by John Clark | Mar 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
I felt like I had a breakthrough in practicing the other day. I was practicing whole-tone scales – two octaves up and down – the way I have for years. Suddenly, it seemed really boring, mechanical and wasn’t going anywhere. It occurred to me to repeat...
by John Clark | Feb 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
Folks, as I said last month, “From a Dream” is available in the store now (downloadable pdf only). Also, on SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/user-208612136/fad-hns you can hear the entire piece. I’d love to hear your thoughts on playability – I found it quite...
by John Clark | Jan 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
Greetings, Jazz Horn aficionados! To kick off 2024, I’d like to introduce you to a piece I wrote several years ago titled “From a Dream.” I hadn’t listened to it for a while, but when I heard it again recently I realized that I want share it more broadly. I’m now...
by John Clark | May 17, 2022 | Uncategorized
Here’s a video of the exercise number 4.1 from “Exercises for Jazz French Horn” I have a plan to make some more and better quality videos showing other exercises and playing actual musical phrases. I won’t go into teaching how to do it,...
by John Clark | Nov 26, 2021 | Uncategorized
Here are 3 blogs I highly recommend. Do you know of some others I’ve missed? I’d love to know about them! Enjoy! Abe Mamet’s blog documenting his research into Julius Watkins and more; this includes links to some fantastic videos and other...
by John Clark | Oct 4, 2021 | Uncategorized
(Re-posting something from earlier) A major concern of all Horn (French Horn) players who are operating in the non-classical realm is: how to be heard when there is a loud rhythm section, or even a loud group of brass, woodwinds or whatever! The bell pointing...
by John Clark | Aug 19, 2021 | Uncategorized
I guess traditionally, folks figured it would be a good way to gain accuracy and range. I don’t really subscribe to that, and I don’t think anyone does nowadays. If you can’t hit a certain note accurately on your double Horn, you probably...
by John Clark | Jul 13, 2021 | Uncategorized
(This is a re-post of something I posted earlier; now that the mailing list is working better, I’m really looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts about this.) As a player, when sight-reading new music, I really prefer not to see too much...
