Learning to play a French Horn?

Question

How long would it take to learn how to play a french horn or trombone?

I play clarinet, and I want to learn one of the two buy next school year to play in my high school marching band. How much do they run in prices? Would I be decent by then?

Answer 1

French Horn is tough. Picking it up may be easy, besides the embouchure, but sounding good on it will be tough. Horns range from a few hundred dollars, to a few thousand, depending on the level. Also worth noting, for Marching Band, there are such things as marching french horns, also known as Mellophones, they are the same thing, but shaped like big trumpet, so they are easier to march with, they also have more of a 'blaring' sound than a normal Horn.

Trombones on the other hand, are supposedly a bit easier, but now instead of valves, you're dealing with a slide. Trombones are generally cheaper. My friend bought a begininer Trombone for about a 100 dollars, since then, he's gotten a Yamaha for a few hundred dollars. Though they can also run up to a few thousand.

I think the most important thing, is to consult your band director/teacher. Find out their opinion, and take it into consideration. A brass instrument embouchure may affect your clarinet embouchure, and hurt your clarinet playing. Maybe you should consider playing another woodwind instead of a brass, such as sax?

These are merely suggestions. Do what you want to do. The best advice is to play what instrument you want to, and don't let any one tell you not to. Believe me, I play saxophone myself, and I always loved the sound of the clarinet, especially in the lower register, so I bought a clarinet, I hope to buy a bass clarinet eventually. My friends on the other hand, don't like the sound of the clarinet (I don't know why), they tell me to stick to the sax, but I do what I want.

Answer 2

French Horns take a while to learn.

They're hard.

And expensive.

Trombones sound awesome.

I don't know if they're hard.

They're not THAT expensive.

Answer 3

i dont know anything about the trombone, but i know a lot about the french horn.

in a year, u would be able to play the french horn, but u wouldnt be able to PLAY it. meaning, u could learn how to play the right notes at least most of the time, but u wouldnt probably have very good tone or anything else needed to play it.

its also very very VERY expensive. a good double french horn costs about 3000 bucks.

but if u could stick with it for a while playing the french horn is a lot of fun u can do a lot of cool things on it and it gets a lot of cool solos

Answer 4

I play Trombone, and it probably takes a few months to get use to playing it. I heard they run from $200 to $400.

Answer 5

It really depends how far you want to get with it. Since you already play an instrument, it should be considerably easier as you'll already have some ear-training which will help with pitching the notes (which is one of the early difficulties with horn). Generally, most people I know have reached about grade 8 (advanced-ish) in 3-5 years, however, if you want to play in a marching band, often the horn parts consist mostly of playing off-beats, so you should be fine after just a year. Horns have a large price range. As a beginner, you can get horns for about £400 (about $800), but they can also cost up to £8000 ($16000) for professional horns. A typical 'beginner' make would be Weltklang. Admittedly the horns are c**p but they're cheap (£300-£500) and work well enough for a beginner. Good luck learning! :)