Flow Studies for Horn David Vining

Flow Studies for Horn: A Daily Phrasing and Technique Regimen by David Vining, edited by Nancy Sullivan, is appropriate for high school through professional horn players.

Flow Studies is designed to help you develop air flow efficiency by playing musical phrases in a wide array of ranges, keys, and rhythms. The etudes are presented in a daily format with eight etudes per day, for a total of fifty-six etudes. Flow Studies offers a musical way to cultivate the important technical skill of breath control, and musical incentives are always more compelling to musicians than technical ones!

Click here to watch a video with the author.

Let's face it: practicing can be arduous and boring at times, but we must do it. Nancy Sullivan's book 'Flow Studies' offers us the opportunity to improve many of our fundamental playing techniques in an aesthetically enjoyable way. Many have been the times I have asked my students to play an etude or exercise as if it were the most beautiful piece of music in the world. Professor Sullivan's book plays like a really beautiful piece of music, revealing at once that the reason we study technique is for one purpose to play music beautifully. How nice to have exercises which challenge and improve our facility while appealing so strongly to our hearts! - Kevin Owen, Principal Horn of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Philharmonic, and Rhode Island Philharmonic; composer and arranger