I think if I was applying for an MM program in performance, the first
question I would ask is How many students from your program have gotten
professional playing jobs?
- Steve Mumford
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I remember playing Mozart's opera Il Re Pastore and it has 4 horns, each
one crooked in a different key. We were using hand horns and it really did
mess with my sense of where I was. It's easy to get kind of comfortable on hand
horn with knowing what part of the chord you have just by
Ha ha! I L'd OL when I opened up the digest and saw a whole string of messages
with the subject line: Steve Mumford is irresistible to women
Sigh, sometimes dreams really do come true!
- Steve Mumford
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Dave Goldberg wrote:
I whipped out my kit, bared her
valve, banged on it a bit, drenched it with oil and it worked fine for
the rest of the evening
I love it when you talk dirty!
- Steve
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I won't disagree with your statements, but I've often wondered how it is
that people in the business inhale metric tons of brass dust and handle all
kinds of lead but still manage to live to a ripe old age. Geyer even ate those
goose grease sandwiches to boot. I've been amazed to see the
Sweet! Here's the first page:
http://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/nma/nmapub_srch.php?l=1
You might have to go to the link Michiel supplied first and sign in. The trios
are in the Serie VIII Kammermusik for Streicher und Blaeser. They start on
page 67. type in 67 and Gehe zu Seite. Wow,
For some really beautiful, fun and challenging trios, check out Mozart's
trios for basset horns. Not exactly originals for horn but at least they're
in F. There are several of them and they're all first rate musically. The 1st
part goes up to high Cs and hangs above the staff quite a
Probably not of any help, but I just thought it was interesting. I was
talking to a retired Detroit Symphony horn player today and he mentioned that
the J series Giardinellis were the Jimmy Stagliano model.
- Steve Mumford
Klaus wrote:
My mouthpiece since 1992 is a Giardinelli J4 with
Despite some naysaying, I decided to answer my own question, just thinking
of the B minor Mass. Why did Baumann play it on a single high G horn as
opposed to some other key horn? One thing about Baumann, you can always depend
that any ornament, trill, grace note etc. he plays is going
All this talk of high horns put me in mind of the video on You Tube of
Hermann Baumann playing the Quoniam from the B minor Mass on a single high G
horn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5DYhyiJtoEfeature=PlayListp=7D02097020E7F21Eplaynext=1playnext_from=PLindex=10
Sorry, the video seems
Franz Streitwieser made a very nice recording of some of these high horn
concertos using a Clarinhorn, an instrument of his own invention, something
like a Bb post horn with valves. I think the Neruda concerto is on that
recording, I'm not finding my copy immediately here but maybe
Don't forget the leadpipes that have a sleeve over the first
few inches and a guard plate after that. I had one particularly
acidic customer who had eaten an obvious hole right next to the
guard plate so I put an artistic little patch there, but what I
couldn't see was that the pipe had
As Packard Motorcar used to say Ask the man who owns one. I think you'll
have a hard time arguing with Paul on this one.
- Steve Mumford
Paul wrote:
William,
You may disagree with this statement completely, but it is important to
consider two of your own statements.
The first is:
The
I got a very cheap QuikTune tuner, but I found an accessory pickup that
clips on the horn and plugs into the tuner. It vastly increases response time
and accuracy and blocks out interference from other sounds. It picks up the
vibrations from the metal. It works as well or better than the
I know I've seen a horn wrapped just like this one in an old Kruspe catalog
but I don't have the photo. It's a single Bb horn. From the top it's
(normal) 1st, 2nd, 3rd valves. The 3rd slide wraps upward to make room for
the 4th slide which is an F extension. That's a seriously old
I'd say, as the audition gets close, start making opportunities to
perform your audition music. Play for friends, enemies, etc. As a practical
matter, you can't really depend on two hours of playing to be at your peak, so
start proving to yourself that you can play just fine with any
That black stuff is leftover buffing and/or lapping compound that never got
properly cleaned out of the horn at the factory. That is to say, unless you've
had some work done in the meantime that involved lapping, or some shop that
cleaned your horn may have buffed (ruined) the valves and
-side open right hand a bit ?
==
-Original Me ssage-
Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:27:49 +0100
Subject: [Hornlist] Re: Leadpipe Question
From: Steven Mumford mumfordhornwo...@att.net
To: horn
I've been enjoying a lot of those Toscanini performances on YouTube lately. I
was a little surprised by Jaenicke's phrasing on the Nocturne where he breathes
after the D# (played). I had always thought of that note as a pickup to the
next part of the phrase. The more I listen to it, the more
I dunno, I've been using anhydrous lanolin since 1975. My horn doesn't
stink, no green stuff growing. It lasts a long time on the slides. My valves
are fast.
I don't put any oil down the slide tubes. If you do, don't put more than a
single drop in each valve. More than that
I found a list of people who played with the NBC here:
http://www.classicalrecordings.org/znbc/nbcplayers.html
That's probably Arthur and Jack in the video, Harry played 3rd.
While you're in the neighborhood, check out the Midsummer Night's Dream with
Toscanini, Bruno Jaenecke on our
Who was looking for a Sansone? Contact me off list and I'll send you the
contact info (it's not mine)
- Steve Mumford
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I'm just curious, if you trade your shiny Eastlake 8D for a beat up Elkhart
one with leaky valves, you'll have a horn that's not playable. What will you
play on?
- Steve Mumford
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Just for the record, I have had my hands (and lips) on two different 19th
century horns that had only two valves, the halftone valve being played with
the 1st finger. Not assembled incorrectly, definitely intended that way. One
of them had Stoelzel valves. Sorry, I don't remember the
To simplify, I would say the main advantage of the compensating horn is
that you can use normal fingerings (probably favoring the Bb side) and
theoretically play the full range of the horn.
The 5 valve Bb is, for me, a little more of an entertainment. It requires
more inventiveness
I can say, as a repairman, that the Bonna type hard dent bags have been
very good for business too.
Now, seriously. What's up with younger horn players? You have to carry
it? W! I've got more mileage on my hard case than I care to think
about. I've logged some serious
+bgross=3dairmail@music.memphis.edu
[mailto:horn-bounces+bgross=3dairmail@music.memphis.edu] On Behalf =
Of
Steven Mumford
Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2009 7:04 PM
To: horn@music.memphis.edu
Subject: [Hornlist] Re: dent bags
I can say, as a repairman, that the Bonna type hard dent bags
You might look around and find out about Arkady Shilkloper. He plays jazz
horn with amazing virtuosity and also plays flugelhorn. I haven't heard a
recording of him on flugel, but run out and buy all of his horn recordings, you
won't regret it.
- Steve Mumford
This could apply to horn players as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKSvk1NMuMfeature=related
- Steve Mumford
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Larry wrote:
-Take a look at this video, and see if you don't get a light hearted reaction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaLRYjaNSywfeature=channel_page
Well, it is kind of funny in a way, about on the level of a fart joke.
- Steve Mumford
I think the early call time/warm up rehearsal thing is just a bad idea all
around. I've never seen anything of value happen during one of those. If it
ain't ready to go the day before the concert, it ain't going to get ready the
day of. It's just a waste of good chops. Then you have
This is not about food, but you might enjoy looking into acupressure.
There are 4 points that affect the lips, 1- just below the middle of your nose
and about halfway between your nose and lip, 2- about the middle of your chin
and 3 and 4 above your lip close to either end of your mouth.
For the flute low B, you can always just roll up a piece of paper and stick it
in the end with enough sticking out to give you low B. Works fine, as long as
you don't also have to play low C. Same with low A on the Bassoon, which is
written in a few pieces. I think there's some trick of
Here's an interesting article comparing different valve
oils: http://www.musichem.com/articles/p_oil_e.htm
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Having attended High School, I feel qualified to answer Steve's question. You
can use Blue juice on your horn, but don't mix it with any other oils. It
reacts badly with petrolium based oils and it will gum up.
- Steve Mumford
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Oh that is classic! An excellent result. Now next year you have to make the
test double-blind. Blindfold the players too.
- Steve Mumford
Ken wrote:
For those of you who have been waiting for me to tally the IHS 2008 Blind
Taste Test Results - they're posted on my site!.
Sincerely
Ken
John wrote:
Knowing what pitch one plays before doing so really helps increase
one's
accuracy. Arnold Jacobs said that his seven years of solgege at Curtis
was
his most valuable music course. Eldon's comments on focus are dead on.
John Schreckengost
Chicago, IL
In connection
We had free access to the student health clinic included as part of our
tuition at the University of Michigan. Unfortunately, after a couple of
visits, it became clear that there were apparently only two possible diagnoses,
VD or stress!
Now that I'm self employed, I'm completely
Hmmm, I'm with you part way there, but the way I've usually seen it is that
the whole horn is flat, with the F circuit being even flatter. For a few
years, Conn built the 8Ds with extra long main tuning slides. My 900,000 had
the long one and I shortened it to the length they used before
Why not save the cost of the mute and just practice stopped? You'll kill
about five birds with one stone that way. It's highly annoying at first, but
after awhile you might actually find you can play stopped without a stopping
mute. What a concept! You'll find it will very much help
Hmmm, well you could easily turn the statement around and say that you
could have a perfect embouchure, but if your air isn't working, you'll still
sound bad. Except that, as Jonathan mentioned, if your air is bad, it's going
to mess up your perfect embouchure.
How to put good air in
Wow, it doesn't get much plainer and simpler than that! I like simple
exercises, as opposed to thinking too hard so here's a dirt simple thing to try
out. Pick a passage to play, put your lips outside and around the mouthpiece
and just blow air through the horn, no buzzing. Blow the air
In addition to whether you have thick or thin lips, you might notice how
the mouthpiece rim diameter fits the witdth of your teeth. Does the rim hit
right in the middle of your 2 front teeth? At the edge? Beyond the edge?
That measurement is going to be different for each person and
I'm trying to remember, I think it was actually Phil Farkas who told me he
had met somebody who knew Szell back in his conservatory days in the old
country. He asked the guy well, what kind of a horn player was Szell? and
the the guy replied something like oh it was like a sick cow!
At least regarding the horn sound, George Szell thought the 8D came
closest to producing a sound like the Vienna horns so that's why he wanted 8Ds
in the Cleveland Orchestra. So there you go, you could say Vienna's kind of
European.
- Steve Mumford
message: 14
date:
An easy and simple way to work on attacks. Get some cheap foam earplugs
and put them in while you practice. You'll be able to hear more about your
attacks, less about the other stuff. It will help.
Another simple way - play whatever you're going to practice. Stop at the
first
Lou Denaro contributes this information about the session:
There's a For No One thread on Hornplayer.net right now. Nobody's
mentioning my favorite anecdote about that session. Namely, after they finally
got Civil to manage recording a take, Paul wanted him to do another so he could
It could be expected that there would be some who would not let themselves
be limited to only potato or pasta mouthpieces. It is rumored that this is the
true traditional Viennese sound. We tried making soup out of our instruments
after a brass quintet concert once, but I'm sure the
A couple more thoughts on on the leg playing. The chair height can have
an effect on success. Years ago my orchestra bought new chairs. We had a
players' committee to make recommendations to management and samples of
different chairs were brought in for everybody to try. In the end,
Be careful generalizing about sound on the leg vs. off the leg. You'll
probably find, if you do a good double blind listening session, that it can
depend on the type of horn, the room, the player - all kinds of stuff. Do what
sounds the best!
- Steve Mumford
Nah, it's just an older Farkas model and the bell has been replaced. It's
nickel silver all the way up to the joint at the top of the horn. You could
get a 179 bell without the name on it, might be one of those, or judging by the
way the wrap kind of bulges up at the join with the first
Here's another choice that will work for a severely tarnished unlacquered
horn with deep dark brown or green spots, the kind that would take hours to
polish out with a normal polish. Penny Brite is made with a food grade citric
acid. It's very slightly abrasive, but the mild acid will do
I fear there may be a small tse-tse fly in the ointment (oops the ointment
went down with the ship) in this whole desert island discussion. Depending on
how long you plan to be marooned, a few recordings or etude books could become
more of a torment than a comfort after a long
I use similar reasoning when there are high notes written at a soft
dynamic. They are often doubled an octave lower by the 2nd horn, so they are
probably not that important. There are some pianissimo pedal E entrances out
of nowhere in the Song of the Earth, very beautiful.
- Steve
My worry would be that stretching the receiver out to fit a regular
mouthpiece would change the size of the venturi also. It would be easy to do
and there's a tool made for that purpose, but the result of that may not be
desireable.
I've got a couple of the old King Schmidt models
Rampone Cazzani exported lots of horns as stencils and they're very common
in the US. These were horns that you could buy wholesale and put your own
brand name on them. Blessing, Getzen and York sold them, as did many local
stores and distributors. Sansone got parts from them. There were
You forced me to dig deep into the archives to unearth a similar beast! I
have a couple like the one that was auctioned but, unfortunately they're not in
good enough condition to play. I have one from the next generation that's not
too bad though. The improved design was patented in
It's a cool design. The valve loops grow continuously. That's why they're
not tunable, there's no cylindrical section for a tuning slide. The bore at
each valve is bigger than the one before it. We often say the french horn is a
conical instrument, but it really isn't when made in the
I fully represent the hopelessly old and un-hip, but I have to say I found
it funny. Y'all have been listening to too much Strauss and obviously haven't
kept up with Snoop Dogg's latest offerings. I think if you ask your students
they'll get it.
Granted there's a little strong
Pan Americans weren't actually bad horns. All the ones you see today are
completely worn out, so it's hard to judge. It was the second line for Conn.
When they would discontinue a Conn model, they would take that tooling and make
the Pan Americans with it. The famous Schmidt model
Here's a post from Lou Denaro about the Olds horns:
I believe the clue to the identity of the horn being described here is the
articulated change valve mechanism. I recently bought an Olds horn with in
line valves and it has such a mechanism. This is definitely not the Geyer
wrapped
That octave at the beginning of the Hall of the Mountain King offers a
couple of challenges, especially if you're the one playing 2nd horn. It's a
little bit down in the woofy range for stopping, not entirely easy if you're
not very experienced with hand stopping. So, not only that, but
Do a Google search for Olds Central and the first thing you see should be
a site that has a lot of stuff about Olds instruments. Lots of great
information there. Look for the 1957 catalog, it has the french horns in it,
some of the others do too. If yours is an Ambassador, those were
I understand that horn players prefer to use creative thinking, but each of
the major manufacturers of horns will supply the proper size bumpers to fit the
horns they make. Your local repair shop really should stock a supply for all
the major brands, instead of putting in random sized
You can try to find the leadpipe dimensions using dent balls, but after a
leadpipe is bent, it rarely has a round cross section anymore. Your dent ball
may be stopped by the X axis, but the Y axis will still not be touching. OK,
you can jam it in farther, but at what point do you start to
friends!
- Steve Mumford
Steve Haflich wrote:
From: Steven Mumford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can try to find the leadpipe dimensions using dent balls,
but after a leadpipe is bent, it rarely has a round cross
section anymore.
Not quite true. After a pipe is bent
Oops, I have to correct my story, I heard from a hornist who had known
Geyer personally and said he used to talk about having worked at Schmidt,
starting out by sweeping the floors. Thanks for the great stories Dave!
On Kruspes, it seems to be commonly said that their intonation
I don't know specifically in the case of Kruspe or Schmidt, but Geyer did
not use a mandrel to make leadpipes. He had a flat pattern he traced onto a
sheet of brass which he then cut out and rolled into a tapered tube. After
filing the edges a bit to clean them up the seam was brazed
Geyer didn't train with Schmidt, although he did build Schmidt model horns.
He trained in Markneukirchen, which was and still is a mecca for instrument
building of all kinds.
There was a non-ferrous mill in Elkhart in the old days and Conn was able
to get some custom alloys. I
I'm sure I must be missing something here, but what happened to just
cleaning your horn fairly regularly with plenty of soap and a snake? I figure
if I've gone as far wrong as to need a chemical cleaning, I've [EMAIL
PROTECTED] up kinda bad.
- Steve Mumford
Although it has been said, it isn't at all true. Many of the Conn Schmidt
model horns said made in Germany on the valve lever support. That was true
only of the rotary valve set which was made by Martin Peter in Germany, not the
same valves used by Schmidt. The rest of the horn,
You'll have the most fun with your Alexander if your mouthpiece has the same
taper on its shank that the Alexander mouthpieces have. It's different from
the American morse taper shanks. It'll still play reasonably mediochre with
the morse taper mouthpiece, but the sound will open up and the
You'll notice there's not much pull on the main tuning slide on that
Schmidt model King. On the earlier ones, it didn't pull at all, the crook was
soldered directly to the knuckle leading into the piston valve. The one I'm
working on now is from the early 20s and that main slide is not
Interestingly enough, the earliest 103s didn't have a MAIN tuning slide
either. The leadpipe fed directly into the change valve, then you had the
little Bb slide on the front and the F slide on the back. Totally independent
tuning! The earliest Pelletier model Kings with the piston thumb
Check to see if the main tuning slide of the 278 isn't longer than that on
the 179. I mean the length of the straight tubes. Check also if the length of
the little Bb tuning slides is different between the two. Not all Holtons were
created equal! Just a note on Holtons, that slide on
There is some sort of tracking outside the US for packages sent through the
US Postal Service. I recently sent a horn to France that took longer than
expected to get there. The anxious recipient inquired, and when I asked at the
post office, they were able to tell me the horn was at his
Maybe the main deciding factor, expect to spend somewhere from 500.00 to
above 1,000.00 to have the horn polished and lacquered.
Lacquer is just clear paint. Paint it on an unpolished horn, and it will
have some slight effect on the way the horn plays, probably not enough to run
Good grief! About 10 people in a row have quoted the entire digest in their
reply to this thread. Stop it!
- Steve
PS - Please!
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It's a great album! Some real rippin' horn licks. Snap it up if you have
a chance to get it.
Tom wrote:
surfing, I found this LP. Any one ever heard it?
Julius Watkins - French Horns For My Lady
Label: Philips
Catalog#: PHS 600-001
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: US
An H.N. White flyer from about 1929 or 30 shows Alphonse J. Pelletier among
a host of distinguished colleages endorsing the King french horn: By far the
finest horn it has ever been my privelege to play. Distinctive features are
the ease of playing, the wonderful tone and the perfect
Of course, you have to look on the INSIDE of a violin to see all the
horrible damage, patched cracks etc., etc. Horn patches are on the outside so
they look worse. I recently had the opportunity to buy about 200 violins from
an old shop for 20 bucks apiece. I couldn't find any in the
The real key to evening out the sound between closed and open notes is
the mouthpiece. Back in Beethoven's time, horn mouthpieces were made of sheet
metal and were a continuous funnel all the way to the small end. A modern
mouthpiece with a choke and backbore works fine on the open notes,
Walt Lewis, sorry about that, my finger misfired and I lost your message
and email address. Could you write me back?
- Steve
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One thing to check is whether it takes the European mouthpiece shank taper.
It will play a lot better if the shank fits in the right distance.
Bob's post reminds me of a fun little test to check if the mouthpiece
resistance is balanced for you. Play a middle C softly then crescendo
Eva, you kind of glossed right over the more significant part of making
that 179 play better. I tend to forget that people are trying out these
replacement leadpipes on old worn out horns with leaky valves and tuning
slides. Sure the FB-210 is a fine pipe, but I guarantee, the valve
.
1. Re: Lead pipes for Conn 8D (Steven Mumford)
2. Re: C series mouthpieces (Steven Mumford)
3. Re: Re: Lead pipes for Conn 8D (Tim Van Gijsegem)
4. Re: Re: C series mouthpieces (Christopher Fitzhugh)
5. Re: Horn Digest, Vol 59, Issue 32 ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
6. Rims, Chops, Airstreams (was C
Anyone who is getting a new leadpipe for their 8D, please send the old
original one to me!!! I won't call any names, but I've had quite a few of the
custom pipes come through here and I haven't seen any yet that were better than
a good original one. Different, yes. Better, no.
-
One more thing to pay attention to when choosing an inner rim diameter is
tooth structure. Maybe more important than the size or shape of the lip.
- Steve Mumford
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well ok, the best I can do is a third hand report. The person who heard
the concert was gratified that the concerto explored all the ranges of the
horn. She was able to listen somewhat appreciatively, having spent weeks
preparing another piece by Carter last summer. She wasn't raving
I've taken it to the extreme and just made several VERY long driving trips
to pick up horns. I didn't want to take the chance that some irreplaceable
vintage parts might get damaged. The upside is, I got to sightsee some very
nice parts of the country.
I'm getting perilously
That's certainly more than a little bit possible, but it can also have a
positive effect. I don't know any trumpet players who haven't had theirs
drilled out a bit, and many horn players too. It can be worth the experiement
if you don't like the mouthpiece anyway. Better, of course to
Kruspe made the single F horns in many different configurations and
different bell sizes. Some of them had garlands, but I'm pretty sure if you
took the garland off, you'd have no bead at the edge. The garlands weren't
soldered in place, just crimped around and with the reinforcing wire
Just out of curiosity, my friend went back and repeated his survey of the
top 55 orchestra horn sections listed on hornplayer.net. He found 61 players
listed as playing 8Ds, 27 Hill, 23 Rauch, 16 Schmid triple, 15 Berg, 11 for
Lewis, Paxman dbl, Paxman triple, Schmid Dbl and Yamaha
Good heavens! Don't tell tuba players their 4th valve is a parlor trick.
That could lead to fisticuffs! Actually there have to be more than a few
pieces that would be nice on the single Bb that go below low Bb. How's about
the Haydn 2nd concerto? I have a recording of Alfred Brain
The F extension is the same length as 1 and 3 together and if you use the F
extension, you can now play all the open notes you'd play on a single F horn.
The valve slides for valves 1,2,3 will be too short for the F horn though so
you can't exactly play merrily along as if it was a regular
Sorry about that, I didn't misunderstand, I just saw that small portion of
your statement as a convenient jumping off point for a little 8D cheerleading.
My point simply being that 8Ds don't get no respect on this list. Even if you
MODIFY them, they'll still sound pretty good!
-
Jack wrote:
Also remember that in the US large silver
Kruspe horns dominated for 30 years or so.
Sorry for the drastic snip there! It seems to be the general feeling on
this list that the era of the big silver horn is over, however... A friend did
a survey of the section
Speaking of tuners, my theory is that a lot of missed notes happen
because the horn isn't tuned well with itself. If your ear's any good, you'll
be trying to put the note where it ought to be pitch-wise. If the tuning of
the slides doesn't agree with that, you'll get thin tone, burbled
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