS when I was in junior high school. His influence on me as a family friend who inspired me to take up the horn and who supported me in my studies demonstrates the generous camaraderie of horn players that countless others have also experienced from members worldwide.

As a composer, I feel that new music is vital for our future as hornists. My book, Dueling Fundamentals for Two Horns, published in 2019 by Mountain Peak Music, has been endorsed by several international hornists. I was ecstatic to learn that players of all levels found it to be a helpful and enjoyable pedagogical tool. I am also proud to have had the opportunity to lead the successful commissioning consortium for Anthony Plog’s Horn Sonata and to have performed the world premiere of this riveting new work in 2023. The IHS offers members help with commissioning new music through the Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Grant Project. Consider the relationships hornists have cultivated with composers that brought us masterworks such as Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, or Krzysztof Penderecki’s Winterreise Horn Concerto. Perhaps we could see a new horn concerto by a thrilling contemporary composer such as Caroline Shaw someday! With each endeavor, we hope that future generations will look back on this era in the international horn community and see our work as having been meaningful and enduring…and I believe that they will.

Our horn world has never been richer, and the IHS is leading the way with profound artistic performances, groundbreaking commissions with prizes awarded to repertoire by composers of diverse backgrounds, excellent regional and international symposia, a regular podcast, celebrations of stylistic freedom for maximal artistic expression and exploration, and decades of educationally enriching publications available at the click of a button—including The Horn Call and Horn and More. How will you make your own unique mark on the horn world? We can’t wait to see!

by Mike Harcrow, Editor

I hear too many players—mostly, but not always, students…and certainly not always just horn players—do a half-hearted warm-up or practice session, one in which breaths are not full and in which distractions are present (primarily cell phones with social or streaming media running), one in which “noodling” is allowed to count for something more productive. I will confess that I have been guilty of falling into cycles of these things myself, and I do make the conscious effort to resist such temptations.

What quickly creeps into disengaged playing are bad habits: inaccuracy, poor energy, erosion of the ability to concentrate, and possibly even the loss of positive gains made—not to mention the time we are stealing from our own good learning.

Keep phones and laptops separate from productive time. Most of us have useful tools on our devices (tuners and drones, metronomes and rhythm generators, audio-visual feedback, model recordings, etc.), so this is a difficult demand to make of ourselves. I understand this; but we must be disciplined to use only the app[s] necessary for a particular practice session and for a specific reason, then silence the device and put it out of sight. Designate “viewing time” or “listening time,” apply what is being studied, then be done with it for the time being. Thorough maintenance (or, if needed, restoration) of the sensory engagement required to make the best music is crucial just to maintain our standards…and all the more so to continue advancing them.

The flute professor at the university where I teach plays an incredibly beautiful warm-up. She will isolate herself as best she can, just herself and her flute, and play a variety of long tones—just long tones, often with her eyes closed…and they are truly gorgeous sounds, whether high or low, loud or soft, straight-tone or with vibrato. She is focused, intentional in breathing and production, and deeply mindful of her tone. It is so simple yet truly inspirational.

Cloak yourself in the music! Work for performance-quality playing at all times. Create your best sound with ease and energy. Eliminate the onset of tension in any part of the body. Engage your ears. Imagine a connection between the tongue and fingers in tricky articulated passages. Concentrate happily. Find a willing and well-disciplined accountability partner who will help you keep yourself in check.

Mentally- and sensorily-engaged playing shows excellent discipline. Much more can be accomplished in 20 minutes of complete and intentional awareness than in an hour of perfunctory swipes at a passage or technique.

by Katy Carnaggio

You are asked to do something extraordinary. Across the full spectrum of human performance, very few domains demand both precise, real-time execution in front of an audience and the transmission of meaning. Not just visible success, but emotional impact. In sports, emotion is a byproduct. In music, it’s the point.

Throughout this series, we’ve explored how musicians develop the ability to anticipate sound and sensation before playing by building internal models through imaginative, preference-based practice. It’s execution with feeling built in.

In music, sound is the measurable, verifiable outcome. You play the written pitch. You follow expressive markings. You stay within stylistic norms. Or you don’t. You can train this endlessly, but it only gets you partway. Because at the same time, you’re asked to do something immeasurable: make people feel something.

Other artists manage the task of creating meaning through process. They draft, delete, and revise. They can pick up a pencil, draw a white chair, and change it until it speaks.

But musicians perform in a single, irreversible moment where every choice is final and every outcome witnessed. In those conditions, certainty can become more tempting than creation. Instead of making the leap to believe a white image will emerge from graphite, we search for a white pencil—something to guarantee the result, but in doing so, forfeits connection.

No amount of technical preparation replaces the leap of belief required when the audience arrives. To train the other half of the ask, you have to practice the leap. You can do that through relational surrender: the act of releasing self-protection, outcome management, or overcontrol to allow authentic connection with the music, the moment, or another person. It’s a conscious choice of yielding in service to something higher than self.

Relational surrender is not the absence of control; it is the calibrated transfer of control from conscious monitoring to internal models built through disciplined preparation. It’s a skill initiated deliberately, developed through practice, and integrated through performance over time as the nervous system learns to meet uncertainty without bracing.

It means:

• Choosing sincerity over self-presentation
• Remaining open to being shaped
• Allowing love, rupture, or disconnection without forcing a narrative
• Risking loss for the sake of integrity
• Withholding in spaces that demand self-erasure

To explicitly train this skill, you must first develop an internal model you can trust. It starts by developing a vivid, compelling musical intention. So, let’s imagine you’re in the practice room, trying to find a quality of sound that sets Brahms apart from Mozart and from Strauss. And while it’s not yet clear, the sound you’re looking for reminds you of one of your favorite traditions: Saturday morning pancake breakfasts with your family. Maybe it was the way sunlight streamed through the window that brought it back. The warmth in a place that felt familiar and full. But you also remember looking down at your plate and watching the butter melt into every edge. And you realize that’s exactly how you want each phrase to feel: rich, connected, and saturated with warmth. Then, with each bite, there’s structure, yes, but the texture is fluffy. Like a centered core to a sound that’s full but never heavy. And of course, the syrup. Golden, bright, and alive on your tongue. The sparkle of overtones that adds lift and complexity without losing warmth. All qualities of a Brahmsian horn sound you can distill into one word: pancakes.

Training the model means tracing the mechanics backward from your now clear musical intention to sensation. Starting from sound, you imagine how it would feel to produce in your body and bring that guess to the horn. Observe, adjust, return. Through this process, you try on breaths and discover what’s too shallow, too generous, or too cool until you find the one that enables your intention. You notice where you still grip for control through your right shoulder or throat or legs, and you learn to surrender even those places to your intention.

Just as you know valve combinations and when to use them, anytime you want to create the precise sound you’ve mapped, you can scan from head to toe until your body, mind, and breath are primed accordingly. You find what needs to release and what needs to support until you have embodied your intention so completely that it radiates from all of you like the moment Beast transforms into a prince in Beauty and the Beast. The horn simply amplifies what’s already present.

Practicing the leap means surrendering to your internal models. Performance stops being proof of your preparation and becomes a question. What does this sound mean here? in this hall, with these people, in this unrepeatable moment of your life?

Relational surrender is performance at its most complete. It’s what allows performer, colleagues, audience, and music to become co-participants in a shared experience.

You can surrender in an audition and discover the hall is adding delightful nuances in your tone and projection that no practice room has revealed. Now your Brahms may always carry a bit of a great concert hall.

You can surrender in an orchestra and hear a colleague phrase differently than expected. You respond without hesitation, and suddenly a well-worn passage reveals new emotional terrain. Now your phrasing will always remember that person, that moment of shared breath.

You can surrender in a recital and sense the audience’s focus is sharpening your own, allowing you to lock in a tricky rhythmic passage. Now that phrase will always pulse with the energy you borrowed from the room.

But stop at execution, and you miss it. Connection is not extra. It’s the reason you showed up.