How to Improvise on the French Horn

While improvisation is often a skill that musicians associate with jazz players, anyone can learn to improvise. Classical musicians often find it an exciting and creative way to engage with music and get new ideas for interpretation. French horn players in particular can create beautiful improvisations on any music that they play, and may even be included in the occasional jazz combo.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Master the technique of the French horn and all of the scales and arpeggios. Because scales are the basis for improvisation, you need to know all of your major and minor scales in every form.

2. Learn common chord progressions, whether in jazz, popular music or even classical music. You may need to learn some extra theory or examine your music closely to discover the chord progressions you use the most.

3. Identify the notes within each chord in the chord progression you want to improvise on. Remember that you can play notes that are outside of the scales you're working with, but they will stand out so you only want to use them sparingly and in passing.

4. Learn some basic melodic lines or riffs and practice playing them in multiple keys. Try transposing the lines mentally--you might have to do this slowly at first.

5. Listen to recordings for ideas. Many musicians like to use tricks such as trills and runs while they are improvising, as well as high notes, low notes and vibrato. French horn players can also bend the pitch by changing their hand position in the bell or using mutes like trumpet and trombone players do in jazz.

6. Practice playing over a recording, whether it's just a musical recording you enjoy or a recording made specifically for learning jazz improvisations. Bad notes will stand out instantly when you practice over a recording, but they might slip by if you're just playing alone.

[jagrell]

on 4/19/2009 The answer given above is a good concise answer - but it assumes that jazz is the only way to improvise. Improvisation simply means making your own decisions about what to play, and that may or may not be in a jazz style. There are plenty of other ways to create your own music than jazz. Jazz is great and every minute spent on it is well spent, but it's not for everyone, and a traditionally trained musician (= classical) might feel more at home improvising in other ways, ways with less of a learning curve than jazz. Start simply. You might take a passage you're working from a solo and play around with it - add ornaments, add or subtract notes, transpose it or play it in diatonic or chromatic sequence, change the rhythms, or keep the rhythms and change the melody, play it backwards, loop segments of it, and so on. Then do it again with a friend as a duet. Add imagination to scale playing: