NFHD - funny shape box!!

paul_c2

Not guitar..........New French Horn Day today! Wish me luck, I think I'm going to need it. Its a Paxman Academy F/Bb full double, if anyone's interested. After talking with a local tutor, she advised that I'm taking a chance on eBay and renting is a perfectly reasonable way to get into things, so after a little phoning around I found a good deal on this one. Buying a new one of these would have cost ~£1800 so way out my price range, although obviously this one isn't new and there's others around a bit cheaper.





I must remember that unlike a guitar, its very shiny and curved too, so any reflections will clearly appear when I take pictures....

Paul_C

http://metro.co.uk/2016/09/21/womans-naked-reflection-appears-on-washing-machine-review-on-currys-website-6141726/

paul_c2

Nobody else had spotted that I'd opened the case upside-down. It took me half a day to suss out that I'd done that, I was wondering why the mouthpiece kept falling out of the holder and the valves were at the bottom!

PS guitar is much easier to play - as far as I know, nobody needs to stop playing and occasionally empty water out of their guitar, after they've been playing it a while.

Paul_C

A friend of mine played French Horn at school.

One day he was cycling home from school carrying his horn (in a case) and, looking down at his bike because it had started making a strange noise, rode into the back of a parked car.

He was thrown over the bars and onto the roof of the car, ending up on his feet on the far side, still holding onto the F Horn.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it . . .

Sassafras

That's an impressive bit of plumbing.
Looks lovely.

maltingsaudio

paul_c2 said:

PS guitar is much easier to play - as far as I know, nobody needs to stop playing and occasionally empty water out of their guitar, after they've been playing it a while.

 And guitar won't kill you! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/22/wind-musicians-warned-over-hygiene-as-fatal-case-of-bagpipe-lung-reported

DLM

Cool! Wor lass has a Hoyer, quite a lot like that, but with a detachable bell. Are you getting lessons? Can you already play a brass instrument?

paul_c2

DLM said:

Cool! Wor lass has a Hoyer, quite a lot like that, but with a detachable bell. Are you getting lessons? Can you already play a brass instrument?

I actually looked round for a teacher before I even got the horn, because I knew its one of those instruments you need proper lessons in, otherwise you can try and pick it up yourself and develop a terribly restricting technique which will stop you progressing later on. Worse than eg guitar. Also I was able to ask her for advice on buying/renting too, ie what kind, where to look. The first day it arrived I panicked after trying to play it and phoned the tutor to book the 1st lesson....and she offered a little advice over the phone. I played tuba ages ago (only for a short time though) and I've tried other brass instruments, so hopefully it will give me a bit of an advantage, but I'm fully aware this is a challenge and not a simple thing.

I nearly fell off my chair when I searched for local tutors and found: http://www.hannahmackenzietrumpet.co.uk/ , however she is full up so I've found a different one, I'm sure she's just as nice and also she is a French Horn specialist rather than a trumpet predominantly. I know most brass teachers teach them all though, except the trombone where you get specialists - presumably because of the slide?

axisus

That would be the coolest instrument ever if they made a straight one and it was 15 metres long!

DLM

That there Hannah Mackenzie site sets off malnet alarms for me...

Is this her?

http://prescotfestival.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/hannah_mackenzie_trumpet.jpg

paul_c2

DLM said:

That there Hannah Mackenzie site sets off malnet alarms for me...

Is this her?

http://prescotfestival.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/hannah_mackenzie_trumpet.jpg

Yes. No idea why you're getting a malware warning on the site, it looks alright to me?

DLM

Might be a categorisation error in the software, had that happen before. Or maybe her hoster also has some dodgy sites on it. 

Anyway it's nice to see her conforming to (stereo)type: on a Google image search she has a drink in her hand as often as an instrument!

Cheers!

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/773590012910796800/ApP0Qgnl.jpg

paul_c2

Managed to inadvertently say "shall I make it horny" during the lesson but luckily my wonderful horn teacher saw the funny side of it. Its going well and really enjoying it...although its definitely hard, many times harder than the guitar.

For my next lesson I shall try and fit in the word "banana".

DLM

Cool beans! My gaff reverberates to the sound of the Star Trek theme at the moment, which is awesome. Wor lass was at a band camp over the weekend. She shared a room with one of the flautists. I didn't ask. Honestly, I don't want to know.

paul_c2

I've bought another one....



I'm not completely mad, I don't need two. (Although I suspect some professionals have 2 or more French Horns, there's some variations of different types which might justify it). The original one is a rental, I didn't want to take the risk with a secondhand eBay one initially. But I don't want to pay a monthly fee for ever, the min term is 3 months, so I might as well buy my own now.

This one is much cheaper (around £200), looks to be a bit older, and much more worn lacquer etc but it works and its mine. When it first arrived this morning it was minging, so I've cleaned it using soapy water and its come up not too bad, and doesn't make my hands yukky now. Also, its a compensating double rather than a full double - its to do with the tubing used to produce notes on both "sides" - Bb and F. The top-spec ones are full doubles, there exists a beginner's horn which is a single - and confusingly, there's some F singles and some Bb singles so they are different lengths and need different fingerings for the same notes. The double has a 4th valve which drops/raises the horn by a 4th from Bb to F and allows higher notes to be more accurately played while having a nice tone on lower notes. A full double has 2 sets of valve tubing. A compensator has a single main set which the air always goes though, and a 2nd set of little tubes which are engaged when the F side is engaged.

Also, annoyingly, the trigger was configured to stand this one in Bb rather than F which is what's most normal, and what I'd been used to so far. Sometimes its a 2 minute job to adjust the mechanism to switch it over, but this horn didn't have any means of doing this. So, I braved it and took apart the rotary valve, then filed off an edge of the valve shaft, then reassembled it 90deg differently than previously, so now it stands in F and triggers to Bb! Another tweak I had to do was the keys and grip was adjusted for a smaller person, so I've carefully bent a few of the metal bits and now it fits my hand a bit better.

Weirdly, the thing is much easier to play, including more accurate getting some of the notes. I suspect its a slightly smaller bore which helps, and the slightly different layout helps a bit too - I don't confess to fully understand all the slight differences in horns which makes some nicer for some people and others nicer etc, I guess its just a personal preference thing!

DLM

Try a few different decent mouthpieces, too. Wor lass found she could get a far greater range on a pricier mouthpiece than on the standard one that came with the Hoyer.

paul_c2

A bit of an update, I'm now on horn #3 due to the second horn basically being too small for my hands, which meant I couldn't trigger the, ummm, trigger key without discomfort. As well as that, it had a really long throw which didn't help. So I was finding myself avoiding using it and trying to play everything on the F side, which soon became an issue as I was progressing to higher and higher notes. (Higher notes are generally easier to play on the Bb side, which is shorter tubing so means the harmonics are spaced a bit wider, also the fact that the tubing is shorter makes things easier. And a horn, or any wind instrument really, is totally unlike a guitar in that the lowest and highest notes are not really playable as a beginner; it takes possibly years to develop the ability to play them). The new one is a full double like the 1st one, which is the best kind to have and shouldn't need upgrading for a good while yet.

Today was the first time I played it in front of other people apart from my teacher - a good analogy might be the first time you're naked in front of someone who isn't your GP. I played with a local community orchestra and fortunately there was a nice guy who CAN play the horn who sat next to me and was a brilliant mentor - thanks Andrew! Also the orchestra is blessed with a full complement of 4 French Horns - there were moments when all 4 of us playing together sounded lush - contrasted with squeaky moments of everyone playing something slightly different and/or fading away into a mush of incoherent noise, when the notes on the page go all over the place and there's more black stuff than white stuff in each bar. I was both looking forwards to, and dreading the first time playing. I get nervous in performances and the horn is a cruel mistress who will punish your slightest mistake or lack of concentration with a bizarre non-musical crack (I think the technical term is "clam"?). Fortunately, everyone thinks the french horn is really difficult to play so we can get away with it where others can't. Despite all the dropped notes, I enjoyed it - one of the pieces was clearly too hard, it will be possible to adapt it a little so its playable but for today I mainly listened rather than spoiling it by playing wrong notes over the others more/less right ones. So I will return and hopefully - eventually, be able to play the french horn to a standard where someone else can actually enjoy it rather than simply tolerate it.

DLM

Cool beans! We've had all sorts of FH GAS in our house recently: a Yamaha silent system and a stopping mute, amongst other things.

Of course, I want to use the the silent system to make an EWI by putting the headphone out through my 180 Watt Diezel and a wah-wah on channel 3 with the mid-cut engaged...