In my last post of 2019 I want to recommend two excellent new publications for horn players, John Ericson’s The French Horn Warmup Collection and Matthew Haislip’s Dueling Fundamentals for Two Horns. Either or both would make great gifts if you are still looking for a last minute holiday present for a horn-playing family member or friend.

The French Horn Warmup Collection includes material from several earlier publications by Dr. Ericson, as well as some new exercises. They can be freely combined in various ways to create numerous warmup and practice routines. All of the basics are covered thoroughly, including range and tone development, flexibility, scales and arpeggios, intonation, breathing, multiple tonguing, and more. I regularly use the exercises for breathing and multiple tonguing, and the “breath-set-play” pattern found at the end of the “Short Daily Routine.” Everything is notated very clearly, and the exercises are explained and presented in a logical manner. The Kindle edition is listed for $3.99, which is an amazingly low price for the amount and quality of the content in this collection. It can be easily read and performed from by using a tablet equipped with the Kindle app. If you prefer a hard copy, it is available through print-on-demand for $8.99, which is also very reasonable. For more on this publication, see Ericson’s post at Horn Matters, as well as this episode of his Horn Notes Podcast. Along with Professor Jeffrey Agrell at the University of Iowa, Dr. Ericson is among a few prominent horn professors making their publications available in both print and digital format. With the ever increasing popularity of tablet devices and digital media, I think this trend is going to continue.

In a similar vein is Dueling Fundamentals for Two Horns, new from Mountain Peak Music. The author is Dr. Matthew Haislip, Assistant Professor of Horn at Mississippi State University. Here is a brief description of the book from the MPM website:

Trill Thrill, Fits of Fifths, Beethoven for Two, and Overtone Madness are just some of the fun—but make no mistake, also challenging!—duets included in Dueling Fundamentals for Horns. This book consists of five chapters: Long Tones; Intervals; Flexibility; Scales and Arpeggios; and Range Extenders. In each duet, both lines are challenging—there is no “student” line and no “teacher” line. Therefore this book works well for lessons or as an excellent tool for two friends or classmates looking to challenge themselves and each other.

I’m a big fan of Mountain Peak Music’s publications, and have published two books of my own with them. The Dueling Fundamentals series capitalizes on a need for high quality pedagogical material for use by college-level players and their teachers. The duets found in Professor Haislip’s book make excellent “lesson-starters,” to be used in the first 10-15 minutes to establish solid fundamentals and set a high standard for the rest of the lesson. They of course could be used throughout a lesson to work on specific technical needs, or assigned to pairs of students for studio class presentations, etc.  I’ve played through many of these with my students, and found them to be well-constructed, useful, and fun. Range requirements usually begin comfortably and progress to extremes, and it is quite easy to adapt these for less experienced players by skipping around and/or truncating the duets. Some of the patterns draw upon classic materials such as Stamp, Clarke, and Gallay, while others incorporate various styles ranging from Beethoven to Philip Glass. In the absence of a duet partner, any of the duets can be performed by a single player to create an individual practice routine.

I am always in the market for innovative and functional teaching materials, and these new publications by John Ericson and Matthew Haislip certainly fit the bill.

As we close out 2019, I would like to thank my readers for taking the time to peruse this site. After almost 10 years of blogging, I still enjoy reading and writing about the horn, and it’s gratifying to know that there are others out there who feel the same way. Wishing you all good health and great chops in 2020!