Posts made by ROWUK

@kehaulani said in playing with a full lower de nture:

Rowuk - any special suggestions? Thanks/

Special suggestions,
well the biggest issue is maintaining attitude when everything is different and not working as expected.

I got lucky as my process started right before Covid. There were no gigs and therefore I could do what was best instead of just trying to get by. I got lucky (or we could call it divine intervention) as a church where I perform a lot had the idea of sending a loud instrument to 4 retirement homes every Sunday to give the church "presence" where the retirees could not go to church and the Pastors could not visit the homes. We agreed on 6 places for me to play and 3 tunes per place - a folk tune, a church tune and a childrens song. It worked out to about 45 Minutes of playing in easy chunks. The tunes were easy enough to allow me to play in spite of changing geometry with each adaptation of the dentures. I learned about what dental creme worked best, I learned that a cup of coffee could spoil the effort (melting the denture creme). Most important, I was still playing and had a reason to practice EVERY DAY!

After 2 years, we switched to once a month and the major church holidays. The first weekend in May 2023 was my "final" performance in the parks and parking lots.

That would be my 2 suggestions: get back to basics and find a reason to play - as often as possible. The people at retirement homes are eternally greatful. I have hundreds of stories and anecdotes from my time there. A lot of individual fate/destiny - including my own. I learned that what I have been teaching for the last 40 years + even works for an old guy like me.

@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.

Let us not forget that for a good doctor, there is no difference between a 1week, 10 day or 2 week break. That is simply their way of saying that we have had a significant medical intrusion and a "little time" is required for our bodies to recuperate.

They want to see us again before we "strain" anyway and it is to our benefit to let it heal a "bit" longer than to risk chapter 2 of the same issue. The pencil trick is a great way to maintain muscle tone without any additional air pressure.

@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!

@anniebee, actually a bit of "humbling" is not always a bad thing for musicians that have had a lot of gifts during their career. I can honestly say that at no time did I doubt about wanting to come back. I have a great dentist who was willing to explain and listen. He did EVERYTHING that we talked about and helped fine tune after everything was actually finished and locked in.

Annie,
we are creatures of habit. With your "repaired lip", you have to retrain what your brain expects. That takes a couple of THOUSAND repetitions.

My experience is to use what has worked for you before but under no circumstance stress out. Our brain works on a reward/punishment system and constantly trying to "hit" high notes sends a frustration message - blocking development and increasing doubt.

Without having you in my studio for a lesson, I would recommend only safe stuff:

1. Practice as softly as you can. This promotes fine motor reaction from the lip muscles instead of forcing a six pack build.
2. Overdose on "easy" interval slurs - like from the Adam 27 Lip flexibilities book.
3. avoid all frustrating things - if your upper octave is deficient, work on articulation and stuff in the lower register. Make your playing time positive and productive. Excel at other things!

I am sort of an expert on this because I lost all of my teeth 3 years ago in an accident. I was lucky because there were very few gigs during Covid. I had time to work things out. The road back was full of "back to the basics" and keeping my attitude in the right direction. My upper octave is not complete yet but it is enough for the symphonic work that I do.

@trumpetb I too have an allergy for "long winded" anything. 5 minutes of content taking up an hour or two is actually an insult. So it is with many of your posts - at the core, a line or two of good content (that I do not always agree with but still find it "good" as it makes me think about things) but so much "fluff" that pales in comparison.
I can appreciate having lots of time on hand and using that time on social media. That does not mean that your pleasure transfers to ours.

In your case, I simply do not even "parse" anything from you longer than 10 lines or so. The content is simply not worth it.

I do not consider Jolter to be a spoiled child. He agrees or disagrees and keeps his content "compact". He has nothing to prove and never had. I will not comment on what I think about your literary circular breathing.

Congratulations!
I personally would not sell off the tried and true so soon. Wait 6 months and THEN you can be sure that the acclimation process is complete. I am not saying that there is something wrong with your choice. I am saying that we are creatures of habit and breaking old habits is a process that does not ALWAYS work.
That being said, my last mouthpiece switch was cold turkey in 1996 and I never looked back. I kept the old mouthpieces for a long time but never tried them out as the new mouthpiece stayed feeling good.

Enjoy!

@henrylr Trombone slide grease is designed for fast action. Trumpet slide grease is not as fast, lasts a lot longer and also helps the slides be more "airtight".
Tuning slide grease would be the same for both instruments.

@walter-sk Interesting, a post 2021 and no response after that. I often wonder how serious the questions are - and how serious some of the answers are. Are we scaring folks off, or are they just posting the usual trumpet thing of not having enough range (that I interpret as no process for building)?

In any case, since I have my upper/lower dentures and implants now, I revisit the tension vs blow thing every single day.

That being said, mouthpiece size (within reason) makes no difference. The Baroque mouthpieces with 19-21 mm inner rims have the same high notes as my modern 10 1/2C on the pick. My go to orchestra mouthpieces are around 1C size - with the same high notes.

I firmly believe that we use mouthpieces to change tone - not range. With the right tone for the genre, playing in the upper register fits better and THAT makes it easier.

@orly61 Going back though the last 55 years of playing and teaching, I have only had one horn that had issues - and that was me (grip of death).
The lesson that I learned very early is that we clean the valves, wait until they are bone dry and THEN oil them. Oil does not stick to moisture, metal that has an oil film does not let moisture cause issues.
Break in is actually "wear in". With a properly cleaned and oiled trumpet, 4 weeks should be enough unless you have a Schilke (tighter tolerances - more break in time).
Make a video while playing to see if you are pushing the valves down from the side instead of the top.

Breaking in the valves can take a while. The tighter the tolerances, the longer it takes.

I also use T2 oil which is on the very thin side - which is good for tight valves.

In many cases, the player does not push the valves down straight when playing. When valves are not broken in, that can cause them to bind. The solution is to practice more, fast and slow which will cause minor wear (breaking in) according to the geometry of your hand.

A second possibility is the grip of death from the left hand. I remember in the Renold Schilke days his new horns needing considerable break in and easing up the intensity of the left hand grip went a long way in improving the situation.

It is important that you inform your dealer and wait for instructions. I would be VERY hesitant to have any hack try to polish something out. The correct procedure is called lapping.

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.

What would be the purpose? To rename Trumpetboards? To get any traffic that might still be looking for TrumpetMaster?

I wrote e'mails to admins and hosters, researched the blocking of the site but got no answers. I know of a couple of legal actions that fizzled out but nothing that would have locked the site down.

I think that you have done an admirable job giving the orphaned a home. Admins are clear about their actions and are willing to "discuss" decisions. I do have the impression that the troublemakers did not migrate.

I see no use for the domain if we can not restore content.

Playing any given tone is the process of our air pressure being able to "blow apart" the lips. If we can't play low notes, the usual situation is that the lips are pressed too tightly together. We can not just intellectually tell our facial muscles to "relax". Playing the trumpet is fine motor activity that needs many low impact repetitions to create muscle memory.

In my "circle of breath" (which is only a collection of things from others with my individual visualisation), I mention exhaling into the note. That is what is needed here. Tonguing the note adds a burst of air pressure to kick start the tone and that is NOT A GOOD THING at this stage. We should only use the tongue to "shape" the beginning of a tone (articulate). We can only start to shape when we have "tone in the first place".

Exhale into the long tones.

In learning to play the trumpet, we can learn from AI techniques - just not as quickly.
What does AI do? It takes the established base of facts (entered by whoever is "responsible" - the facts can be limited in scope or very broad depending on who is feeding the database)and calculates on the base of documented success with those facts, what steps offer fastest results.
This is what also happens with a good student teacher relationship - with perhaps not as broad of an experience base. The teachers "large" experience base is applied to the student.

The problem is the relationship between the student and AI or student and teacher. At the end of the day, the student must understand and be motivated by the "facts" presented - regardless of where they are from.

In my world, no one ever "taught" talent, or even patience. The patient and talented person that had the good luck of having a qualified, patient and motivating tutor had higher odds. I do not believe that the odds change when the tutor is AI. Only access to the qualified part is possibly enabled. Perhaps the technical aspects could be sorted more quickly with AI. That could possibly lead to more motivation, but equally possible could replace "musical" with "technically spectacular". We see this happening in many areas of art like latin or standard dancing for instance. Live bands do not play during the competition - everything is choreographed to a CD recording.

@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!

@barliman2001 my vacation this year is especially taxed. I will be in the Waldkraiburg (the home of Miraphone) area from 5-15 August and hope to catch him at his shop on one of my free days. I have some projects planned for the "near" future.

Blueprinting often consists of taking the instrument completely apart, unsoldering everything and reassembling with no "tension".

Changing the number and position of the braces and adding weight to specific parts is a big part of what I did. I also have a tuning bell and changed the lead pipe to a cut down Bach 7. The bell braces are on rails.

@barliman2001 https://www3.nd.edu/~dstowe/orchestra/16-17_parts/Elgar-Enigma.tpt-tbn-transp.pdf

Here are parts in Bb from the Lucks library.