The Whole Horn
Practice assignment

Your teacher sent you this

The key, tempo and articulation are already chosen. Open it and they’re written out for your instrument.

What to practice
Open in The Whole Horn Get the app

Free. No account, no sign-up, and the trainer works without a signal.

If nothing happened when you tapped

  1. Can’t install apps — a school iPad or a Chromebook? Tap Play it here, in this browser above. The week plays in the browser, with sound, and nothing is installed.
  2. Open this link on the device you practice with — an iPhone, an iPad, or an Android phone or tablet. It also runs on a Mac with Apple silicon.
  3. If you don’t have the app yet, tap Get the app, install it, then tap your teacher’s link again. It will land on the right settings.
  4. If you do have it and this page still showed up, you are almost certainly reading it inside a chat app, which keeps links in its own browser instead of handing them to an app. Tap Open in The Whole Horn above — that works from anywhere. On an iPhone you can also tap the ••• menu, choose Open in Safari, and tap your teacher’s link again.

Almost nothing needs a signal. The trainer works in Airplane Mode — on the bus, in a practice room, anywhere. The spoken readings behind the Listen buttons stream, and the photos on the gear page load from the retailers, so those need a connection. There is nothing to sign in to and no form to fill in, and the App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected — that label is about the app, not this web page. This page counts visits with Vercel Web Analytics, run by Vercel, the company that hosts the site. It sends Vercel this page’s address (with your assignment in it) and the site that sent you here, and Vercel records the time, a rough location, and the kind of device, operating system and browser you are using. It sets no cookies, the count is anonymous, and it cannot follow you from one day to the next or on to other websites. Like every website, the company that hosts this page keeps ordinary access logs.

What the settings mean

A practice link carries four things, and your teacher chose each one:

A link never changes your instrument. Your teacher assigns what to practice; what you play it on stays yours.

For teachers

Nothing to install on the school’s side — no district account, no rollout, no IT ticket. You will make the link on your own phone: open For Teachers in the app, choose the exercise, the key and the tempo, tap Make the link, then Copy link, and paste it wherever you already assign work — Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, or plain email. Your roster stays where it is; the link carries the exercise. Every current version carries the week in the link itself, so it opens on your student’s own device, set up for their instrument.

Whatever you assign opens for your student, even if it sits in the Full Studio — scales, ear-training games, the blues bass line, the maqamat. No student of yours will meet a paywall inside an assignment you set. No student data reaches me, so a review should be quick — but your district sets that bar, not me. If you need a data-privacy agreement, a SOPPA rider or a New York 2-d agreement, write to me and I will sign yours. More for teachers.

Questions

Do I need an account?

No. There is no account, no login and no sign-up anywhere in the app.

Does it cost anything to do my assignment?

No. Whatever your teacher assigns opens for you, even if it sits in the Full Studio — keep the app up to date (version 1.5.0 or later). The twelve major scales in every key on all 69 instruments, long tones, vibrato, the Milestone and all eight ear-training games are free for everyone anyway.

Which instrument does this use?

Your own — every assignment is written in your instrument’s key and clef. If your instrument ever looks wrong after opening a link, set it back under Instrument. It is always yours to change.

Is it on Android?

Yes. The Whole Horn is free on Google Play as well as the App Store, and a teacher’s link opens the same assignment on either one.

The Whole Horn is written and maintained by Thomas Hornig, Henri Selmer Paris artist and Professor of Saxophone at the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music. Questions: the support page.