I haven’t added another instrument to my collection but the Charnwood Training Band has recently been joined by a young player of the French Horn. Initially there was some confusion as she told us it was a Bb horn but it turns out that this is just one of the many challenges thrown up this most peculiar of instruments. Most adult players will be using a double horn and they can switch between “Bb” and “F” parts to give each individual note the best chance of being in tune. Junior players often use a single horn, which is lighter and also less expensive. However, even if they have a “Bb horn”, the music for it is still written for an F instrument.

It is great to have a horn player with the band but we did have to go scrabbling for music a bit. Not having had a previous person in that chair, at least as long as I have been with the band, means we don’t have F horn parts available for all of the pieces. I’ve managed to fill in the last couple of gaps for our forthcoming concert by dint of taking Eb horn parts (alto saxophones are often well represented and so many pieces have parts for saxes pretending to be horns) and transposing them. That requires typing them into MuseScore but the software makes the rest of the process easy.

I’ve also got a strategy for any tunes that don’t seem to have any kind of horn part. On one for which I have the full score available, I spotted that the F horn was either doubling the trombone or the second trumpets. That should give a quick way to knock up suitable parts for our new player and, when we buy further pieces, we’ll try to make sure they come with a horn part included.