good ears

[Robin Blankenship]

Ron,

This is true primarily above F4, concert pitch. The hornist has to be a
decent pitch sense, period. Intonation is controlled with the embrouchure
and by subtle movements of the right hand inside the bell. It is an
interesting and revealing experience to be playing a long sustained note,
while others move, and have to change your pitch as the chords change in
order to stay in tune. I was a pro horn player for some years (U.S. Navy).
The constant application of the use of the overtone series made
understanding some concepts of piano tuning quite easy.

The horn sound is rather fat; so, actual zoning in on the beating partial in
piano work was not all that easy for me at first.

Melodic and harmonic pitch sense (make that intonation sense) seem to be two
different things. I had a pro oboist insist that I lower the pitch of
certain notes on his Steinway B a few cents in order to comport with his
pitch sense. It was a span of a fifth or so that corresponded with the top
of the oboes range. Curious, I thought, but understandable.

On the horn, different fingerings on the same note will yield different
pitches for the same note. So, what the hornist does sometimes is to switch
off fingers to better achieve a particular solution.

Hope this helps clarify.

Robin Blankenship

----- Original Message -----
From: Ron Nossaman <RNossaman@KSCABLE.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2000 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: good ears


> >On French Horn almost *any* note can be played with *any* fingering. That
> >is why they must develop *good* ears.
>
> Ah, ok, now I get it. I was looking at it from the other direction - pitch
> recognition training from listening to just the horn.
>
> Ron N