The Mello Zone
Posted in Brass on Apr 17th, 2008
By John Q. Ericson
Associate Professor of Horn, Arizona State University
In the United States nearly every horn player will encountermarching horns and mellophones, both of which are often not favorite instruments of horn players. As in the classic joke:
Q: How do you play a mellophone in tune?
A: You can’t!
I first encountered the mellophone in F alto in high school in the late 1970s, as I was given a “classic” mellophone by a family friend, the one pictured at right. I did not march with a mellophone in high school or college, as Emporia High School, the Kansas Lions Band, and Emporia State University all marched standard French horns, which was not uncommon at that time. But being interested in horn history I even then started becoming familiar with other alto range brass instruments, including the mellophone and alto (tenor) horn.
Fast forward to the years I played in the Nashville Symphony. I also helped with horn sectionals at McGavock High School, and about 1994 they were in the process of buying new instruments. Besides the mellophones the directors where looking at I had them also get a Yamaha B-flat marching horn on trial. I did a playing test of all the different instruments. To my mind the B-flat marching horn was the best, but the directors chose the best of the mellophones.
When I left Nashville to start teaching full time at the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, NY, life was good in a sense as they have no football team or marching band! I only had to talk about mellophones with the students in horn methods classes.
Fast forward again to 2007 and teaching full time at Arizona State. For the first six years of my tenure here they used B-flat marching horns in the marching band, as illustrated at left. For me, this was ideal. As a horn teacher I felt this to be the right instrument for mature, college level horn players; horn mouthpieces, horn related fingerings (B-flat side of double horn, that is), similar “feel” to a horn, etc. But marching mellophones are at present used by every drum corps and are also used widely at the high school level.
In terms of ASU the bottom line was people in high places wanted change in the athletic bands. As a part of that change a decision was made to replace the old marching horns (mostly purchased in the 1980s) with brand new mellophones, part of a large purchase of instruments and uniforms funded by an anonymous donor. The first one I tested is at the right.
Initially I was not very happy about this turn of events. But it did get me thinking out of the box. Most horn students today in the USA will play mellophone for a while somewhere. The way the mellophone is taught and used is a part of the “horn problem;” if it were taught better it could be a part of the solution to the issue of there just not being enough good horn players around at the high school level.
The result was that during the summer and fall of 2007 I became very well acquainted with the mellophone. It is an ideal time to get to know the mellophone better, as the fact that DCI groups recently switched to standard band instruments has been a big boost to mellophones. They had long lagged behind other brass instruments, but now there is in fact a “renaissance” in progress with real development money and effort going into improved instruments and mouthpieces. Starting that summer I wrote not only a number of posts in my blog, the Horn Notes Blog, but also wrote a book, the first of its kind on the mellophone, A Mello Catechism; A Guide to the World of Mellophones and Marching Horns.
