French Horn Players Research Articles

Bioengineering. Identification of Control Parameters for Brass Player's Embouchure by Measuring Contact Pressure on the Teeth Buccal Surface.

For the technical improvement for brass instrument players it is important to obtain the detailed control parameters for embouchure building. While many investigators have reported the preliminary data on the muscle behavior, the precise aspects are unrevealed so far. The purpose of the present paper is to study dynamic perioral muscle behavior of French horn players and to investigate their lip valve function by measuring the contact pressure on teeth buccal surface during playing. It was shown from the experimental results that the advanced players contracted depressor angulioris and levator angulioris especially for high tone playing. It is considered that the combined contraction by these muscles contributes to forming smaller lip aperture being suitable to produce higher tones. Inversely a strong contraction of m. buccinator, which is widely believed to work to give hard tension to player's lip, was observed insignificantly in the advanced players.

1202 フレンチホルン奏者におけるマウスピース力と顔面筋力の測定

1202 フレンチホルン奏者におけるマウスピース力と顔面筋力の測定

Ulnar Nerve Entrapment in a French Horn Player

Nerve entrapment syndromes are frequent among musicians. Because of the demands on the musculoskeletal system and the great agility needed to per-form, musicians often present with vague complaints early in the course of entrapment, which makes the diagnosis a challenge for the clinician. Presented here is such a case of ulnar nerve entrapment at the left elbow of a French horn player. This case points out some of the difficulties in establishing a diagnosis of nerve entrapment in musicians. It also supports the theory that prolonged elbow flexion and repetitive finger movement contribute to the development of ulnar entrapment at the elbow. Although surgery is not required for most of the musculoskeletal problems of musicians, release of an entrapped nerve refractory to conservative therapy may be career-saving for the musician.

An Interview with Paul Lansky

Cody: Mr. Lansky, you studied twelve-tone composition with Milton Babbitt, and you earlier studied with George Perle, who had a more idiosyncratic application of the twelve-tone method. What is your relationship to twelve-tone composition in general? Was there a specific rapport between those theoretical advances and the advances that electronic and computer music made in the 1950s and 1960s? Lansky: I got involved in computers at a time and place where the prime motivation for doing so was that we thought it was going to be a way in which the properties of the twelve-tone system could be more deeply investigated. The idea was that with computers, one could perform very complicated structural manipulations of sets, rhythms, timbres, and other things that one could never possibly do with instruments. The interesting thing for me was that as soon as I started to do that, I lost interest in it. It was probably the computer, more than anything else, that led me away from twelve-tone music, because as I started to use it, I noticed that anything I did on the computer was much less interesting than the most primitive sounds somebody could make scraping on a violin. Consequently, constructing complex pitch relations became much less challenging and exciting than trying to get a handle on the guts of musical sound itself. (Or perhaps I wasn't meant to juggle more than three balls at a time.) And so I got involved in the early and mid-1970s in using the computer as a sort of lens on the sounds of the world, but it certainly was the excitement of serialism in the sixties that led me to use the computer. Cody: As far as your training, did you become interested in computer music as a musician? I know you were a French horn player, but as far as composition, did you begin studying quite traditionally? How did you originally involve yourself in electronic music?

Interview with Paul Lansky

Roads: Could you tell us a little about your musical background? Lansky: I started studying music when I was in grade school. I went through several instruments, finally settling on the French horn, which I took quite seriously. For a long time I had planned to become a professional French horn player, and I did play professionally after college, with the Dorian Wind Quintet. I was moving toward composition during high school, and there came a point later where it was clear that I had no alternative but to stop playing the horn professionally and take up composition full-time. Roads: How would you say your instrumental background has influenced your composition? Lansky: It was in large part responsible for my turn to computer music because I was very interested in performing. In electronic music I think of myself as a performer. Making my own noises creates a similar kind of satisfaction to the feeling one gets from being one's own boss, which is part of the thrill of performing. Roads: Where did you study music? Lansky: My musical studies got serious at the High School of Music and Art in New York. I worked a great deal in composition and theory at Queens College [City University of New York], and then I went to Princeton as a graduate student. I studied with many different people, never really with one person. I was a bad composition student, in the sense that I didn't take advice well and worked in a rather single-minded way, though this created an early sense of self-sufficiency, for which I am glad.

Wandering atrial pacemaker (prevalence in french hornists)

Continuous electrocardiographic recordings were obtained in a group of French horn players during performance of identical pieces of music. Half of the musicians developed wandering atrial pacemaker. One example is illustrated. The causative mechanism is briefly discussed. This may represent an "occupational" hazard.

French Horn Affairs

To the Editor.— I beg to differ with your consultant's answer to the problems of acid saliva and perspiration in the French horn player (226:212, 1973). Saliva is normally slightly acid (pH 6 to 7). The usual dosage of antacid is not going to change it. Condensate in the brass (and woodwind) instruments is mostly from watersaturated breath with probably a negligible amount of saliva. The acidity of the liquid is from the dissolved carbon dioxide, ie, carbonic acid. Antacid will not help. For protection of the instrument, a coating of some type of clear plastic like that used for protecting paintings or to protect and waterproof furniture finish might help. Be sure the plastic is the kind that remains smooth when dry, and is not tacky. A coating on the tops of the valves probably will protect the instrument against perspiration. No musician can or will want to play

French Hornists' Scale of Blowing Effort

A scaling of speakers' vocal effort based on direct magnitude estimation has been reported recently (Lane, Catania, and Stevens). The authors have adopted similar methodology to scale the blowing effort used by French horn players. A total of thirteen players individually produced tones at random levels on the same musical pitch (concert C4). Players assigned a numerical value proportional to their blowing effort after each tone production. Output levels were recorded on a graphic level recorder. Tones were first produced normally in an anechoic room. The procedure was then repeated with the addition of high-level masking noise delivered by earphones during each tone production. Least-squares derived power functions appear to fit the data fairly well though a graphical analysis reveals deviations at low and high SPL. Exponents for the functions relating effort and SPL are about 1.1 for both normal and masked conditions. Players reported that, with masking, tones were still audible, but their loudness changed very little in spite of large changes in effort. The results seem to indicate that loudness plays a minor role in the French horn players' evaluation of blowing effort.