Hand Horn - A Classical Technique... For Dummies

There is a huge amount of background information you would need to know to understand why hand horn works that involves science and sound waves measurements, however...

The people who originally played this way didn't know the science behind it, they just knew it worked so rather than explaining sound waves and partials, I'm just going to tell you how to do it. Playing horn this way will impress any French horn teacher. I promise.

Basic hand horn positions are open (your bell is unblocked) and closed (your hand closing off the air coming out of the bell). It gets a little more complicated to really play it well, but here are the hand positions for basic notes.