How to Play Accenting Notes on a French Horn

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Katie and I'm here on behalf of expertvillage.com and I'm going to show you how to play accent marks on the French horn. A accent mark looks like this. Here you see accent marks above the notes and the shape of the accent mark even shows you how it works with the big part, the loud part being at the very beginning and a gradual decrease. As much as the name implies, it simply means to accent or emphasize that note and particularly the front end of the note. When you are going to play accent marks it helps to imagine ringing a bell. When you ring a bell, the first thing you hear is the clapper hitting the side of the bell and its very pronounced and then the sound gradually dies from there. It is the same thing with accent marks. So again here would be a normal scale without accent marks. With accent marks. You could tell the front end of each note is the hardest hit and then it gradually recedes a little bit before the next accent articulation and that is how you play accent marks. "