French horn 7th harmonic exercises

I have devised some practical exercises for exploring the 7th harmonic. Let's start on the F side. So we're starting on harmonic 4. 4, 5, 6, 7. The thing about all the harmonics is working out the intervals. So the intervals, they sound a little different than what we're used to. So playing 4, 5, 6, 7 in a row. 4, 5, 6 stabilize our ear, give us some intervals we're used to. We're at on the 7th harmonic, diminished 5, 6, 7. 6 and 7, that very narrow minor 3rd. 5 to 7, that diminished 5th. When I've devised these exercises some time ago, maybe 15 years ago, I used to practice them on every length of tube on the wall, because you never know what the starting pitch is going to be, what the tonic is going to be, or the central reference point. You don't get to know the intervals surrounding the 7th harmonic on every length of tube. Now what I'm going to do today is I've adjusted the 1st vowel of the airform so that it's 8th harmonic equals the 7th harmonic of the airform. Airform 7. 8th horn of the lower D level. So now we get harmonics 4, 5, 6 and 7 on this low E flat horn. Airform 8. Airform 9. Airform 10. Airform 11. Airform 12. Airform 14. I've adjusted slides 2 and 3 to match the low E flat horn. So I'll just start to play again the 8th harmonic of the airform, and the 7th harmonic, which equals the 8th harmonic of the low E flat horn. And here's the 7th harmonic, which becomes the 8th harmonic of this low D flat horn. And that now has a very low 7th harmonic. Airform 11. Airform 15. Comparisons of pitches. I'm going to the G horn now, so B flat horn 1 and 2 vowels. So there's the 8th harmonic of your airform. Which I'll match to the 7th harmonic of the G horn. Airform 16. There's no way that I can push the 2nd vowel slide of the D flat horn up high enough to make the similar adjustment of tone higher. I can't get it up high enough. So this just illustrates how some of the tube lengths can match each other for some harmonic series intervals and not others. So we have to work out how we're going to organise the horn for any given piece, or what we want to organise the horn for, and then how we can like the piece of music to match that. So there's always some adjustments to be made. But there's an illustration of how we can use some of the 7th harmonics in conjunction with 8th and so on from other horns within the same piece of music. Now here's a different exercise. This one is doing some slurring, which I found very useful to help practice these intervals. And of course one can do things like this. And devise all sorts of exercises to help explore the intervals that surround the 7th harmonics that might lead into it. But it's also been useful to start on the 7th harmonic and adjust our ear and our embouchure, face, air pressure, all those things so that we get used to starting from there and finding other notes around it. And it was 7, 5, 7, 7, 4, 7. And obviously we can extend there, let's go up a little bit. And the last one was 7 to 14 for the whole octave there. So exploring all those harmonics. Again, to practice them on the different tube lengths gives us a different feel. Just like when you're playing a natural horn and you put in a different hook and it feels really quite different to the embouchure, the air pressure and so on Obviously on a double horn everything physically doesn't move around that way but still the air pressure and the feeling of the lips is quite different for each length of tube. So I hope you found this of interest working around the 7th harmonic and how we might find our way to it and from it and navigate with it. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!