Posts made by mediocreplayer

I did get a reply to my email

Hi Shaun,

Thanks very much for reaching out directly, and sorry for the slow reply — was out of town for a couple days.

We're located in Oakland, California near Grand and Broadway. We're a small team of two selling mostly online through Reverb, so we don't have a brick and mortar storefront with regular hours. But there's a room elsewhere in our building where we can do playtests of about 4-5 instruments at a time. If you're interested, please list some times that would work for you in the next week or two, and which items on our website you want to try out.

I should also mention that for direct purchases from us we only take debit-like payment methods including PayPal Friends and Family, Venmo Friends and Family, Cash App, Zelle, or simply cash. But, we don't collect sales tax in this case.

What do you think? I'm happy to answer any questions here, or you can text or call me at (510) 575-9995. If I don't pick up please leave a text/voicemail/email so I know it was you, and I'll get back when I can.

All the best,
Jimmy
Bay Area Brass

I just got hit by one of his youtube ads. Man, this guy knows and has been trained by a lot of fancy people!!

Posted from his web site:
Matt Brockman is a United States based trumpet player, audio/video producer, author, and entrepreneur.

He is a professional trumpet player and is a member of the United States Army Band.

He is the founder and host of Trumpet Legends, a virtual workshop/masterclass series that features the best living trumpet players from all around the world. Some guests include Allen Vizzutti, Wayne Bergeron, Chris Martin, Brandon Ridenour, Gabor Tarkovi, Tom Hooten, and others.

He is the author of the books Trumpet Tone Builders and The Fearless Performer

He has performed with various musical artists throughout the world, such as TwoSetViolin, Christopher Bill, Seb Skelly, Trent Hamilton, Ska Tune Network, and others

Some of Matt's trumpet instructors include: Chris Coletti (Canadian Brass), Joe Mosello (The Maynard Ferguson Band), Peter Bond (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra), Tom Boulton (New York Philharmonic), and others

I sent them an email. We'll see how he/she/they/them respond.

For the last year and a half, I've been purchasing various horns going on safari. I'm not sure I classify myself as a collector now that I've sampled so many different horns and I've settled more or less on what I will play long term. If I was younger, I certainly wouldn't have done this but my finances are such that I don't have to be a spendthrift anymore. So I buy what I'd like to try and I'll turn around and sell what I don't want. Half the horns I bought were cheap to begin with so I'm not too worried about losing money on them. As for the more expensive ones, the boutique maker instruments are just hard to find and try before you buy. So I'm a bit more frugal about buying several of those. I'll sell the ones I don't want for a reduced price and be happy that someone else will get an opportunity to try these wonderful horns for themselves without having to spend full retail.

Anybody have experience with Bay Area Brass? www.bayareabrass.com

There is no phone or address. Only an email. I looked through Trumpet Herald, and found an old post on TrumpetBoards discussing safe retailers, but found no reference for this one.

@Trumpetb said in Tough Decision to make:

The Yam is a safe option but safety is often where mediocre lies

Since I'm mediocre, sounds like a Yam is right up my alley.

A 2025 update on AI. I was using ChatGPT for music pedagogy. However, I had to give up on it. It's responses were generally innaccurate. It couldn't even get the fingering chart correct. So I had to ask it this question:

Question
when you quote information that is 100% incorrect, where are you citing this information? How did you come up with a fallacy in the 1st place if the false information isn't even available on the internet?

Response:
Great question — and an important one. Short answer: there are two ways a confidently wrong statement can appear, and the explanation depends on whether I actually looked things up in this chat or not.

1. If I DIDN’T browse the web during our chat (no live citations):

I generate answers from patterns learned during training. I don’t have access to my training examples and I can’t point to a single document.

Sometimes that pattern-matching hallucinates a fact (or combines bits of different sources) and presents it confidently. That’s a model error: noisy training data, contradictory sources, statistical averaging, or an extrapolation the model made.

I can also misinterpret your wording or the context window and produce a plausible-sounding but false claim.

2. If I DID browse / gave explicit web citations in this chat (you saw links or web.run citations):

Those citations point to pages I fetched during this session. If the claim is wrong, either the source itself is incorrect/outdated, or I misread / poorly summarized the source. (That happens — I can make extraction/summarization mistakes.)

There are also occasional cases where I accidentally fabricate a citation label or paraphrase that looks like a real source — that’s a hallucinated citation.

Why it happens (brief list):
compression of vast, noisy training data → no single-origin traceability
conflicting or low-quality sources in training
interpolation/extrapolation when exact facts aren’t present
parsing, arithmetic, or summarization errors
ambiguity in the prompt or missing context

What I can do now:
If you paste the exact incorrect quote (or point to the message), I’ll verify it right away and show the real sources (I’ll run a live check and give links and an explanation of where the mistake likely came from).

Or tell me whether I used citations in that reply — if so I’ll re-check those pages and explain whether the source was wrong or I misread it.

Want me to look up a specific claim now? Paste it and I’ll verify and correct it.

Please don't mess up! I'd be lost without my TrumpetBoards.

I agree, her reasons are her own. Everyone deserves their privacy.

@Dr-GO said in Unable to simply hear that I'm out of pitch:

Hard to advise without more detail and being there to watch and hear.
The most important question is: How long has it been since you have been back on the trumpet? It takes weeks (on average 6 weeks) to tone muscle to the point of getting a consistent response. Time playing may be a relevant issue.
--> It's been about a year now redeveloping the embouchure. I've taken lessons with a trumpet player locally. I've also taken lessions with Ethan Chilton on Tonebase.

Once the basic embouchure development is well underway, than yes, playing with others and listening and then hearing the changes you need to make would be of high value.
--> I agree. This is what I've been thinking may be the main problem. 40 years ago, I played 1,000's of hours with others. One year we had 426 gigs logged with performances 7 days a week. Then of course practicing for hours together every weekday. The ear just may need to be retrained.

Is the trumpet in need of repair? Have you had other experienced trumpet players play your trumpet and if so, is the intonation fine when others play? If so, we can likely exclude instrument contribution out of the discussion.
--> Trumpets and Flugel are all brand new. No problems there. I am educating myself on technical design of the mouthpeices and instruments. Being an I.T. professional for the last 30 years, I think of the entire "noise" organism as made of up 3 primary systems: Human, Mouthpiece, and Instrument. Each of these systems can be broken down into subsystems. For instance, the mouthpiece can be affected by diameter, rim/cup shape, material, throat, taper, length, mass, etc. I've got a micrometer, throat, and Warburton gap measuring tools. I'm taking a look at how much gap I have playing on a specific trumpet with different mouthpieces and how it affects slotting and tuning. So it's a work in progress.

After sitting the trumpet down for 40 years, I find myself struggling with finding the pitch on various notes. I don't have perfect pitch, but I don't ever remember struggling with this in the Marine Corps. I have a tuner and microphone attached to my bell so I can keep an eye on pitch now. I'm wondering if it's a symptom of possibly the following:

1. Ear has simply become untrained to hear the correct pitch
2. Hearing is not as good as it used to be.
3. Not playing enough with others. When I'm playing with others (who can themselves be in tune), then I can tune myself with others.
4. combination of the above or something else...

Anybody with teaching experience comment on probable causes?

@Shifty said in Flugelhorn Trigger Mod:

I'd share this on the oTHer site, but they're too judgemental.

Yes, I've noticed that about the "other site" as well. Being a mediocre player now after being away from the trumpet for 40 years, they would eat me alive.

I didn't find an older post regarding 4-valve trumpets, so figured it was ok to start a new one. Please forgive me if I missed it.

I've been researching 4-valve trumpets for some time now and have come to the conclusion that for the most part, it seems like most manufacturers just add one more valve to the trumpet as more of an afterthought than really giving it a thorough and comprehensive technical study it deserves to cater to those wanting the extra valve just to increase their lower range.

I've been looking closely at Stomvi's line of Titan 4-valve instruments and it appears that they have given a lot of thought to it's architecture compared to the competition. I'm wondering has anyone has had the opportunity to play 4-valve Stomvi trumpets (or other 4-valve trumpets in general) and what their thoughts are. Do you see advantages just beyond extending the lower range? Is is a struggle to keep in tune in the various registers? etc.

@barliman2001

Interesting, thank you for that insight. I'll keep an eye on that.

@Trumpetb said in Carol Brass Sticky Valves:

by ROWUK DR GO flugelgirl and the other knowledgeable members are the best

Good day everyone,

I see this is an older post (2 years ago) but it's "new" to me. I too, am having an issue with a new boutique trumpet that was built with the famous German MAW valves. When I'm playing quickly, there's no problem. It's only when I'm playing ballads/slow passages where the valve (primarily 2nd valve) will stick very close to the top of the upswing if I've had it pressed down for more than 2-3 seconds.

I cleaned the instrument myself with no luck. I sent it back to the dealer who had their repair tech look it over and clean it. Per the dealer, it is attributed to my technique as they said they had no problems with it. I've played professionally 35 years ago in the Marines and decided to pick up the trumpet again as I get closer to retirement. I finally sent it to JLandress to look at. Josh said that he felt that the valves were "not great" and he burnished the inside of the casings and changed out the springs. I noticed the valves became much more reponsive and quick, but the hesitation at the very top of the upswing still occurs rarely. That rarety just destroys your performance and enjoyment.

At this point, I'm breaking it in and "running" the valves to see if they will finally get the right wear to make it operate smooth as silk. As for my technique, I am doubtful of that as I own 2 new Martin Boehme's (tumultous and schnaffhorn) with MAW valves... they are silky smooth just like my new Edwards X-13 from Getzen. No problems with those. I also have a new Schilke HCL2 that is not quite as good as the other 3, but still no sticking. I also have several vintage cornets that work wonderfully.

Cheers!