Posts made by Dale Proctor

My wife and I went to see an outdoor performance of a big band I had been a member of in years past. The band leader saw me in the audience, and after a few more charts, he told the crowd I was there and had me stand up. After some applause, he said to come on up and play a song with them. More applause, so I couldn’t refuse. I went up on stage, a friend handed me his trumpet, and on an unfamiliar trumpet and mouthpiece, with no warm up, we kicked off String of Pearls the fastest I’d ever tried to play it. Of course, I ended up with the solo, and I luckily made it through pretty well, even at breakneck speed. More applause, and I returned to my seat…lol

@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.

I took a couple photos on the way home from an orchestra rehearsal tonight. My trumpet case fits in the center recess of the trunk, and that’s about it…lol

Looks like it takes a cornet mouthpiece or a smaller proprietary trumpet mouthpiece. That trumpet mouthpiece just barely goes into the receiver.

Somewhere along the way, Bach started putting a saddle on the 1st valve slide. Before they did that, the 1st valve slide was symmetrical - both legs on the slide were inner legs and the outer slide tubes were both attached to the 1st valve case. Yours are set up for a saddle, so I’d guess someone switched the saddle for a ring. Or, someone went to the trouble of fitting all the 1st valve slide parts (except the saddle) from a later horn to it.

I played with a brass quintet in a church service yesterday morning. We played along with the the hymns and then a couple patriotic numbers for the offertory and the postlude. That evening we played for a BBQ dinner and recognition of veterans. No other playing planned for the 4th.

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.

Yes, I play Curry 3-size mouthpieces on my trumpets and cornets almost exclusively. 3B, 3C, and 3M on trumpet & 3C and 3BBC on cornet.

@georgeb

Man, that’s a beauty! I bet it plays like a dream, too - congratulations.

It’s that day again!

Recently, I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a poor, humble man. The service was to be at a pauper’s cemetery in the middle of nowhere.

As I was not familiar with that area I used the Sat Nav, but the signal dissapeared and the road I was on didn't show on the map, so I got lost.

I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone, and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left. They had almost finished filling in the grave, and were having a break and eating lunch.

I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and looked down at where the man lay.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I started to play.

The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends.

I played like I’ve never played before for this guy.

And as I played ‘Amazing Grace,’ the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, and we all wept together. When I finished, I packed up my cornet and started for my car. Though my head hung low, my heart was full.

As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I've never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."

Apparently, I was still lost.

The Marine Band, “The Presidents Own”, is basically a professional band with no boot camp or other military service required. I believe if a person auditions and makes it, there’s just some military etiquette and uniform instruction required. No PT, firearm training, etc. All the other service bands require the members to be regular military, whose primary job is to play in the band.

@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.

A trumpet playing friend of mine recently decided to dig out his old Conn 76A Connquest cornet and play it on cornet parts in the church orchestra, because I’ve been leading by example. I offered to let him try out a bunch of my seldom-used cornet mouthpieces to get an idea of what might best work for him on his cornet. He kept them a couple weeks and returned them to me after rehearsal last night.

In the box were eight Bach pieces (1C, 1-1/2C, 3, 3C, 6, 6BM, 7C, 10-1/2C), two Connstellation pieces (5C-W, 7C-W), a Conn 4, since that’s what his cornet originally came with, and a Wick 4B. I told him to be careful with that box of mouthpieces, because the replacement value was probably close to $800…

I didn’t include my Curry 3BBC., Curry 3C., and Wick 4, because those are what I’m currently playing. Out of all those, he said he preferred the sound and ease of play combination the Bach 6BM provided, since he plays trumpet on a Bach 5C. Unfortunately, I don’t own any Bach 5 size mouthpieces for him to try, because I never liked them.