Best posts made by ROWUK

@Dr-GO you know my opinion of Jason Harrelson and his business practices. I do not consider his palette of instruments that adaptive. Sure, there is a lot to customize, I consider his approach to give a very „playable“ instrument but it locks the player into a certain shade of color. That is the bogusness of the concept. It is not what is in the players head, it is the shade injected by the maker.

This is my point. Those that buy those instruments do not „have to“, they simply can. The story comes after the fact.

I was with a student recently at a well stocked music store. The student was looking for a C trumpet. There were 6 instruments there, additionally I had my modified tuning bell Bach CL229H and my Monette Raja. For that student, a used Schilke screamed buy me! He sounded better with that instrument than with all the others. We had rehearsed auditioning instruments weeks before the trip. The student stuck to the audition procedures and was able to easily sift through the choices. We used my Monette as a reference but in the students case, it did not have that something special that the Schilke did.

I know of one manufacturer in Munich that has built „reference“ trumpets that are not sold or loaned. Potential buyers get a valve section and add parts with the goal of putting an instrument together that is better than the reference. They have a box of over 100 leadpipes -all essentially that all measure the same - but play differently. With the right audition procedure it only takes an hour to get the „best one“. Then comes the bell - much harder to zero in. At the end, braces are fitted. With another student of mine, we needed 3 hours to select the parts. This is what I was talking about. We got a horn that matched what was in the players head. It took 100 leadpipes and 10+ bells. This is NOT the Harrelson or Monette experience.

I can‘t speak for Harrelson as I have only played them but never bought one. In the case of Monette where I have 3, I can testify that the first one changed me. The second one was built on 10 years of communication with Monette and the positive experiences with the first instrument. He changed it. The third instrument is simply pick it up and play. There is no need to „think“ about color. It just happens.

The time frame needed to make musical decisions precludes „magic“.

Should be either notated a 4th higher or, if in concert pitch a 7th higher. The slurs are not original. No valves is the way I like to hear it, and play it. There are 3 notes that are challenging on the picc...

V cups go back to medieval times. They were easy to produce - and worked.

As far as the "modern" trumpet goes there are deep Vee cups like from flugelhorns and cornets - and shallow Vee cups like those that Maynard Ferguson played.

What actually works for the modern player is very debatable. Most of our success is in our heads - what we believe, how we bias confirm what we believe.

I would insist that we need MONTHS to acclimate to a new architecture before we could really know if the switch was good or not.

I use Vee cups for my cornets and flugelhorns and C cups for everything else. I can switch easily back and forth.

I have a Vee cup experiment for a natural trumpet project. There are some historic originals that I want to try.

The human state is a huge shoebox full of single entities. The process for learning is to emulate first and then through the coordination of things collected in the shoebox, we get a result.
I would offer that the "beginning" jazz trumpeter with a "classical" mindset needs building blocks and structure to get started. Scales and chords should be memorized. Then Aebersol is much less daunting.

The next step is to fill that shoebox with melodies - memorized. Any of the fakebooks are great for standards! They also provide snippets of structure that help us keep from getting lost

@_Mark_
I would say that the tuner is probably causing more damage to your playing than helping. Turn the tuner off and just relax into the biggest and best "sound" for each note. You will have plenty of time later to work on intonation but if you compromise your sound, it will be almost impossible to fix that later. We do NOT WANT TO FORCE OUR BODY TO DO THINGS THAT WE ARE NOT YET READY FOR! Beginners bending the notes to get them in tune just supports crappy breathing and twisting our face into shape.

@stumac said in Trumpets Made ONLY by Their Maker:

Jerome Wiss, a French maker who has completely redesigned the trumpet including the valve block with only 2 passages through the valves, in the up position the air goes through one port in one direction, in the down position the same port in the opposite direction, makes it all himself.

He came on TH three years ago announcing his new trumpet and was driven off by people who could not understand how it worked.

I ordered one beginning of April, delivery November/December.

Regards, Stuart.

I am anxious to hear of your first and lasting impressions. While standard valves (rotary and piston) in many respects are really "dumb design" (in respect to geometry, wear, mass, friction), they have stood the test of time. It is great that we have some free thinkers like Wiss, Monette and others that push the envelope - in spite of the nay sayers.

@barliman2001 It is great to know that you were not homely enough - but someone else was qualified!

I successfully use LaTromba T2 (new bottle), Ultra Pure, Hetmans (various thicknesses) and Monster (various thicknesses). LaTromba T2 is the cheapest (in Europe). I buy it by the case.

They are all "equal" on my horns if applied properly. They are much faster than my fingers, last for at least a week of heavy playing. I have no sticking or other artifacts.

Horns that I use these oils on:
Bach 229CL
Selmer Radial 2°
Monette Raja C
Getzen Eterna 4 valve flugel
Cheap chinese pocket trumpet
All of my rotary trumpets

I also use these oils to keep my natural trumpet slides and bows from oxidizing together.

Clean horn first, wait until it is bone dry, apply oil sparingly. Never mix oils and greaes on the same horn.
It is not rocket science and I have no preference - maybe I am simply not good enough to notice? Maybe I simply do not have a "need" to have a preference?

@djeffers78 you will have to be a bit more specific about what you do not understand. There is no debate about Covid being transmitted by contact of droplets and aerosols. There are enough professional studies performed where actual orchestral players and their instruments were tested. A lot of these things have made a careful opening of concert venues possible in Germany.

If for no other reason than the constant reminder that a virus NEVER sleeps makes this bell cover interesting. The study presented in the link is compelling and similar to one conducted with the Bamberg Symphonic a couple of weeks ago.

We should not forget that it is not Covid that causes lockdowns. It is the Covidiots that think that they are immune and just end up getting thousands infected. America is doing an especially poor job of containing because of the "perversion of individual rights". Fact is, if everyone simply practices good hygiene, distancing and wears a mask whenever possible, we could be well on our way to recovery - which has struck the music industry in a devastating way. Everyone has access to facts. The first wave, how various countries handled it - and which countries simply are failing and why.

Selfish attitude is not "propaganda". Infections just do not happen - they are caused. Non-cooperative people are a danger to society in general!

@administrator said in Mouthpiece issue:

A wider rim will likely lead to quicker fatigue. That's been my experience, at least.

Maybe you should try some mouthpieces from the baroque era. They are much larger than modern mouthpieces and have very large flat rims - but no shortage of high notes!

I do not understand the excitement. Is horn X a rip off? Well, that depends on our definition.

Most „civilized“ countries have trademark laws. If a manufacturer breaks those laws, then they pay the price. That does not make the product bad or the price point irrelevant.
What bothers me most, is the selective use of emotion. Why should anyone be pissed off when a company in China or elsewhere fills an economic need? Are we mad because the word „Stradivarius“ has been used twice? Are we mad because a band teacher should „know better“? Are we just mad because that is the current popular political vent?

I see nothing wrong with this horn. I personally have a high performance standard for my own instruments not yet filled by a cheap instrument and I discuss this issue openly with my students and their parents. If they make another decision, fine. The most important thing is that the student enjoys playing and practicing. Everything else rests on those shoulders.

In 1975 a Bach trumpet was <$500 at Giardinellis in New York. I wish that salaries had inflated this much....

Kodak learned the hard way what happens when the market and the product no longer match. The digital revolution blew them out of the water. How many manufacturers of instruments are now dead. Why are they dead?

To be honest, for many kids, it is the cheap horn or no horn. They are not interested in flea market bargains on „vintage“ instruments with 50% lacquer.

Let us not let elitism screw up something very precious. There can be value at this level.

There are various traits that make for good site reading.

1. large collection of memorized patterns
2. ability to negotiate the diagonal (end of one line to the beginning of the next)
3. ability to “hear” intervals (different than #1)
4. well taken care of chops
5. an organised approach before playing a note - key signatures and accidentals, natural feel for phrasing/breathing
6. a lot of experience site reading

A good practice routine is something that does not necessarily make me feel good. It is a serious collection of things that make the player „better“. Routine for me is not the same thing every day either. If I have gigs with more extended upper range requirements, I do range exercizes every second day or so. Technical studies I often treat the same way.

What is most important to me is the frame of mind, the idea of not wasting a note, containing lesser controlled behaviour. If I am on a run with great results in a specific area, I allow myself to keep moving in that direction instead of being submissive to a recipe.

I do have some basics that I do play every day. That is far from the complete daily pensum however. The daily stuff I call „circle of breath“. It is posted elsewhere here.

Our central nervous system is a very fickle thing. It can remember things that we did decades before and can "store" "rewards" for things that we have done. There are many schools of thought on how to deal with these hard wired reactions. Some recommend seeing a shrink, others start yoga class or Alexander Technique lessons. Others (like myself) find a Feldenkrais or a Cranio Sacral therapist. This method actually deals with helping us get a new inner organisation. The therapy is very gentle and everyone that I know that has taken it seriously has reaped large benefits.

In your case, you did the right thing first: checked for physical damage. Now I would recommend going to https://www.davemonette.com (no, I am not trying to sell a mouthpiece or trumpet - and he will not either). Click around the site and see if anything rings. If yes, then click on "Contact" and write a short description of your situation. Then either call or wait for an answer. You can also google Moshe Feldenkrais if you want to know more about some of the background

I am convinced that this is a very good way to get over this. There are no painful massages or physical rehab punishment. Normally, we notice "improvement" right away but many times, we need more time to get out heads around what is going on. Dave is very in tune with brass players. He is very to the point about the way things work in his world. You can write if you have more questions, I will be on the road this week on a business trip so I will not be monitoring 24/7.

Training wheels/ breath marks. Sounds like fightin‘ words!
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Measures on a tank of air? Equally juvenile.

We have to inhale in a way that lets us exhale without having to release „compression“ or „expansion“ muscle tension first. One of the major flaws in tanking up for maximum measures is that we create tension that we have no routine to remove musically for.
Yes, we can expand breathing capacity. That involves an organized, prepared body, no brute force!

Let's get this "higher quality made in the US" notion out of our heads. Quality has NOTHING to o with location. Quality is a function of responsible decisions in the manufacturing process. America has NOTHING that would be decisive in higher quaity instruments. Every company decides how much "quality" goes into their products. In the case of chinese manufacturers, the importers placing the order decide how much "quality should be built and they get what they pay for.

As far as Americans out of work, that is how capitalism works. Money does not care if a specific group of people are employed. It only cares if anyone is left to buy the products.

We can play longtones intelligently or carelessly. That is the difference between working or wasting.

I think that the cat and mouse have shown both sides. I believe that there are many paths to Rome. I have stopped using the word "buzz" to stay out of discussions just like this - surely splitting hairs, but simply describing "ignition" to get the standing wave in the horn going. Without it, we are just blowing air through a tube. It is not possible to play a tone without the lips being ignited. They open and close like a switch in harmony with a multiple of the resonant frequency of the horn. The more supple the lip and embouchure, the easier that it is to play.

Now, we all know that embouchure changes (jaw position belongs to that) are a dangerous thing for most as there is no applicable reference for success. In my small world, embouchure changes are more luck than skill. That is why I prefer evolution to revolution. I do not ask (or care) the player if they phoo, BRRR or ZZZZ. They play long tones with NO ARTICULATION. The lips must ignite on a whisp of air. I try and stabilize the geometry regardless how it lies. Then the player gets a steady diet of long tones and lip slurs to build and strengthen. Once the art of creating sound is stable, we add microscopic amounts of articulation to chop the tone into intelligible pieces. This is like learning to talk and in my international experience is VERY tied to the players mother tongue.

Now, moving the jaw could very much change the playing field from downstream to upstream with dramatic changes to the geometry of playing. I know many upstream players with great high chops, but also know enough downstream players that also are not slouches (do we change embouchures for any other reason?). I have not investigated this deeply. Those students that come to me for lessons get the evolution routine regardless of what they bring to the table. Some fly with it, others just get more stable.

Now, one word of warning. I learned first hand at TrumpetMaster that pedantic, repetitive posting never results in anyone taking ones side. Generally the target audience just goes away shaking their heads. Sometimes passion is too close to politics or religion (with a small R).

@georgeb I am playing professionally on full upper and lower dentures. It IS possible, but it is different and will require making new habits concerning tongue position, articulation and fine motor embouchure activity.
I got my final implants/dentures last July (2022) and by September(2022) was back to performing. I invested at least 2 hours per day to retrain and still do today.

We must always keep in view that trumpet playing is a fine motor activity - not weight lifting. Endurance comes through training efficiency and body use. The goal is NOT a six pack!
The problem with Caruso is if we in fact treat the exercises as "calisthenics". This is a 100% wrong image.
Remember: the harder you press your lips together, the more blow force that you need to get them vibrating. The #1 problem that I observe is that way too much force is used - with the lips being forcefully pressed together as well as being mashed against the teeth.
Our embouchure must speak with a whisper of airflow. Starting from this side of playing, we develop that efficiency and NEVER need a hurricane to blow the lips apart.