Hi everyone,

I’ve recently moved to southern Germany and I’m looking for a reliable, highly skilled luthier or brass repair technician to give my horn a complete overhaul/maintenance service.

It’s a professional instrument (an Alexander 103), so I’m looking for someone who works with high precision. It needs a full cleaning, valve alignment, and a small dent removal.

I already reached out to the Gebr. Alexander factory in Mainz, but their quote was quite high. I’m wondering:

• Are prices for this kind of service generally similar across the board in Germany, or are factory quotes significantly higher than independent repair shops?
• Do you have any specific recommendations for excellent brass technicians in southern or central Germany?

I don't mind traveling by train if it's worth taking it to a trusted craftsman.

Thanks in advance for your help!

https://youtu.be/4AU2r2YLctk

Everywhere there are only paid notes Zsolt, Nagy "Happy Blues". But there is no money for them. So if it's not difficult, please help me get the sheet music of the piece.🙏🙏🙏

Hi all, I've had this my French horn for over a decade now, and have found myself wondering why it is it came with 2 different shaped mouthpieces. Does anyone know if there's any functional differences between them? Would one be superior over the other for tone or quality? The one on the left is labelled "Yamaha Japan 32c4" and the one on the right is "ckb 2"

For a long time I've had this though of what solos or excerpts are really good to display the range, sound and timbre of the horn on educational concerts.

For example, I've alwaya felt like Sorcerer's Apprentice was a perfect fit for the bassoons, but is there a similar one for horn?

Does anyone have any advice for how to play more consistently with braces? I have struggles each day with different notes, but I do always have issues with anything above a high D.

Hi all, looking for horn upgrade for corolla touring 2022. Location - Ireland. Thanks

Who likes theses horns?

Hey everyone! I’m looking to discover some more great horn section moments in orchestral music, especially passages where the horns are featured together. Some of the more well known examples that come to mind are the horn trio from Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, Liszt’s Les Préludes, and Weber’s Der Freischütz. I’ve also come across some more niche ones like passages from the ballet La Sylphide and the opening of Bizet’s Roma Symphony. I’m curious if any of you have come across other cool horn section features, especially some more obscure ones that don’t get talked about as much. I’d love to hear your favorite finds!

Hi All, anyone got any recommendations for cases for Schmid Triples. Currently got an MB-5 Baby 2 for a double horn but Houghton horns seems to not recommend this for triples. It seems to be the same depth as the new MB-5 Flex and the High Compacts though, so a bit confused about how it wouldn’t fit. The wrap seems pretty standard on the Schmid so definitely a depth issue that I’m worried about, with the mute getting squashed into the bell. Any recommendations, MB or other, would be greatly appreciated, possibly a BAM case? Thanks 📯

Hello! I’m a fairly new horn player, last year i joined an orchestra at my university and started playing on a burrowed and frankly horrifying double horn donated by an older member, and recently bought a a single horn of my own second hand.

This horn had been completely unplayed for about a year, so i bought it knowing it needed some maintenance. I’ve gotten the first and third valve working, but the second is genuinely completely stuck. Most guides and tricks I’ve seen talk about inserting some rotor oil and slowly wiggling the mechanism but I can’t get it moving at all. I’ve tried rinsing it (with soap and without) and also grabbing the mechanism itself and twisting but genuinely nothing works.

What should I do? Just keep rinsing, oiling and twisting hoping I get the (probable) deposits gone? Some stronger chemicals? Cleaning alcohol? Benzene? WD-40? I’d really like to avoid going to a repair shop since there isn’t one in my city and those I’ve found elsewhere cost (the equivalent of) $300 for a cleaning, which is 60% of what I bought it for and would total higher than the price of a new one.

Does anyone know where to find the Horn Choir arrangement of Armenian Dance by Alfred Reed, Arranged by Kentaro Kobayashi. I'm looking for horn choir stuff and I love the original piece, and just found recordings of this arrangement but can't find the arrangement anywhere. TIA!

It’s gross, I wish I could put a warning on it.🥀

Thanks agin to this community for patiently asking my questions as a tuba player who is beginning to fool around with horn. I am wondering why the "standard" fingering are the way they are when it seems to me that using fingering from lower octaves might make a lot os sense

For example written D5-G5 using standard fingerings you move between the 9th and 12th partials

D5 0 -9th, Eb 2 -10th, E 0 -10th, F 1 12th F# 2 12th, G 0 12th..

However that whole chromatic range is available in the 12th partial as starting on 1+3

To me that makes for much easier chromatic passages in this register.. and it is something I do occasionally on tuba in the high range for both intonation and facility especially in exposed legato playing. Especiialy when pushing the range on BBb tuba on pieces that I really should be using my Eb or F on. It is often easier than making sure I am on dead on hitting the right partial.

I am sure there is a very natural reason... I am just trying to make sense of this wierd skinny F-tuba with a tiny mouthpiece in front of me.

Hornbarf /hornbarf/ - a crazy explosion of really wrong notes at the worst possible time.

“Everyone heard my hornbarf echoing off the rafters of my church”

“ I still don’t know what happened….must’ve been a hornbarf”

very pretty solo, love bernstien

Hi everyone — I'm the developer of Solfa, a sheet-music transposition tool. I wanted to share a horn example and hear whether this would be useful to you.

The image shows the solo entrance from Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 3, K.447: an old scanned E-flat horn part, with the written notes transposed down a whole tone for F horn. The sounding pitch stays the same. The idea is to keep the original printed look instead of rebuilding the page in notation software.

I know transposing at sight is part of horn playing. This is for the times when you'd actually prefer to have a printed part in F — for a student, rehearsal, or your own practice.

These are matching crops from the original scan and the actual full-page output, with no manual notation corrections. It's still beta and needs proofreading: the original "Horn in E-flat" heading isn't automatically updated, and I noticed rehearsal letters elsewhere on this page being mistaken for chord symbols.

You can try it at https://solfa-music.com. New users get two free page credits after phone verification, and you can inspect a preview before deciding whether to spend a credit. Further credits are paid.

Which old horn parts would you most often want a printed F-horn version of?

Source: the public-domain Kling/Breitkopf & Härtel part, IMSLP #14243: https://imslp.org/wiki/Horn_Concerto_No._3_K.447_(Mozart,_Wolfgang_Amadeus))

I direct a community band and am currently programming a showcase concert to display some of the amazing talent within our ensemble. I have an 8+ member horn section that I'd really like to feature with a piece.

I'm keeping the theme pretty loose so that I don't pigeonhole myself with repertoire selections. Essentially, the focus of the concert is on dynamic musicianship (e.g. virtuosity, technical skill, heightened emotional drama, etc.).

I need suggestions of horn choir music that absolutely RIPS. I've done a lot of searching online, and so many of the results are slow, lyrical selections. They're lovely tunes, but they don't have the wow factor that I'm going for.

Some things I like that are sort of in the right direction:

- Bohemian Rhapsody (London Horn Sound)

- Back to the Future (Vienna Horns)

- Farewell to Red Castle (Kerry Turner)

Any recommendations from the r/horn community?

I started my first year of undergrad as a horn performance major this fall. Currently, I use a Kruspe wrap Holton from the 70’s with a custom lead pipe and bell. I got very lucky, and a friend of my private teacher was selling her horn at the same time I was looking for one. It‘s a very nice sounding horn, and I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on it. However, I realize that Geyer horns are much more prevalent in American orchestras than Kruspe. Because of that, at some point I plan on getting myself a Geyer wrap horn. What I’m wondering is how necessary is it. I plan on using my current horn as long as possible. My current professor says that it will probably get me through college. But, I‘ve also heard that it’s really hard to get gigs with a Kruspe horn. Exactly how true is that? I’m just wondering when would be the best time to go shopping/trying out for Geyer horns. Thanks in advance!

I've never gotten a clear answer from anyone on this. Does it technically change the resonance of the bell or anything? I don't notice any particular dampening on natural horns with painted bells compared to unpainted.

Thanks in advance for any information on this