I think most people have good and bad days. As you become more proficient, the bad days tend to be fewer and less severe, and you can compensate so the listener doesn’t really notice a drop-off.
As for diet, rest, and exercise, they’re all important to help you play better, but the effects (good or bad) are more cumulative than immediate. Being relaxed while playing goes a long way, too.
I just ran across an old, dusty photo of me, taken in the mid 1980s during my 3rd chair symphony orchestra career…lol
As for the picture, I must say, Dale, you look like a very distinguished gentleman indeed.
George
I was trying to appear so…lol. That was about 40 years ago, but I’m still playing!
@Kehaulani
If I remember correctly (it’s been a year or two since I did it), I noticed more of a difference in response than anything else. I left it that way for a few weeks and never warmed up to the change. I did the alignment on 4 or 5 instruments - one was perfect the way it was so I didn’t change anything, one or two seemed to play better, and one or two played worse to me.
Frederick Fennell had just told us a funny joke right before we were to play at a band festival in Kentucky. That’s me on the far right.
@tmd
Yeah, my homegrown valve alignments weren’t PVA, in the sense that I didn’t use rubber “felts”. I just used an assortment of regular felts to do mine. I wasn’t worried about any long term felt compression - I could tell right away if I liked the result, and kept the old felts in the correct order in case I needed to undo the new alignment.
Is anyone here a Curry mouthpiece fan? I currently have 4 that I use, and sold 3 in the past that I didn’t care for. Left to right - 3B., 3C., 3M., and 3BBC.
I’m a moderator on a couple Facebook pages, and the first back and forth name calling I see gets the comment(s) deleted, and if the originator of the post is the instigator, the entire post is deleted. They are “PG” sites, and extremely foul language and/or images also gets a comment (or entire post) deleted.
@thirkieldh said in Curry Mouthpieces:
I cannot figure out their specs. I am used to the Bach nomenclature such as 3C, 5C, 7C, etc. When I tried to contact them, I got no response.
The ones I have are from his Standard Series, which use the Bach sizing numbers. Read over this...
@richard-iii said in Henry Lehnert Mouthpiece:
I missed it if you said, what do you think the diameter is?
I have an unmarked cornet mouthpiece. Construction looks like late 1800's. Perfectly fits my 1903 Conn Wonder. Sounds great. Small diameter makes it more of a challenge. Working to get acclimated. Have you had any issues with yours and playability?
I took out the calipers this morning and measured it as best I could. All dimensions are in millimeters, most rounded off insignificantly, and the 13mm dimension is the cup depth. Comparatively, the cup width is somewhere in the Bach 7 to 9 range, throat is about a 22.
To answer your second question, my initial playing impression was that it suits the cornet very well and seems to be very playable for me, even though I normally play slightly wider cups (Curry 3C. on trumpet). I’m currently preparing for some slightly difficult Easter playing, so I’m not messing with the new cornet mouthpiece until after Easter.
I had another rehearsal last night for a July 4 patriotic concert. About a 2 hour rehearsal, and I was a little spent by the end, having barely touched a horn for the last 14 months. I used my new Curry 3C on the old Bach 184 cornet again, and am really happy with its playability and my endurance on it. If I’d thought about it, I would have had Mark make me one years ago.
I just found another photo of the Bavarian band that I haven’t seen in about 35 years. I’ll post it here for posterity. I see that I was also playing trumpet on some of the songs. I think that trumpet is the 1955 Mt. Vernon ML43 Strad that I sold about 20 years ago.
@rowuk said in $800 Box of Mouthpieces!:
We are creatures of habit and I firmly believe that THIS is the #1 reason for mouthpiece safaris not working.
I believe that we need MONTHS to determine if a mouthpiece is good for us. The process is called acclimation. We must practice, adapt and perform to cover our use cases.My personal practice is, and has always been to cold turkey switch and stick with the "new" for at least 2 months - no switching back to the original. After that two - three months, I retry the original and note the differences. My last switch was in 1996.
I can generally tell within a day or two (sometimes much sooner) if I don’t like a mouthpiece, but yes, it takes quite a bit of playing one in different situations to tell if I REALLY like one. I’ve played a 3C on trumpet since the early 1980s, but I did switch from a Bach 3C to a Curry 3C. about 6 years ago, and haven’t looked back. It was familiar to me, so the transition was easy, and it was so much better! I generally play a Curry 3BBC. on cornet, too. I accumulated all those cornet mouthpieces over the years partly due to curiosity, and partly due to keeping some of the mouthpieces that came with horns I bought and sold.
@administrator said in Smallest car trunk I’ve ever had:
Yeah, Miatas are a lot of fun, but very tiny!
Yes, in city traffic I feel like a roach who’s about to be stepped on…lol. I ride motorcycles, and it takes the same mindset to drive one of these. Here’s the view from my window at a stop light.
A nice photo I took last summer.
