 The Fingering Forum
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Author: musichick
Date: 2004-07-08 21:06
I'm playing an english horn solo tomorrow night (Dvorak new world symphony, movement 2) and I can't get the Eb out! I can get everything from C# down, and everything from F and up, but no D, Eb, E. Is it a fingering thing? The oboe fingering doesn't work... I got the English horn from a friend this morning. The EH is wood, doesn't have a second octive key, the first one serves as both. PLEASE HElP ME!
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2004-07-08 22:11
Sounds like a leak to me, either as a result of problems with hand posture on the larger instrument or something out of whack with the horn itself.
First make doubly sure you are covering all of the necessary holes in the plateau keys with your fingers. You may find this to be something you'll have to pay extra attention to with the larger proportions of the English horn compared to the oboe.
The fingerings shouldn't be any different from oboe fingerings. Will the C# come out? Do you hear any leaking of air from the pads when you try and play the D, Eb, and E? If you do, try and see if you can locate it. Hopefully it will be a leak that can be fixed by turning a few adjustment screws to allow the key to seal better. If it's in fact being caused by a leaky pad, well... I'm not sure. Maybe one of your local music shops can do an emergency fix on it if that's the case. Again, hopefully, it's not.
Try checking for leaks from keys around those notes first, i.e. around the holes you cover to make the D, Eb, and E. You also may want to try a few different reeds to make sure that it's not a reed-related issue.
Remember too that the English horn takes more air volume than the oboe, so if may just be that you're not putting enough air down through that larger bore to make it sound.
Also, you could try pressing down a little harder with the middle finger and/or ring finger of the right hand to see if that allows them to speak--the idea being that if that is where the leak is, you should be able to seal if up better with a <i>little</i> more pressure. If however you're C# speaks, then I doubt that is where the problem is located.
Anyway, I hope out of that desultory mess of ideas just throw out as they came to me you can solve your problem. Let me know how it goes.
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Author: musichick
Date: 2004-07-09 13:06
thanks for responding, I'll go try that...
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