Buying a French Horn

binx
Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:06:00 +0000

Momof3Stars, certain teachers seem to enjoy messing with their students’ equipment. If your D gets one of these kinds of teachers, expect along the way to be encouraged to buy a new kind of horn, a new mouthpiece, new pieces for the horn, or whatever. This happens often. It doesn’t surprise me that they wouldn’t say so upon admission - They want to work with the student a bit more, and see where the natural strengths are, what sort of “help” you need from the horn, etc. What things are your fault, and what things are the horn’s fault.

My S tends to worship his teachers, so when a teacher tells him he needs something different, he is all set to switch! Over the years, though, he has learned to evaluate such suggestions as to what merit they might have for him personally. He has had the advantage of lessons from a variety of teachers, and has learned that there is much personal opinion involved. He has had to learn to negotiate between opposing views, without making anyone mad.

This go-round, he thought he wanted a Kuhn. He had tried several, and liked them. But one of his teachers does not like Kuhns, and recommended he go back to Lawsons. We watched him waffle, trying to remind him of the opinions he’d had last week or last month… Finally he hit upon the E. Schmid (as opposed to another kind of horn called Schmidt!) He liked them when he played them, and all his teachers seemed to approve of them. I am hoping he will like the one he has on spec, and we can be done with this!

He did learn along the way that the newer Conns are not consistently as good as the originals were, but the originals (like my S2’s) are getting old and dying. So some orchestras are beginning to move away from Conns. Many of the Conn players are moving to E. Schmids because they have the same full sound and air movement. (Conns were famous for their “New York Sound.”)

(I’m trying to repeat, as best I can, what I have picked up along the way, but may not have all the details right.)