John Q. Ericson

Some brass teachers suggest thinking of the beginning of notes as releases instead of attacks. While you could just brush it off as sort of a use of words issue, that they are essentially two terms for the same thing, actually I see some danger in using the term release for two reasons.

Part I: Fifty Great Solo Horn Recordings

By Matthew Haislip, D.M.A.

We live in an unprecedented time. Music is instantly available to us at our fingertips. YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Pandora, and other online music mediums allow users to hear practically any known piece of music in music history whenever they desire. As these platforms have increased in popularity, the traditional physical recording format has diminished. This access to music has done some good for musicians. Unlimited access to music is educationally invaluable. YouTube can bring out the humanity of live performance where sterilized and edited recordings have often unintentionally manufactured a perception that absolute perfection as achievable and expected. A hungry student of the horn has exponentially more resources than students of any other generation have ever had.

At the same time, this on-demand access has potentially caused some harm for musicians as well. The most obvious harm is the loss of royalties for recorded music. The financial return to artists is not fair, and it is often bypassed completely. Another potential problem this availability has created is that there is now a muddled sea of music and videos online, and it is growing wider and wider. It might be challenging for a listener to discover great recordings when views or popularity is the primary metric for search engine results.

I would like to help alleviate these issues by offering a series of three articles in which I provide my recommendation of 150 of my favorite commercially released Compact Discs. Part one in this series features fifty of my favorite solo horn albums. These recordings primarily consist of traditional works, transcriptions, or arrangements for solo horn in the context of horn alone and/or in collaboration with an orchestra or a piano. Part two will feature fifty chamber music CDs, and part three will feature fifty orchestral music CDs. Many of the artists on this list have other equally worthwhile recordings, but I have only listed one recording for each artist for this first list. Additionally, there are numerous long play (LP) records that have not been converted to CD that hornists should know as well. The argument could be made that LPs sound better than digital recordings, however, many people do not have access to a record player, and artists are still releasing CDs today, so my lists will only feature CDs.

John Q. Ericson

During a group warm-up session I attended at the 2009 International Horn Symposium (led by Lydia Van Dreel) a participant asked a question about low range fingerings. This topic is one that is surprisingly hot, as it relates to the use of the F and B♭ horn in the low range. Some teachers have strong opinions on the fingering choices.

by Kyle Hayes

Being able to sight-read is one of the most important skills in your toolbox as a musician. A lot of music instructors will say it is the most important skill. The reason is because if you can sight-read well, you are demonstrating that you have fluency in all of your key signatures, you understand all of your rhythms and are subdividing, all of those technical exercises that you’ve been drilling in your private lessons and your band classes have been mastered, and your musicality is at a level where you can read expression markings and make a phrase really come to life.

When I was in school, I never really paid that much attention to how well I was able to sight-read because we always had weeks of rehearsal before we gave a concert. I was at the top of my sections in high school and college band and orchestra, taking gigs, and was always asked to be in chamber groups. I thought I had it all figured out.  “Rehearsal is where you come to learn your part, right?” was my way of thinking. Man, I have never been more wrong. In graduate school my teacher would always impress upon us the idea that we had to sight-read with 80% accuracy if we even wanted to consider having a career as a professional musician. I can’t tell you how many times I would go home after playing duets with him and questioning whether or not I had it in me- my sight-reading was absolutely terrible. Sure, I had some church gigs where you show up an hour before the church service to have a quick rehearsal of the big choir pieces, but the hymns where played on the fly. I survived, so I didn’t really pay attention to really developing sight-reading as an actual tool.

Assuming you have your horn tuned "at home" to A=440 (or whatever pitch your ensemble prefers), it is often difficult to find one's pitch in a large ensemble.