Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Horn Players, Beware!

Doug, a trombone player, decided to take up French horn 4+ years ago. New to BE, he's coming on strong, so horn players beware! With Doug's permission, I'm sharing an email I received from him yesterday.

Valerie,

What I'm noticing is that everything feels better. This is how it used to feel when I was playing all the time, chops in great shape, and fearless about going for notes. Kamakazi horn if you will. I've been inspired by Bruno (what a great name for a horn player) and got out the Mozart Horn quintet. The last time I attempted it, it was pure struggle, today it was approachable. The thing that just made me set my horn down in awe, was that eight bars from the end there is a high C eighth note approached from a C an octave lower and followed by eighth note D a seventh lower. That sucker popped out like I'd been doing it all my life. It was so much fun I did it five more times.

I used to belong to a new age church that taught us to visualize and believe in what we wanted to do, before it manifested itself. So sometimes I'm a dreamer. My dream is to sit amongst four strings, in my tux, forty pounds lighter, and blow everyone away with my definitive rendition of the Mozart Horn quintet. What do you think? Well, OK. Like I said, I'm a dreamer.

OH. GOOD HEAVENS! You are going to laugh at me. I just realized that this piece is for Horn in Eb. I've been playing it in F! I'm going to have to turn in my IHS membership card as they paint a yellow stripe down my back and drum me out of the corps and confiscate my 8D! Later. I have to go try this again.

Doug

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