Don’t forget!! Plan to visit the Southeast Horn Workshop March 6-8th in Cullowhee, NC. I will be there with a few horns to try and chat about. Hope to see you there!
I have discovered a way to have my new B-flat horn change back and forth from an ascending 4th valve to descending stopping valve. This isn’t actually all that unusual except that my new design requires no restringing or turning rotors. The switch can be made between movements, even in the middle of long rests if the need is there. This means that you can have access to the easy notes of the ascending horn without sacrificing the ability to play stopped notes or use an F extension. Pictures are on the way!
I’m working on a new (to me anyway) design for a single Bb horn. I’m told that Dennis Brain favored a Raoux piston horn with an added ascending thumb valve and I’ve decided to try this design out, using rotory valves.
It’s a tricky thing, making a short horn and still having a tuning slide, but I think that having a horn with an ascending 4th valve would really be a fun thing to play. No decision yet as to whether or not it should be reversable into a traditional Bb too.
Of course I have to say that it’s for sale and you can play it at the Southeast horn workshop and buy it, but the artistry of the thing is what I’m enjoying right now. I’ll post a picture of the drawing when its done and maybe some updates along the way.
At long last, photos of the Medlin horn are up! There is a nice slideshow and a very little information at The Medlin Horn. I’m still deciding how to present the features and options on the horn, I think I’ll sit on that part for a little bit but I did post some of the basics. I welcome any comments about the info or the site in general!
I wanted to make sure that everyone has this link, I am surprised at the number of people still unaware of the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP). This is a completely free collection of sheet music in the public domain for your printing and playing pleasure. Since many of the scores and parts are scanned in by users, check to make sure the pieces are readable before printing, I’ve run into this just a few times.
If you want to skip ahead to the horn music, here is the link to bookmark- http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_Compositions_Featuring_the_Horn. Make sure to grab the Kopprasch high horn etudes (op.5) while you’re there, they can be difficult to find otherwise.
Photo-illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: Getty Images, istockphoto
Yes, I do other things in my spare time not horn related. However, I couldn’t resist this picture from an artice at NYMag.com which claimed that Chuck Todd went to George Washington University on a horn scholarship. Chuck Todd is a political analyst from the NBC networks and has done very well for himself. If only we all had his foresight! (Kidding of course, horn is much better…)
For those not on the yahoo hornlist, I’d like to share a recent post from Richard Hirsh. For those not familiar with him, he is a very highly regarded Horn miracle worker from Chicago. You have probably seen the various horns on hornplayer.net which he has resurrected.
My take-away from this post is that science absolutely has its place in horn building, its just that nobody has figured out how to use it to their advantage. It’s nice to know the amplitudes of every available overtone in a given note, but nobody has any idea how to turn that into usable information for horn builders. And even if we were able to build a horn with perfect acoustics, who can even say for certain that it would sound like a horn? The secret is good old fashioned empirical research (read: trial and error…). If it sounds good and plays good, it is good. Period. (grammar left poor to facilitate wisdom…)
Now words from someone smarter than I…
“For those interested, two classics on musical physics are Vibration and
Sound by Philip Morse (McGraw-Hill 1948, second edition) and Horns,
Strings and Harmony/ by Arthur Benade (ca. 1962).
Benade’s book is very intuitively understandable, but it is based on a
lot of rigorous understanding and analysis. I heard him speak on several
occasions at the Acoustical Society of America. He was a clarinetist,
but had a wide understanding of musical acoustics. Still, when
describing how to make adjustments to clarinet mouthpieces, he answered
one question by saying, “I can show you, but I can’t describe what I do.”
Morse’s book is fairly pure theoretical physics. I struggled through
part of it during my senior year in college as a physics major, and came
away with some understanding of the subject:
(1) In order to come up with “nice” solutions (e.g. strings produce sine
waves, the ideal taper for a horn is a catenoid, etc.), you have to make
many unrealistic assumptions. These include perfect reflection at tubing
ends, perfectly rigid tubing walls, perfectly rigid string bridges,
perfectly flexible string, etc. Even with these simple models, the
mathematics quickly gets heavy when you start to introduce more
realistic modifications, like movable bridges, stiff strings etc.
(2) Physics, like all sciences is descriptive. It relies on models to
describe complicated phenomena, because we need to start with relatively
well understood phenomena in order to progress with some confidence to
more complicated. These may be mathematical, purely descriptive, or more
recently, digital. The classic competing models of light comes to mind -
two different descriptions of light (waves or particles) were developed,
both successful at predicting much behavior using physical models (wave
tanks and rolling balls) and both good for mathematical analysis. Wave
theory was more successful at predicting diffraction, but eventually
particles (photons) had to be reintroduced when very low levels of light
were analyzed. Ultimately the usefulness of a model must be judged on
how well it can predict actual behavior.
FFT (Fourier transform) analysis has been mentioned as a tool in
understanding how sounds are constructed, but one must be careful in
relying too heavily on this method. While it’s information is
intuitively useful (time/amplitude waveform is converted to a
frequency/phase spectrum), it is ultimately only a mathematical trick,
WHICH DOES NOT PRODUCE CONSISTENT OR REVERSIBLE RESULTS. You can get
wildly different analyses of the same sound by changing the size of the
sampling window. And if you Fourier transform your frequency/phase
spectrum back into a time/amplitude waveform, you will find the waveform
has no beginning or end, but repeats endlessly.
Still, the results of mathematical model analysis provide us with some
basis for study and development, which ultimately must be corroborated
by practical experience. Fourier transform analysis does still give us
information about predominance of certain partials etc. For horns,
analysis of tapers etc. shows that making a horn play with a good
harmonic overtone series relies on the taper matching approximately a
catenoid pattern, both for the alignment of the overtone series ,and
the ability to insert varying lengths of straight tubing without
altering the spacing of the harmonic overtone series.
Richard Hirsh, Chicago
A.B. Physics, U. of Penn’a, who remembers precious little of it.”
A favorite blog of mine to read is John Ericsons Horn Notes Blog and a recent post of his asked some tough questions about what your body is really doing when you play a brass instrument, (including a very cool and slightly creepy x-ray video). I was inspired to share an experience from a few weeks ago that relates.
The short version is that I got my decaf and caffeinated coffee bags in the freezer mixed up and treated myself to a heavily caffeinated mocha that evening. Being an avid mind-body enthusiast, I was trying to meditate my way to sleep and having a very difficult time. A meditation that I use on sleepless nights is a very simple one I picked up a few years ago, the steps are:
All was normal until I reached a part just above my chest, under the clavicle bone (usually, I would be asleep by this time). On the exhale of tension, my breathing became effortless! Upon waking the next morning, I ran to find my horn and played the most beautiful note I’ve ever played. After a few weeks of experimenting, I have decided the following:
This is a very exciting realization for me. For many years I have heard “open your throat!”, only to lose all focus of sound and clarity in the high range when attempting to force open (where I thought was) my throat. Possibly, the big focused wonderful horn sound comes not from a deliberate openness in the throat (relaxed, yes) , but a conscious effort to relax the upper chest. I’m sure doctors and Yogi gurus would have much more convincing explanations…
Next time you hear “keep that throat open!” try “keep that chest open!”
I thought people might be interested to see a set of valves before they go into a horn. Its an interesting feeling to look at them by themselves without the rest of the horn around it.
I’ve decided that it is important to handcraft the braces between the slides and between the outer slide tubes. This gives me control over the width of the braces and makes sure that the valves go together with good allignment but without any forcing or filling with solder. Its difficult to buy stock braces that fit handmade instruments becuase each space that needs a brace is slightly different. I like to be flexible and fill the unique space with the exact size of brace that is needed. I also think it adds a nice personal touch to each instrument!
This particular valve section has brass braces on top of nickel silver slide tubes, but I am experimenting with other combinations. Leave a comment with your prefrence!
Welcome hornists and horn aficionados! Medlinhorns.com is the web front of Jacob Medlin, a horn builder located in Bloomington Indiana. Please enjoy this site as it grows and develops in anticipation of its official launch on August 1st, 2009.
The Medlin Custom horn is a Geyer style double horn. The slideshow on the right is of my natural horn but will be updated to show the double soon. *Update* As you may have noticed, new photos of the custom double horn are in the slideshow!
Here is where you will find information about me, Jacob Medlin, and my Geyer-style double horns. I handcraft each and every horn using traditional methods passed down to me during an extensive study with the world renowned natural horn maker Richard Seraphinoff. My horns combine modern advances in acoustic understanding and machine technology with an old-world focus on graceful aesthetics. Enjoy your visit and please contact me with any questions!
