Memories. Ahhh Yes, Memories of My Life

Learning To Play The French Horn

Learning To Play The French Horn

         We moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico after my second grade school year. Once there, I attended school at Five Points Elementary. It was there that I started playing the French Horn. You might ask yourself why would a young boy of eight or so choose the French Horn? First, we need to backtrack a little bit.

         I didn't do a lot in the third grade, I was a typical boy. In the fourth grade I learned about the school band. I really wanted to join the band, but not because of a love of music. There was a girl in my class who was taking band, playing the Saxophone. I had a HUGE crush on her, and figured that if I could join band also, we’d have something in common. Ah, Rita Sanchez, my first love. Of course being band mates, we’d get to know each other, she would see what a nice kid I was, and we’d be together forever. There was just one problem. My parents were convinced that I wouldn’t keep at it, and refused to get, or rent an instrument for me. <sigh> Then my fifth grade year came around, and once again I pestered them to let me join the band. They finally relented, but now we had another problem. My parents were far from well-to-do. Very far. They couldn’t afford to buy me an instrument, so renting one from school was our only option. The only instruments that could be rented were the larger brass instruments. The Baritone, Sousaphone/Tuba, Trombone, and French Horn. I had a hazy vision of what a Baritone was, I knew what both the Tuba and Trombone looked like, but had no idea what a French Horn was, or looked like, so I chose it.

         I get to the first day of band practice…. And you guessed it. Rita Sanchez was not taking band that year, or any year in the future. I was stuck though, my parents had paid the year’s rental for the French Horn, so I had to at least stick that year out. As fate would have it, Rita and I attended different Middle Schools, but we did attend the same high school. She never knew I existed.

         Somehow I fell in love with the Horn during my fifth grade year, and kept at it in the sixth. When I arrived in Middle School, it was a bit more advanced, but not a lot. During the summer vacation of my 7th grade year, I attended summer band. This was quite the change for me, because it was there I learned to ‘sight read’. Let me give you a comparison of seventh grade band, and summer band sight reading. Up to this point, playing in band had been almost boring. We’d rehearse, but we went VERY slow in reading the music. Painfully slow. I shudder to think of what my parents went through listening to our concerts. Now I’m in summer band. The director was a high school band director, and treated us all as if we knew the piece already. There was nothing slow about it at all. He would hand us the sheets of music and start us off. It was quite the change for me. Of course I struggled at first, but the more we practiced, the better I became.

         I’d like to tell you that I became a great horn player, but I lacked one thing to allow that to happen. An inner drive. Don’t get me wrong, I was good, very good. But I didn’t practice! Despite this, I became the ‘first chair’ horn player in the 10th grade. Today I’m left with one thought. “How good could I have been?” I also have a burning desire to buy a French Horn and join the Bloomington Community Band. They don’t have a Horn player. Once I retire and stop traveling, I will.


658 words




Jim Dorrell