hey, do any French Horn players out there have suggestions on some music and drill books that are challenging and will help build speed and range

solo

hey, do any French Horn players out there have suggestions on some music and drill books that are challenging and will help build speed and range

...i guess not lol, sorry, i couldn't help myself!

im new to the forum and was looking though some of the threads. I know this is an oldie, but i was wanting to ask the same question... so it seems i am throwing back into the system. hopefully this time somebody might have an answer.

btw, very cool forum :D

If you already a good player then "50 Etudes (Opus 6) by G Kopprasch" is a standard. For less advanced players "Primary studies for the french horn by A Horner" is fine but old. Don't forget that scales and appegios are also very good exercises. You can also try some simple variants eg C C' C B C Bb C A C Ab C G C C' (and the reverse from the high C to the lower part of the octave). Such exercises can be played starting on any note.

thanks! i will have a look into buying that book.

I'm a successful come back French horn player. The two best books I've found for building speed & range were not even written for French horn, but trumpet. I don't know why, but I've found more help with with range & speed from trumpet teachers than from French horn teachers!

FOR RANGE: I give my strongest endorsement to Jeff Smiley for "The Balanced Embouchure". This is the program I used to develop the four octave range I have after being off horn for over 3 decades. Nothing Farkas, Brown, Dufranse, Little or my private instructor offered helped me. But Jeff Smiley, a humble trumpet teacher from Garland, Texas, developed the method that gave me the range of a professional in just a few months. I can't say enough about his program. It's simply the best! Jeff's book is not available in music stores, but is on line through his website.

FOR SPEED: I'd recommend H.L. Clark's "Technical studies for Trumpet". It's a classic that can be found at any music store. What I like about it is every exercise covers EVERY key signature so after you play Clark's for a while, no key signature scares you because you're ready for ANYTHING! The other thing I like is that these exercises can be adapted to ANY player's level & range. You can spend as much time as you need on these exercises w/o wearing out your chops. Many of the technical exercises for French horn wore me out because they were too high to spend much time on, but EVERY Clark's exercise can be adapted to your needs. His exercises start low & gently work up in half step increments. When you get to the top of your range or endurance threshold, you stop. It's that simple. You've gotten a good speed workout w/o wearing out your chops. My private French horn instructor introduced me to Clark's. At the time I was struggling with Mozart's 1st concerto. My fingers & tongue just wouldn't move fast enough. I felt like a total spaz. After two weeks of working in Clark's, I could play Mozart's 1st at an acceptable tempo. I work with Clarks at lease a few minutes a day to keep my technique up to speed.

Valerie, French horn player in Tacoma, WA

I use Kopprasch Book I. It's great for advancing your skill, trills, and transposing, and various other things you may run into in advanced music.

A lot of the etudes will take a lot of work, but if you take private lessons and can get tutored on them each week, by the time you get to college auditions you'll have a great book to choose etudes from, since most auditions ask for one or two contrasting etudes (Kopprasch being one of the most popular)

Well ... I've done Kopprasch. It's great for learning technique & musical skills, etc. BUT, for building speed, you need something that you can do for a good 10 or 15 minutes a day without busting your chops. Kopprasch etudes are too demanding to fill that need. I believe for speed, the best thing is H.L. Clarke's book like I mentioned in a post above. Scales are also good, but even scales can be too taxing to work on long enough to develop speed.

Furthermore, Kopprasch has absolutely nothing to offer in range developement if you don't know HOW to play high. Jeff Smiley's book, THE BALANCED EMBOUCHURE, gives you the "how to's" needed for veloping the range to play Kopprasch! I worked in Kopprach for months & months w/o expanding my upper range a single note. I learned a lot of tunes, developed pretty good technique, but my range was stuck where it had been for three years. When I began working in BALANCED EMBOUCHURE, my upper range started opening up very, VERY rapidly.

Another thing, Farkas has a range building exercise in his book, The Art of French Horn Playing. But I don't recommend that one either. I worked out of the Farkus book for 2 1/2 years w/o expanding my upper range a single note. I finally replaced the Farkus range building exercise with BALANCED EMBOUCHURE & w/i just a few months I had a FULL four octave range (couble pedal C to high C). Farkus was a great player & and a wonderful human being, but even he didn't know how to teach someone else HOW TO play high. Jeff SMiley does.