Real recorded french horn notes on a piano keyboard: click, touch or type, and the french horn answers. The french horn is the brass instrument that blends best with the woodwinds and the strings, warm rather than bright. Free, nothing to install, with note names, your computer keyboard and a metronome.
Recorded notes, the french horn's own range, and the keyboard you already know.
Every key plays a recording of a real french horn: 10 notes from A1 to F5, each key pitched from the nearest one. The french horn is brass instrument with rotary valves: the player's lips buzz into a small funnel-shaped mouthpiece at the end of about 3.7 metres of coiled tubing; the right hand rests inside the bell to shape the tone.
The keyboard covers A#1 to F5, where the recordings sound natural; a real french horn plays B1 to about F5. Use the octave arrows to move, and More keys on a wide screen.
Play slow, wide melodies in the middle of the keyboard, the range of horn calls and film themes. The note sounds as long as you hold the key, like a bow or a breath.
Famous french horn music: Mozart, Horn Concertos; Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 (second movement solo); Strauss, Till Eulenspiegel; Film scores of the 20th century. Pick out a melody by ear on the keyboard above.
Click or touch a key. The first note starts the sound; the french horn recordings for the visible keys load in the background.
A S D F G H J K L play the white keys, W E T Y U O P the black ones (Q and Z on AZERTY). Z and X move an octave (W and X on AZERTY).
Set Labels to C D E or Do Ré Mi to see every note name, or to Keys to see your own keyboard letters.
Turn on the metronome and play along. Then try the same melody on the trumpet or the piano.
| Type | Sampled french horn, playable on this page, free |
|---|---|
| Family | Brass - brass instrument with rotary valves |
| Samples | 10 recorded notes, A1 to F5 |
| Range here | A#1 to F5 |
| Real range | B1 to about F5 |
| Notation | Treble clef (bass clef down low), written a fifth higher than it sounds |
| Controls | Labels, octave arrows, More keys and a metronome |
| Computer keyboard | Ableton layout by key position - QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ |
| Credits | French Horn samples from tonejs-instruments by Nicholas Brosowsky, CC BY 3.0 - see credits |
| Requirements | Any modern browser with Web Audio - Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari |
Most online instruments are a synthesiser with a picture on top. This one plays recordings of a real french horn, so the attack, the tone and the decay are the instrument's own. The french horn is the brass instrument that blends best with the woodwinds and the strings, warm rather than bright.
The horn descends from the hunting horn. Valves arrived in the 1810s; before that, players changed notes with their lips and by moving the hand in the bell.
A real french horn is written in treble clef (bass clef down low), written a fifth higher than it sounds. The keyboard here plays the sounding notes, so a melody you find by ear is the melody you hear. To go further, the free sheet music and chord pages work with any instrument you can read music on.
Yes. Every key plays a recording of a real french horn - 10 notes from A1 to F5 - pitched to the nearest key. The recordings come from the tonejs-instruments library, under a Creative Commons licence.
Yes. The middle row of letters plays the white keys and the row above it the black keys, by key position, so it works the same on QWERTY, AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards. Set Labels to Keys to see the letters on the keys.
A french horn plays B1 to about F5. On this page the keyboard goes from A#1 to F5, where the recordings sound natural.
Mozart, Horn Concertos; Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 (second movement solo); Strauss, Till Eulenspiegel; Film scores of the 20th century.
Yes, free with no account and nothing to install. It runs in any modern browser, on a computer, a tablet or a phone.
The french horn on this page is free, with no account. GOONS Studio adds a sampled piano, drum machines, synths and a sequencer in the browser - free for 7 days, no card required.
Free on this page, no account. Play the trumpet →