Saw the facebook entry. Lose the heavy caps and replace the leadpipe and receiver and the horn would be well on its way to at least being in tune. This problem pops up even with professional trumpets. Monke rotary Bb and C trumpets occasionally had the same issue. The G on my natural trumpet is "naturally a bit high". Not quite this much, but it does require attention on a regular basis.
With any vintage instrument it is a question of the true condition, how hard it was played previously and if it gets past these mechanical checks, if we can get the sound that we need.
Granted, there are people that get the warm fuzzies every time the word vintage falls. There it does NOT matter what a reality check is worth.
I would say that about half of the vintage instruments that I have ever played were not worth my time or effort. Pitch, intonation, valves and tone were simply not up to snuff. I have a lot of old instruments but they are ALL PLAYERS.
I do not consider the coprion bells to be special in any way except to the marketing departments. There are simply too many truly sensational instruments based on "standard techniques".
Carol Dawn Reinhardt
Susan Slaughter
Ingrid Jensen
Gunhild Carling
Forget all the blonde beauties. Not my cup of tea.
Play before you pay. This is an old horn and no one will say if it has been "repaired" or not. Because the picture quality is low, bell creases would go unnoticed.
I have played Radial 2° from miserable to brilliant and never could blindly recommend them. I paid 500 euros for my Bb - but played before paying. Mine is only a bit better than "good" and I am working on making it "great" - probably at a cost of $700 to $1,000 ...
@barliman2001 I have been there and after 4 years, am almost back to where I was before. In my case, an accident knocked the 4 front jaw teeth loose beyond repair. In addition, that started a chain reaction that ultimately resulted in me losing all of my teeth. There seems to be bacteria in the mouth just waiting for trauma.
Dentures were the first step and I learned all about dental cremes and other methods to "glue" them in. I learned that a cup of hot coffee dissolved those dental adhesives, so my diet changed during that time too. As the dentures were pretty much the same as the teeth preceding them, my playing was stable. After the gums all healed (6 months), implants were the solution. After that, the geometry of the mouth changed only by microns, but it still was a very dramatic change and it took a year to get back on track. Fortunately, that was during the Covid pandemic so I did not disappoint any of the people that book me.
If you have any questions, let me know.
@SSmith1226 The F being sharp is very unusual. E and D will be sharp and need a bit of correction. That being said, vintage instruments (the days before first valve slides) often had a slightly too long first valve slide. Someone that had habits from a vintage instrument can have acclimatisation issues when switching to a "new" horn. If it bothers you, there is nothing wrong with putting a spacer on the first valve so that it does not go all the way in.
I would never oil the inside. Remember: valve oil is NOT food safe and if you oil the bore, you WILL breathe in the vapor.
Regular maintenance should include bathing the horn in proportion to how often it is played.
Supposedly WD40 is food safe and designed to displace water (WD=Water Displacement). That may be an option, but just as I prefer bathing myself, my horn certainly deserves regular attention too!.
@Jolter said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:
Thanks for posting this thread! I found the link very informative and it helped me with how to think about (and visualize) slotting. The discussion has been slightly less educational but only slightly so.
One thing that bugs me about the article is that if you come at it from a scientific (or in my case, engineering) perspective, that figure is extremely confusing at first. Only after a while did I understand what it was supposed to illustrate: how the Y axis means pitch, yet the orange surface area indicates the amount of overtones. To an engineer, those two values do not belong in the same diagram...
@Trumpetsplus said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:
Not a fan of recreational (part-time) trumpet players indulging in deliberately avoiding the resonance of their instrument. I have a colleague who bends notes so often in his public warmup that he is unable to start any note in tune. Blog on this coming up in the next week or so.
I think I saw an interview (old stuff, 80's) with Håkan Hardenberger where he describes doing severe pitch bends (downward) as part of his practice routine. I don't recall if it was part of the warmup or not, but I think it was supposed to help with embouchure development somehow. I've only seen one or two people doing it, in person, but there seems to be some sort of "method" to it.
Yes, there is some method to it - for people that practice as much as Håkan does. The problem is that we are supposed to train fine motor capability at any level. Moving on to advanced concepts without the foundation builds a contraproductive six pack with our face muscles!
@SSmith1226 said in First Valve Slide and more:
Thanks for both of your opinions. Relative to the spacer suggestion, is it possible that the valves need an alignment?
Out of alignment valves cause more "focus" issues with the tone, not direct intonation problems.
I can appreciate the question. Back at the old place I started at a time where the web had novelty for me. I had little or no other "social media" on my plate. My level of interest in repeating myself was certainly far different than it is today. Still today, I have essentially no motivation to start that over again. Whether it stays that way, or if something pops up to spark my interest, I simply do not know. Currently the additional time behind the horn reaps fruits - that the Internet does not. Sorry.
@Kehaulani said in a new way to learn scales (and a bunch of other stuff in the process):
"A new way?" Where's rowuk.
Rowuk has been in the wings (probably something wished for by many at TrumpetMaster back in the day), just watching where this stuff goes. As we can clearly see, history repeats itself.
Scales, modes and triads are a great way to build patterns - although not new, most of us will admit that we do not practice them enough. Certainly worthy of a post in pedagogy.
I certainly need more than a week for any of the Charlier trancendental etudes. It has been on my stand for about 2 months and I get about 30 min/day with it. So much to tie together.
@Dr-GO said in Best Off-brand Trumpets:
Here is a pic of my Allora Pocket Trumpet
Can't get more "off" than that...
@trumpetb Artificial has "nothing" to do with the human state. What we learn is real. Please do not refer to AI as a "human" experience or trait.
The problem with AI is that there is no judgement. We have seen for instance, what happens to automated trading on the stock exchange floors. We also see that our credit ratings are based on the streets that we live on (not always our own credit worthiness).
What we also see is the strong tendency to believe a machine before a person. Manufacturing has been revolutionised by putting people out of work. There is more coming. Unfortunately, societies largest problem all over the world is having enough work for the populace.
Thomas Sowell has a very applicable quote:
"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
It should be very clear to you that machines will never have to pay any price.
Those pushing AI forward do not have any goals of making life better for everyone - the goal is to make life better for those that can afford to play the game. We may not be able to stop it, but we certainly must vote for politicians that have OUR well being at heart instead to the populist scum from both sides of the aisle. How easily manipulated we and those ruling can be was very recently demonstrated for the whole world to see. An entire congress held hostage for several days by 19 populists. No common denominator. No effort for compromise. 19 terrorists held 400 congressmen hostage until their agenda got pushed through. With AI, it can be the same issue as AI can calculate how little is necessary to take future elections hostage. Our laws and control instances are not even close to ready.
Just imagine the AI run across twitter tweets affecting our ability to get a Tesla and what our individual configuration would be limited to. Add Alexa, Siri to the mix. Maybe we will not even be employable based on what was heard online. There is plenty to be concerned about!
@Kehaulani said in Seeking input on Rules:
Well, as I read it, it's not a pursuit for perfection, rather an arbitrary time frame to just meet the challenge of doing what one can do within a timef frame; something to do for fun and challenge during this virus period to beat the boredom.
Never waste a note...
Username, if you live in Germany, get in contact with me. I live near Frankfurt/Main and we could go through all of the motions BEFORE you decide in which direction to go. It makes no sense to "import" a trumpet if you are just getting started. Germany has enough instruments available with no customs issues.
This is all fine and good, but is the excuse - other things are bad for you too the right argument? Even if a mouthpiece is plated, is what we "think" or "assume" even asked for. We have a lot of Americans believing anything that they want to - from guns to global warming. It is hard to find enough facts outside of the emotion and populist BS being spread thick.
California did not dream lead poisoning up. They announced levels for legislation long before the laws took effect. That is an OK process in my book. It is also what I expect from a reasonable functional government. Don't clobber overnight, give the industries time to adjust. If they sleep on this, goodbye - or move out of state and don't sell in California. Make the Californians travel to Tijuana if they disagree with the policy.
@ssmith1226 said in Bots are getting scary:
An interesting article today on AI and ChatGPt- “Europe Sounds The Alarm On ChatGPT”
An excerpt:
“…. that ChatGPT, just one of thousands of AI platforms currently in use, can assist criminals with phishing, malware creation and even terrorist acts.
If a potential criminal knows nothing about a particular crime area, ChatGPT can speed up the research process significantly by offering key information that can then be further explored in subsequent steps,” the Europol report stated. “As such, ChatGPT can be used to learn about a vast number of potential crime areas with no prior knowledge, ranging from how to break into a home to terrorism, cybercrime and child sexual abuse.”The full article link is here:
https://news.yahoo.com/europe-sounds-the-alarm-on-chatgpt-090013543.html
So guys, post pictures of or messages from vacation AFTER you get back home - not during the act.
Nothing worse than returning home to an empty studio!
