In A Singing Approach to Horn Playing, author and renowned teacher-musician Natalie Douglass Grana develops the fundamental sense of pitch that is essential to play the horn. The book begins with simple songs to sing on solfege, buzz on the mouthpiece, and play on the horn, followed by innerhearing, transposition, and polyphonic exercises. Readers learn to fluidly hear the notes on the page before playing them, through sequential exercises with songs, improvisation, stick notation, and duets. Training continues with progressively challenging melodies, including canons as well as vocaletudes (solfeggi) like those of Giuseppe Concone. Finally, hornists apply their musicianship skills to standard etude, solo, and orchestral horn repertoire. Horn parts are provided with important lines from the orchestra or accompaniment, transposed to also be sung and played on the horn. Accompanying rhythmic and harmonic exercises enable performers to learn to hear the parts together as they play. Through a wide-ranging synthesis of theory, practical advice, and exercises, Douglass Grana puts forth a crucial guide for a new generation of horn players and burgeoning musiciansseeking to improve and perfect their sense of pitch. | A Singing Approach to Horn Playing by Natalie Douglass Grana, Paperback | Indigo Chapters