Why is the french horn called the french horn
Why you should choose the French horn!
hello I'm chief musician Jason Ayub of
the United States and Navy band and I'm
here to tell you why I love the French
horn now when I was a kid I loved going
to Symphony Orchestra concerts so that I
can look at all the different
instruments but the one that really
caught my eye was the shiny big bells
crazy tubed French horn but the other
thing that caught my ear about the
French one was its wonderful glorious
sound like when I listened to Princess
Leia's theme or the beginning of Star
Wars or the Avengers now I bet you
didn't know this but the first ones
weren't even made out of metal at all in
fact they were made out of animal horns
or seashells like this giant conch shell
that I have here from Hawaii take a
listen to this that's a beautiful sound
right instruments like that show and
early French horns would have been used
as a signaling device now another reason
I love the horn is it has such an
expansive range in fact it has a four
and a half octave range take a listen to
this
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
now one thing I enjoyed when I was a
beginning French horn student was to
play elephant calls kind of sounds fun
sounds like a real elephant also one of
the very unique things that the French
horn has is a sound called stopped horn
that's where I take my hand in the Bell
and I close it off completely and I get
a very distinct sound as I said earlier
I truly love the expressive sound the
horn can make here is the mysteriously
beautiful Hedwig scene from Harry Potter
[Music]
now I'm gonna play for you one of my
favorite themes from one of the band
pieces we play here at the Navy band
it's called American overture I'm always
reminded of the Wild West thing Cowboys
when I play that now this last one is
one of the ones I mentioned earlier that
really inspired me to play the French
horn I think you'll recognize it well
thanks everyone for watching and I hope
you enjoy playing the French horn as
much as I do
