Posts made by ROWUK

My response was not pointed at anyone specifically, rather it was intended to encourage reflection. If we look in the mirror, we realize that we „expect“ a lot from our tax dollars but when it comes to accountability, we are very selective. We have options for replacing brass with lead. The factoid that there are „toxic“ plastics is just another distraction from the issue. To be honest, not much intelligence is required from politicians or manufacturers to solve this issue. Less factoids, more common sense.

@Pinstriper said in Lead found in brass horn mouthpieces:

@ROWUK said in Lead found in brass horn mouthpieces:

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.

I was merely offering a counterpoint to the view that plastic was presumed to be safe. It depends on the plastic.

Whether a particular political body ignores the science and "finds" something to be so, that may not be, is its own phenomenon. As far as reasonable sounding regulation goes, anyone in the environmental sciences or compliance field knows all too well that in order to be in compliance with one standard, you have to violate another, and so you decide which fine to pay.

Not all plastic is safe. Not all brass is toxic.

Carol Dawn Reinhardt
Susan Slaughter
Ingrid Jensen
Gunhild Carling

Forget all the blonde beauties. Not my cup of tea.

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.

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).

The problem here is that government as usual does not consider solutions other than "stop it". To be fair, the "no lead" legistlation had plenty of time given to manufacturers who simply dropped the ball by not taking the warning shots seriously. Perhaps early in the process, alternatives could have been considered by politicians - but where was the "good faith" on either of the sides. It is yet more proof: If you do what you are supposed to, when you are supposed to, you won't have to when you have to.

California takes a lot of hits for such legislation, I am not sure that it is justified.

Looking at mouthpieces, we have plastic, ceramics, titanium and surgical stainless readily available, machinable and working. What is the beef?

Great collection of ideas. The Institut Wiener Klangstil in Vienna did a study on the effects of mouthpiece backbore, throat, cup width and depth where we can add or subtract up to 15 cents in specific registers. They did not address the changes in tone when changing those aspects of the mouthpiece. We also have Dave Monettes mouthpieces that also considerably deviate from more "standard" types. Here we also have up to 15 cents plus and minus deviation.

I think that this is reason to study and document the effects more closely. I recently bought a new natural trumpet and tested it with several mouthpieces and there were some strong tendencies - the lower the pitch, the further apart the octaves - requiring body use to play in tune (pivot, upper body tension, manipulation of the airflow or tongue position).

Please remember that we are creatures of habit. For valid testing, we need several attempts (much more than 3 or 4).

In my world, we are creatures of habit. I am convinced that the „where“ is secondary, what we need is „stable“. This gives us a reliable target for development.

Recently, I have been spending a lot of time on the natural trumpet. The mouthpiece there is huge(19.5mm) and the proportion of upper to lower lip far different than with my „modern“ trumpets. This seems to be insignificant for playing. We just need a very stable base in everything that we do.

Generally, embouchure questions only come up when something is not working. There seems to be the blind assumption that we change one thing and are cured. This has NEVER worked. In my teaching, body use and breathing come first, then a relaxed exhale into the note. We build stability over time by strengthening the foundation and not moving too fast to get an octave more in 4 weeks before an audition. The attitude about preparation is the biggest reason that we get into trouble. We need to play things out of our scope because we did not improve the scope when we should have.

Generally, a good program with lipslurs can improve the embouchure by evolution instead of cold turkey revolution.

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.

When our range stops at a specific note (especially if we can name it), our problem is simply too much pressure. We squeeze the lips off and they are not free to vibrate. Unfortunately, we are creatures of habit and with too much pressure comes a whole army of body use and breathing issues.

The success stories of turning range around are basically monitored by teachers sensitive to the subject. I use primarily Clarke and Irons for myself and my teaching.

@tjcombo I use drones. It simply keeps intonation on the map when practicing. A 6th in C major is much different than the third in F!

@Kehaulani If that was the goal, they failed miserably. I consider them to be light years apart on blow, core and tone.

@Kehaulani said in Does a large bore horn take more air?:

Science aside, , I wonder if instrument makers don't use the bore sizes as matters of classifications, within their own relative results. That horns aren't built with certain characteristics that fall within the bore-size classifications. And these characteristics apply to these given classifications regardless of how it's done?

Man, that's hard to express what I want to say! My point is that, within a given make, do the terms include certain characteristics that show the results and not necessarily the how.

So, if I buy a medium-bore Getzen and a large-bore Getzen, and a medium-bore Schilke and a large-bore Schilke, will the medium-bore horns be have certain characteristics that separate them from their large-bore counterparts?

This was certainly the way that they were built before the Xeno (with the exception of the Bach ML Vindabona). If you want to reduce the amount of „air“ required in a large bore Bach, remove the bell brace next to the tuning slide. Optionally, one could purchase the models with a reversed tuning slide. There the brace is closer to the valve block. More energy escapes through the bell, we hear ourselves better. We fool ourselves into believing that we need less air.

One more time: moving air is ONLY necessary to get the lips vibrating and lubricate them so that the standing wave can be maintained. We are NOT talking about the physical act of filling a trumpet up with air (it is already full) or about fluid dynamics blowing air through a specific pipe size.

If we want to measure how much air the trumpet needs (or better, how inefficient our embouchure is), hold long tones out. Write down when you run out of air. Repeat 25 times for statistical relevance and then try the next instrument.

@Vulgano-Brother said in TrumpetMaster.com:

I was a moderator there, and as far as I know, none of us knew or had contact information for MJ other than through TM.

I agree with this. Even in the last months, I don‘t know of MJ answering PMs.

@Kehaulani said in Does a large bore horn take more air?:

So, if I buy a medium-bore and a large-bore from Kanstul, I would not find the large-bore harder on my endurance and other perimeters at the end of a night's gig? They would have the same result?

This is a considerably different question.
The first issue for comparison is acclimation. We are most comfortable with the stuff that we are used to because more is automated. The brain is actually in the way of change.
The second issue is match of the mouthpiece to the different bore progression and bell shape. Remember, the trumpet is a complete system including the player.
The third issue is where will we be playing. Matching a section sound in a wind band is a very much different use case than manipulating orchestral fabric as a symphonic player.
The fourth issue is our ability to hear ourselves. Take your favorite horn into a bathroom and play your favorite excerpt, then go outdoors to a lake and play with no acoustical feedback - the same horn us now stuffy and much harder to play.
The fifth issue is bias confirmation. Our generation grew up on starting with ML instruments and a 7C and then maturing to a larger horn and specialty mouthpiece. What a crock!
The last issue is the state of our playing. Read Dave Monettes testimonials from players after getting their bodies aligned. This is not voodoo or Monette specific but unfortunately too few players and teachers invest enough here.

In my case, my range, endurance does not change once acclimated. The difference between horns is color and I leverage this to the performances benefit. Most of the historical copies are smaller bore but have bigger bells than we generally play today.

@Dr-GO said in Does a large bore horn take more air?:

@ROWUK said in Does a large bore horn take more air?:

Simply, NO. it is not the bore that needs air. It is the resistance and that has nothing to do with the bore.

Thanks Rowuk. I've been trying to convince others on this thread but they all seem to be reluctant to appreciate the physics of a propagating sound wave through various materials. I guess my having a PhD in quantum chemistry doesn't qualify me, but your understanding of Trumpet physics truly blends with my training in wave forms.

The simple observation that if it was air transmission dependent, we would not be hearing the sound until seconds after a note was played. I hope people reflect on these concepts as I do feel this understanding can enhance the performance we get from our horns.

I have experimented with a headphone speaker glued to a mouthpiece. The trumpet needs no air flow. Only the players lips need enough air to get them to open and close by overcoming lip tension. The smart players learn to reduce tension, that reduces pressure and the amount of air flowing.

To be honest, I think that the air discussion has more to do with mine is bigger than yours than with serious intelligent practice. If a trumpet needs more air, the phrases that we play become shorter.

@uqj3ww8jw

I use a Reunion Blues leather double bag. They do not appear to make it anymore but here is an almost identical item from Gard:
https://www.gardbags.com/en/brasswind/trumpet/gig-bag/9-mlk-gard-doublers-trumpet-flugelhorn-gig-bag-leather.html

I have been using mine for 20 years and it still is great.

@moshe said in Does a large bore horn take more air?:

If all other factors are the same,
a larger bore takes more air.

On the other hand, things such as tightness of the wrap can cause the larger bore to require less air than the smaller bore.

So the answer is the same as what I wear:

Depends.

moshe

@moshe said in Does a large bore horn take more air?:

If all other factors are the same,
a larger bore takes more air.

On the other hand, things such as tightness of the wrap can cause the larger bore to require less air than the smaller bore.

So the answer is the same as what I wear:

Depends.

moshe

Simply, NO. it is not the bore that needs air. It is the resistance and that has nothing to do with the bore.

@L-A-Horn
For me, the best off brand is Monette - regardless of price. For one of my students it was a used Schilke B1 and B6 (both under $600 used but in excellent condition). My beginning students normally start with a Yamaha 3xxx, which is not an off brand but has incredible bang for the buck - including resale.

I have played a bunch of the Carol trumpets that have good value, but little bang if you are going to study classical trumpet (you will end up having to buy a Bach or Yamaha anyway). A B&S Challenger 2 offers most of what a Bach 180 does for far less money. Ivan Hunter visited a while back with some prototypes of his horns and they are glorious and reasonably priced!

So as we see, from my view, bang means suitable for the job, resellable without great loss, in great playing condition (having to get a used horn refurbed before being able to use it is a crap shoot). The price must be justified based on the quality of the tool.

@L-A-Horn said in Best Off-brand Trumpets:

@ROWUK Generally, when people consider off-brand trumpets, it's to save some money and/or stay within budget. Therefore, off-brand would be one that's not considered mainstream and requires significant investment. My hope is that your post isn't to dispirit an otherwise healthy conversation.

@Dr-GO They can have your daughters, but not your instruments. Spoken like a true musician.

My intent is not to dispirit the thread. If we define the "intent", there is actually a lot to talk about. Let us take "best" out and replace it with high value/low price. In most cases I would not even consider most mainstream instruments as "best".

@Dr-GO said in Best Off-brand Trumpets:

Here is a pic of my Allora Pocket Trumpet

Can't get more "off" than that...