French Horn
December 23, 2008 | Category: Instruments, Music | 1 Comment
But then at the beginning of this year, I read a book by Jasper Rees - “I Found My Horn: One Man’s Struggle with the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument”. If you know me, you know that I like to solve difficult problems; and even though I’m a bear of little brain, that doesn’t stop me having a go. This excellent book is really fun to read (I recommend it, even if you have no desire to go away and learn a musical instrument - though you might by the end of it). The French Horn sounded so much fun, that I had to try it, despite the fact that I also have a ‘couple’ other instruments on the go….
The first thing you find when you start looking into it, is the cost. A horn is a complicated system of a lot of brass piping and valves, and it’s not exactly a mass-market instrument. For that reason there are two different categories of horn you can buy as a beginner. You can go for a cheap-as-chips no-brand horn that is supposedly a copy of one of the more expensive models, or you can go for a ‘beginner’ instrument with a reputable maker (admittedly, there are instruments in between, but that’s more or less my experience). As a beginner with no idea how you will get on, it’s a huge investment to get a decent horn, or a small investment to get a cheap horn that will probably be pretty depressing to play on. I’m generalizing of course, based on my own experience, but that’s about it. There may well be a cheap horn out there that does the job for an adult beginner, but I didn’t find one. I started on a full-double horn that cost me £250 - I didn’t even consider a single ‘F’ horn; not because that wouldn’t have been OK, but that comes with a guarantee that you’ll need to upgrade within 12-18 months - and let’s face it, it just isn’t as cool as a full double (less brass, less buttons to push - I’m a big fan of buttons). The cheap horn lasted until I could get up to the first G on the stave; at that point it became pretty obvious that while I could match my teacher’s open ‘C’, my horn’s open ‘G’ was equivalent to my teacher’s ‘F#’.
But the problem was, that by the time I’d reached that first G reliably, I was already completely hooked. Suddenly spending that extra cash seemed like a necessity, and it was only a couple of months before I’d picked up a much nicer horn in the shape of a Yamaha 567, obtained after a fairly tricky negotiation with my wife. It sounded amazing from day one.
At this time of writing I’ve been playing about 9 months, and am just starting to win my battle to make the first ‘C’ speak - giving me almost 2 octaves of range at the moment (2 to go!!). I’m loving every minute of it. Really looking forward to another year fighting with this wonderful instrument. I hope I’ll one day get to shake Jasper’s hand; without the book I would never have considered it…
1 Comment | PermalinkBlogging again
August 1, 2008 | Category: Misc | Leave a Comment
Every once in a while I want to start posting again, then realize I’ll have to go through the pain of setting up the site how I like it. Well, I went through the pain and installed Wordpress a couple weeks ago; which seems pretty good - and the easiest install I’ve ever known (beating Community Server hands-down). Who knows, it may stick around for a while ;-). I’ve even got an iPhone app that can post here; we’ll see how that turns out.
I’ll likely post here anything that interests me. My continuing obsession with all music & musical instruments will likely feature, along with the occasional programming bits and pieces.
In the meantime, I’m off to San Francisco next week to visit home office, then to Siggraph in LA the week after that to talk about FX Composer 2.5 in an NVIDIA sponsored session. I’m looking forward to catching up with friends and seeing some cool talks, and maybe the odd night out. After two weeks away, I’m hoping the kids will recognise me when I get back….
Leave a Comment | PermalinkTags: blog, kids, LA, Siggraph
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