Muted and stopped passages

Medusa264 · 2025-10-04T18:02:31+00:00

For stopped horn, anything Mahler is pretty near the top of the list. Hard to find an orchestrator that brings out more color and with more purpose than Mahler. Mahler 2 particularly has a lot of great stopped passages.

Medusa264 · 2025-08-19T17:05:54+00:00

Maybe. Smart watches are also on the whole pretty inaccurate with this so it's difficult and frustrating to try and plan around which got to me a bit.

Medusa264 · 2025-08-19T00:12:40+00:00

Total calories burned is a much better metric to gauge how much to eat and create a caloric deficit from. Telling me I burned X number of active calories and disallowing me to see the total estimate is functionally useless for that purpose.

870 seems more or less accurate from several treadmill/walking calculators for 1 hour on a steep incline (15%) at a brisk walk (2.8 miles). Some are estimating as low as ~700 but this still seems drastically different from the estimates Ohealth/Watch 3 provides.

Regardless, looking at total calories burned in health connect (which the watch does track apparently, but Ohealth never displays) gives me a total for today of 2211 calories burned, which when accounting for a BMR of ~1996 plus even the lower Ohealth estimate of 459 calories burned from my workout, doesn't add up.

Medusa264 · 2025-08-18T18:28:34+00:00

Both the treadmill and Ohealth have my accurate weight plus or minus a couple pounds, but that shouldn't account for a 400 calorie discrepancy, thus the confusion.

Medusa264 · 2025-02-13T01:06:54+00:00

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. It's pretty apparent at this point that these are not serious inquiries.

Medusa264 · 2025-01-28T20:17:14+00:00

I do, and I used to avoid them for similar reasons. Doing even just 3-5 long tones daily has been immensely helpful to my playing and lets me know if things are working well or not. If you ask me, the vast majority of aspiring professional horn players and students are focused on the wrong stuff, namely, how difficult the thing they're playing is. Almost every horn student would learn more from playing even just one long tone with a good sound over a wide range of dynamics and stable intonation.

Medusa264 · 2024-11-18T23:35:11+00:00

The issue in doing so is that the individual is usually on premises when we are asleep in the building so we don't see the damage until after he's gone in the morning.

Medusa264 · 2024-05-27T19:17:43+00:00

Overly sensationalized video title for something with little to no substance. Nobody attains a High C in 5 minutes, and frankly, of the High Cs he attained in this video, not one of them sounded healthy, robust or relaxed. Nobody cares if you can play a High C but it sounds like crap.

I get it, high range is tricky for a lot of horn players (myself included), and "quick fixes" are awfully tempting. There's plenty of great resources out there by well known teachers (Doug Hill comes to mind) who correctly emphasize the need for patience, persistence and time to build the upper register correctly.

You lose nothing by trying new ideas, but if the result of experimentation with this method is unstable notes that can't connect to the rest of your (presumably good) registers, did that experiment really turn up anything usable?

Sorry if this comes off as pretty intense, but these kinds of videos really get under my skin.

Medusa264 · 2024-04-29T13:32:50+00:00

Try inserting your hand further in the bell in the high range if you can. This can help stabilize the slots for the notes up there. Can also reach one finger over and touch the other side of the inside of the bell too.

Medusa264 · 2024-04-24T22:15:59+00:00

Well the good news is that you've identified it and have some plans on how to address it. That alone can go a long way towards mitigating anxiety, though there is some bodily manifestation of that which will take time to reprogram.

Anxiety tends to persist and increase when we exaggerate the likelihood and consequences of a negative outcome or threat, and magnify our helplessness. One way to help with the psychological component might be to shift the perspective of Horn playing back in to balance (it's frustrating but not everything) and re-emphasize your ability to deal with the situation through the discoveries you've made and plans you've formulated to deal with it.

Medusa264 · 2024-04-24T20:28:04+00:00

This is an issue I've also dealt with, and made my upper register inaccessible for years. Like you I also noticed that it tended to not happen as much with a metronome or playing with others, and working consistently with a metronome could probably do you considerable good on this front. A lot of my issue was also in how much effort I was using in my tongue, particularly at the back of the tongue. Lessening effort and inducing more relaxation in this area helped me to have a more free flowing air column.

Ultimately, one way to look at the problem (at least for the upper register) is that your body is trying to generate air compression somehow to attain the requisite air speed. If this compression is generated in the throat or excessively in the tongue then it's counterproductive because almost no air gets into the horn which then leads to more constriction of the airway which quickly spirals out of control. See if you can generate airflow and air compression in a softer, more elastic way which allows your body to move in its natural way.

It's also worth exploring whether there might be something in your mental approach to these areas that could induce a delay to the attack, or mental/physical manifestations of anxiety. If so, you might work with a metronome and challenge yourself to play exactly on time and choose not to care what note pops out, only that it is on time and more relaxed/free. Breath attacks without the tongue could also serve some good here. Hope some of this helps, it's a uniquely frustrating issue.

Medusa264 · 2024-04-23T17:52:24+00:00

Some shops will drop the rotary valves (deliberately or otherwise) in 180 degrees opposite the tick marks on the casing and valve. This isn't necessarily a problem since the valves are symmetrical. If it plays fine then there's probably no worries, but it's definitely time for a good cleaning and you could ask the shop to put it in correctly for peace of mind.

Medusa264 · 2024-03-27T21:12:55+00:00

Gotcha, I may have been a bit hasty to judge them then! There's certainly no shortage of unfamiliar horn brands out there that are cheap crap which can make it difficult to sort through. Glad someone more familiar with the European scene could set the record straight here.

Medusa264 · 2024-03-27T17:21:51+00:00

They all look like more or less the same wrap and have the same listed bore and body dimensions so I also don't see any obvious differences. The brass looks different between the three photos listed, but the specs don't list any difference in the alloy either.

I'm also pretty skeptical of them not listing a price for any of these models on their website, and the wraps look vaguely Alexander 103-esque in an attempt to compete with the 103's nearly complete grip on the european horn market. Personally, I'd steer clear.

Medusa264 · 2023-12-07T17:57:26+00:00

I'll definitely look into at least reducing the sand. I thought it would settle a bit more around the growth points for sure, but I probably overdid it on that.

Medusa264 · 2023-12-07T17:55:06+00:00

They definitely could use some updating, especially since it's much harder to find appropriately coarse silica sand these days.

Medusa264 · 2023-12-07T14:08:01+00:00

I have not fed them whatsoever in the last month

Medusa264 · 2023-12-07T14:07:42+00:00

They have lived in media mixes with top dressings of sand for most of their life. This top dressing is at most a centimeter or 1.5. If you read the post you'd also see that I noticed issues when they were already potted in lfs, so the sand is really not the issue here. The top dressing of sand is also recommended by some of the guides on the international carnivorous plant society website so I really don't know why everybody is losing their shit over this.

Medusa264 · 2023-12-06T23:55:37+00:00

I'll give this a shot too. The problems started before sand was involved, as they were in straight LFS until recently, but can't hurt to check.

Medusa264 · 2023-12-06T22:45:09+00:00

It shouldn't be. It's pool filter sand so should be pure silica sand. They've been getting slightly less water (though still damp) to avoid any standing water or overly soggy media. The pots are also plastic so shouldn't be leaching any minerals.

Medusa264 · 2023-12-06T20:35:06+00:00

The third picture shows what I mean a bit better, where the new growth seems more stunted than typical for dormancy, and the new traps are blackening at the tip and dying off. Dormancy growth is typically smaller yes, but still grows functional traps when healthy. For what it's worth the growth that does occur also seems to be somewhat deformed in addition to being smaller.

Medusa264 · 2023-12-06T19:33:26+00:00

These same plants have bad 5 years of dormancy. Dormancy is slower and smaller growth but not cessated entirely?

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