Pip Eastop – Hornplayer

This blog entry is quite a large one. It’s taken from a much earlier version of my website (8 years ago) and I’m re-publishing it here because lots of people have requested to read it again since it disappeared a year or two ago in the re-write and re-design of my website.

Teaching my first beginner
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I’d like to try to explain why the quality of the starts of notes is so important and I’ll start off by saying something which may sound surprising, or even silly:
After you start the note, nobody is listening any more.

They are still hearing you – but they’re not hearing what you are playing right now [...]

Congratulations to everyone in last night’s performance of Lulu!
(I have to exclude all those I couldn’t hear from where I was sitting – celli, violas, basses, brass, singers)
Hell, no, congratulations to everyone! It really was quite something.
Antonio Pappano (conductor) is pretty frightening guy – I’ve never known anyone with such apparently limitless energy. He’s a [...]

(Please note: this has nothing whatever to do with hornplaying…..)
Well, almost eviction. I had a narrow escape.
I live in a very nice flat in West Norwood. I’ve been here for about 15 months and I’ve been really quite happy with it. Imagine my consternation when an eviction notice was delivered through the letterbox. It basically [...]

I’ve been working at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for some weeks now. At first it was Donizetti’s awful, “L’Elisir d’Amour”. Why awful? Because the first horn part is unremitting torture and is UTTERLY boring. I really resent horn parts which will only get you noticed if you make a mistake. I hated playing [...]

The worst thing about this particular trip is the travel. Today, for example, we had to get from Krakow to Budapest. We did this by means of two flights: Krakow to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Budapest. To put this into perspective, try to imagine flying from Manchester to London with a short stop-over in the [...]

I’m away again with Scottish Chamber Orchestra, this time for concerts in Perth (Scotland), Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bydgoszcz and Krakow (Poland), Budapest (Hungary) and Istanbul (Turkey).
The best thing about this trip is the music. All seven concerts are of the same program, which includes two of Mozart’s greatest piano concertos, in C minor and Bb Major.
The [...]

This is a view from the balcony of Air Lyndhurst Studio of the horn section for “Terminator Salvation“. 
The players are:
Back row, left to right: 
Richard Berry – Lawrence Davies – Myself – Martin Owen. 
Front row, left to right:
Richard Clewes – Jim Rattigan – Nigel Black – Richard Bissill – David Pyatt – Richard Watkins – Michael [...]

(Photo by Martin Owen)
Here’s the excellent Andy Wood with me this afternoon at Angel Studios, Islington, London. Andy is normally a trombonist but here he is playing the baritone, a fine and noble instrument, sadly much maligned for its resemblance to an anorexic euphonium. 
We were adding a bit of brass band flavour to some music [...]

“Kolkata”, sounds like the name of an opera by Janacek. I much prefer “Calcutta”, with its whiff of Gilbert & Sullivan and afternoon tea.
After the hotel welcoming rituals of melon juice, flowers and a friendly bullet through the forehead, the first thing that happened was that my horn broke (see “my (other) horn broke“). All [...]

The first city of our tour was Mumbai. I’ve no idea why its name has been altered and de-romanticised. I much prefer the old name, Bombay, and I don’t think the Indian film industry would do well to change its name to “Mumbywood”.
On arriving in the rather comfortable Trident Hotel hotel at Nariman Point (at [...]

It is my very good fortune to be invited along on a tour of India with Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Over a period of two weeks we will play concerts in six cities: Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh and Delhi.

I went with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, to Budapest to play a New Year’s Day concert of Haydn’s Creation. 
My horn went ahead of me in the orchestra’s truck, in a nice big padded crate, along with the basses, timps etc. When I got my horn out for the rehearsal – this was New Year’s Eve – I [...]

Any excuse to get a photo in here….
Strictly speaking, this has nothing to do with playing the horn, but at least it was taken from the back of one of the three London Philharmonic Orchestra coaches. We were on our way to the concert hall to play a concert. 
It’s not really my cup of tea [...]

Here’s a picture I took from the balcony of Air Lyndhurst Studio of nearly the whole group.
The maximum time delay on my camera is only ten seconds and I figured that I could’t get through the four sets of heavy doors, down the stairs and into the group with my horn at the ready in [...]

Here you can see Martin Hobbs (of the London Philharmonic Orchestra horn section) testing the prototype of my new Emergency Mouthpiece Airbag. 
This latest invention of mine is to protect the lips against bruising if too much mouthpiece pressure is used. 
Tiny sensors built into the rim of the mouthpiece pick up any variations in pressure exerted onto [...]

This is Blair Sinclair, a neatly foldable trombonist. He holds several world records for playing virtusoso contemporary solo trombone works in confined spaces.
The photograph shows him fearlessly preparing to play Berio’s Sequenza V for trombone (1965) in a small alcove backstage at the Royal Festival Hall.
All proceeds from Blair’s performances go to the New Zealand [...]

Endlessly rehearsing “Parisina“, an obscure opera by Donizetti, has taken its toll on these poor fellows in the London Philharmonic Orchestra horn section.
Just look at them, the poor devils: from left to right it’s Martin Hobbs, Neil Shewan, Gareth Mollison and Richard Bissill.
I was lucky – I got to play in the stage band so I [...]

I’ve recently discovered that there are some muscles just beneath the lips called “depressor” muscles.
This is fascinating – I sometimes feel a little depressed, for no obvious reason, and have figured that the cause of it must be these little muscles. I’m sure I’ll smile more without them, and I don’t think I use them [...]

According to Engelbert Schmid, my horn is the most complicated horn he has ever built. Here’s part of a letter he wrote to me which arrived with the new instrument. 
It’s a wonderful horn, in every way, and a marvel of design and engineering excellence. It’s the only horn I’ve ever seen with eight valves.  
It’s [...]

Here’s Hughie – Hugh Seenan, creator of The London Horn Sound, and possibly the world’s most enthusiastic lover of all things horn (as in French Horn).
Now that “Give It One” has finally been released and is available, I’d like to say a huge THANK YOU to Hughie. 
If you’re reading this, Hughie: thank you so much
   [...]

Gordon Laing and June Scott – travelling with the Philharmonia.

The Philharmonia work very hard on tour. 
I found this poignant scene backstage in the Graf-Zeppelin-Haus, Friedrichshafen, in the short break between the rehearsal and the concert.

Here area a couple of photos of Byron – principal trombonist in The Philharmonia Orchestra. 
The first is backstage just before a concert in Munich. I managed to capture him practising his devastating stealth-attack. It is so powerful it can blast open the doors of a lift.
The second photo is another of Byron which I’ve sort [...]

 
 
The PipStick
 

Description
As can be seen from the photo the PipStick is a attachment which fits securely on the underside of the horn and provides a support so that the entire weight of the instrument is taken by the right leg.The foot of the PipStick, where all the weight of the instrument is transmitted to the [...]

The “EaseStop” 
Good news for horn players with small hands!
 

This invention came to me while trying to help a female student of mine improve her handstopping. 
Women tend to have smaller hands than men and since most horn players in the past have been male the bell throat dimensions of horns have evolved to work best with [...]

(This page was first published in my old website, several years ago, so the photo is rather old. I’m much better looking these days.) 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
If I suggested that by bending your mouthpiece you would suddenly have an infinite range of new playing positions, would you believe me?
No, of course you wouldn’t. However, it’s true.
Having played on [...]

This is Zak, my son. He’s actually a trumpet player and unfamiliar with the horn. I just needed a model for the photographs. 
I’ve been experimenting with variants on the PipStick, and come up with this – it’s mounted on a very sturdy photographic monopod (made by Manfrotto).
Zak is 11 years old. Look at the way [...]

Since we have the words “slur“ and “glissando“, we may as well use them precisely so that we can understand what we’re talking about with some precision.
How about these, for definitions:
A glissando is:  moving from one note to another of a different pitch, legato (joined – the sound does not stop) and allowing any notes en route [...]

I think I’ve got to the bottom of why horn studies annoy me so much, and why I usually discourage my horn students from playing them.
The horn is a wind instrument and its sound depends on the breath. In this way it’s comparable with singing. Songs are written with the need for breathing written into [...]