My 10-year-old nephew is going into fifth grade, when they start band. He already plays piano and viola a little, though guitar is really his main instrument. He picked French horn for band because, he told me, you play it lefty, which he is.
James, didn’t your Mexicali trumpet style come from a few years playing French horn? And if so, is it really played left-handed, or was the guy at the music store just shining him?
3 comments:
Indeed, I started the French Horn in the 5th grade, after having attempted the piano for some years, with limited success. I played it until my senior year of high school, when I moved to a school that focussed on the marching band, for which the French Horn is particularly ill-suited. At that point, I became more of a music researcher than performer, and spent my afternoons flipping burgers in Harvard Square to pay for the used 60's albums that I brought to college with me. I foolishly sold them, of course, and will eternally regret the fact that I no longer possess the Uncle Meat comic book, or even a single Electric Prunes album.
On chirality, indeed, the French Horn is played with the left hand on the valves and the right hand in the bell of the horn. Before the invention of the rotary or piston valve, intonation was modified by the use of the lips, as well as by 'squeezing' the sound by placing the right hand farther into the bell. This technique is a plausible precursor to the modern mute, although I suppose the 'hat over the trumpet bell' technique fits somewhere in between. When Louis Armstrong began to find his gifts as a young man, his volume and tone were so dominant that they would make him play outside the room during recording sessions.
N.B. It takes at least two years for a young person to develop their technique to the point that other humans can actually listen to them play the French Horn without discomfort.
peace,
jim
Well I'll be. 40 years of playing horns and I had no idea.
I somehow ended up with a couple of your LPs, including the first Fugs album and "Together" by CJ & the Fish (which includes the great "Rock & Soul") and I have them to this day, on the beautiful record shelves Juliana's dad made. I'm not sure how I ended up with them, since as you may recall I didn't have a stereo when I was in school. Come on out to Berekeley if you want them, and I'll toss in the first Big Brother album.
I am glad to hear that someone I know still owns a Fugs album. Thus, Ramses the Second is not, in fact, dead (my love). I honestly don't need more stuff in my life, but I look forward to hearing them next month at your house.
Just coming at you from a stone groove, you know.
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