How I learned to stop worrying and love teaching Star Wars

My musical education about the horn and how to play it is pretty vast, and was hard-won. I take great pride in my teaching ability especially, and have collected a pretty impressive library of horn treatises, etudes, etc. I have a prescription for every conceivable problem involved in playing the horn; I’ve even written some etudes to address certain problems (I’m looking at YOU, Guilford H.S. horn section, when you had to play Holst’s Jupiter.) In spite of all of this, after more than twenty years of teaching using the “classics” of horn pedagogy, I’ve given up, and not only have come to embrace the whole Star Wars obsession with kids, but am now writing a series of lessons for beginners, which use the best-known leitmotifs from the soundtracks.

Oh no, they’re not getting away without learning from the old classics, but I’m incorporating Star Wars themes into the mix. The elementary methods, with their old-timey songs, just won’t cut it anymore, by themselves.