Posts made by ROWUK

It looks like a standard Bach to me. It has the finger ring, stop rod and double tuning slide brace.

I don't really think about what trumpet any artist plays, I only think about what they accomplished and with Alan, the list is long!

@oldschooleuph Even at the end of Mt. Vernon, the horns simply did not have the build quality of the "competition". That does not necessarily have anything to do with playing "well". Even a "bad" Bach had that magic core and adjusting to the playing characteristics was just something that we did back then.

The perception of the Mt. Vernons today is considerably different although the lacquer and valve issues are the two things normally necessary when refurbishing. Either the Bach lacquer was not so good or the horns were not prepped properly.

There is a swiss artisan Rene Spada that disassembles Bachs and rebuilds them with swiss precision. In my view, they are what Bach should have been all along. The Spada Bachs are simply that much better using only Bach parts. Even if I had a Mt. Vernon, I would have it disassembled, cleaned and put back together with Spadas precision and attitude. There are other artisans. I use one Rainer Jordan who has his shop close to Frankfurt.

I have had 3 Bach trumpets. A 180 B172* (new picked at Giardinellis in New York but rebuilt by Spada), a 180 B25 and a C229H (also bought from Giardinellis). I still have the 229 although in the mean time, it has been completely disassembled and rebuilt without tension as well as getting a tuning bell and a new leadpipe.

@oldschooleuph
And as fine of a horn as the Bach 180 Stradivarius is/was (when yours found you), the "build quality" in the 60s/70s/80s was worse than a student Ambassador or certainly a Schilke. Lacquer and silver plate usually developed blemishes within 3 years. For heavy players, the valves were worth refurbishing every 5 or 6 years to get compression back. Precision valve alignments had very noticable effects (sometimes even negative). Perhaps the valve wear could have been minimized with synthetic lubricants - or cleaning more often and repeated application of "Al Cass" per day. Standard for me was oiling when the horn complained or after the weekly bath.

Although there were hundreds to thousands of possibilities, Most everyone that I knew went to a store to pick one out of stock. I know of one single trumpeter that actually ordered a customized horn directly from Bach. In my opinion even today, Bach=play before you pay.

It is important to recognize context when talking about "quality". A students instrument can have a very high quality, but the focus is on different things!
A beginner handles their instrument more by "chance" than by "experience". This means that a student instrument must be very durable to insure good mechanical properties even when not regularly maintained. The next mark of a high quality student instrument is how easily it "speaks". It needs to resonate easily with good tone. The player has to hear themselves easily. The valves will not have as tight of a tolerance to prevent them from hanging when not regularly brushing teeth before playing!

I will leave out "intermediate" instruments as I personally really see no musical sense to them. We can move from a Yamaha 2xxx or 3xxx directly to the 8xxx series for instance.

Professional instruments are not "soldered or designed better" than the student instruments. The improvements are in the time it takes to manipulate the materials for a playing response more closely connected to the players intentions. Instead of "durability", materials are used that allow a greater choice of playing colors, perhaps more ease of playing extremely soft and loud. The ability for "articulation" to be heard. A more controllable transition from clear to brilliant in a crescendo. In many cases, professional instruments have considerably more manual labor in their construction and that costs money.

I certainly agree that buying a beginner a pro horn normally does no one a favor. we start on a bicycle with training wheels, not carbon fiber rims. As our use case matures, we have opportunities to offer more colorful playing. A professional instrument can help us tap those talents by giving our ears/brain less gaps to fill in. When our vocabulary and quality of musical speech warrant it, the pro horn lets us shine through more.

@_mark_
Hi Mark,
the biggest issue is simply giving yourself enough time to build the right habits the first time around. The trumpet is first and foremost a "wind instrument", and that should be your focus.

Most trumpeters go through various stages of development. We start with "whatever we can get" and advance to a level that is hard to break though. Then we figure something out (or get help) and the next step comes along. At one point in time, we all have a bit of proficiency BUT want more range and end up using pressure to get it. This is legitimate, as pressure works - up to a point. The problem is, if we build a pressure habit, we will have to break it to get to the next step. Habits are tough to break as any drinker/smoker can tell us.

When we are at this stage, we need to ask the questions - how much is improvement worth and when does it make sense to make any changes. Very often a decision is made in mid playing season and the player only ends up screwing up his own reputation.

We make changes out of playing season! We can lay the plans and make preparations but never ever take a risk during times when we can play in public!

As far as teeth go, mine are crooked and I played to the side for 30 years. Then I mage some changes in my routine (more lipslurs and longtones), and the embouchure wandered more or less to the middle where I have been playing for the last 25 years.

I had an accident 18 months ago and now have a full denture instead the bottom teeth (no choice). Thanks to the Corona season, I had time to adjust and my playing is about where it was before the accident. My Circle of Breath, Earl Irons lip flexibilities, long tones and a lot of hymnbook were the way back.

As far as a teacher goes, I really do recommend getting some lessons early to at least get the daily routine, body use and ones own expectations pointed in the right direction. After that, success is very dependent on the players motivations. Even after 55 years of playing at all levels, I still take occasional lessons - some trumpet, some body use. There is still a whole lot to learn.

Best regards and good luck,

Rowuk

My experience with Chinese instruments has been very good. We just have to understand that they do not decide on the quality, they just build to order.

When I last visited, I saw the production lines. If some customer wants a $50 trumpet, they will build it. For $51, you get some nickel silver trim, for $52, a bit thicker metal. $55 gets you a couple of mu more Monel on the valves... And so it goes up to their most expensive instruments that cost maybe $650 each (including mouthpiece, case and white gloves) when a container full is ordered. The realistically purchased instruments are VERY, VERY good!

The bad guy is not the manufacturer, rather the customer that is willing to pawn off cheap on their customers.

320kbps MP3. Respectable sound for a free download! I wonder if the original recording has better sound?

Thanks Dale for the link!

A tuner is often the worst thing that we can do to our playing. Drones, Stamp and simple duets (not recording one voice and then the next however - then only one voice "gives" - the second one!) are about the best.
The tuner is almost always wrong except for establishing a one note reference.

There are a couple of internal mechanisms for tuning, none are accessible from the intellectual level.
Drones teach us to relate with sum and difference beats
Stamp teaches to find the resonant center
Duets teach us give and take in the context of ensemble playing.

The consummate trumpeter needs it all. We need thousands of repetitions to claim "habit".

@masterwannabe Used trumpets are a buyers market - with very few exceptions. I would have no personal interest at all for me or my students. It would make a nice lamp - that is what I will do with my Monette Raja C when I retire from trumpet playing.

@masterwannabe This is, for western standards, at best an intermediate trumpet. It looks like a Bb/C instrument. It is not "rare" or "valuable" in my view.

Arban only speaks about the Cornet á piston or simply "piston". I have never seen any reference tying Arban to a rotary valved anything. It also looks like someone else besides the bell engraver engraved the name into the bell.
I would be interested to see what proof Josh got of the provenance of this instrument.

Congratulations!

I have found that range becomes useful when we can integrate it into our "style". We need to know when the leading edge of "higher notes" must be round and fluffy or razor sharp. In the non rehearsal times, play along with any recordings that you have. An acid test would be to use headphones to hear the band and record JUST your playing. Afterwards the warts become very obvious when the band sound does not mask.

Have fun, stay healthy!

I did not see any new format. In any case, what aggrevates me most is "wasted space" that makes me have to scroll to see even only a couple of lines. Facebook is my biggest loser 2020 in this respect.

Very nice!

Many times tinnitus is caused by a shift of our lower jaw due to pulling teeth. Proper implants or prosthetics can, in this case restore the jaw geometry and at least lessen the impact.

Opening the throat does not make the mouthpiece less stuffy. It makes the "targets" or slotting looser - a big advantage for Bach C trumpets with the high third space C, flat 4th space E and sometimes sharp top of staff G.

I have found that "stuffy" generally means that I can't hear myself well. Even with my current setup that is wonderful in churches and concert halls, when I play outdoors with little reflective surfaces, it feels stuffy. Experiments with the 1 1/2C back in the day, had me push the tuning slide in further (making me slightly sharp) and then relaxing more when playing. After a short while, the more relaxed chops resulted in much more open sound and far less embouchure tension - great for more endurance and a better upper register. In addition, articulation got easier where my face muscles were doing less.

I would suggest experimenting with pushing the tuning slide in so that you are maybe 10 cents sharp, and then "lipping" everything slightly down. For me it was like pulling the cork out after a week or two. 10 cents is not much work to compensate and I found it much easier to hear myself with the "new" tone.

In my world, the 3c is NOT a symphonic mouthpiece, rather something well suited for commercial playing. It has for me a slightly uncomfortable inner rim sharpness. Good flexibility, tone with a fair amount of sizzle.
I played the 1 1/2C for 15 years. Comfortable rim, great articulation, creamy tone equally good with the Bb and C trumpet although mine with the C had the throat drilled out. I ended up switching to a Schilke 18 (15 years)and since 1996 to a Monette 2 series mouthpiece (B2D/C2D). These days, playing the 1.5C makes my tone a lot rougher and upper register flat.

In Germany we have E music and U music. E stands for „Ernst“ or serious and U stands for „Unterhaltung“ or entertainment.
I love a language that supports the fun side of music.

No guilt, all pleasure! Maybe I felt a little guilty when buying a recording of John Cages 4‘33“...

@_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.

Mark, as you may have noticed, any particular fingering can produce multiple notes. That is why 3 valves on the trumpet (with 9 possible combinations) can produce 30 to 40 different notes.
Just taking the open trumpet (no valves pressed) we can play a pedal C (one wavelength in the horn), low C (2 wavelengths), G (3 wavelengths), 3rd space c(4 wavelengths), 4th space e (5 wavelengths), top of staff g (6 wavelengths), high Bb (7 wavelengths) and high c (8 wavelengths).

What is happening to you is that you are playing a „G“ (3 wavelengths) and because your embouchure is staying tense, the note does not go down, rather jumps to the Bb which is the next note possible with the first valve.

Open horn: Pedal C, C, G, c, e, g, Bb, high c
2nd valve: Pedal B, B, F#, b, d#, f#, a, high b
1st valve: Pedal Bb, Bb, F, Bb, d, f, Ab, high Bb
1+2 valve: Pedal A, A, E, a, c#, e, g, high a
2+3 valve: Pedal Ab, Ab, Eb, Ab, c, Eb, high Ab
1+3 valve: Pedal G, G, D, g, b, d, top of staff g
1+2+3 valve: Pedal F#, F#, C#, F#, a#, c#, e, top of staff f#.

Any of the good trumpet method books have tables where they show this list. It is one of the basics of learning a brass instrument. As our lips are the motor „generating“ the sound, we must invest on controlling tension of the embouchure to produce the desired tones at will. A six pack in our face is the worst approach. We must think more like surgeons - fine motor activity. Many repetitions are required (thousands) until we perfect a certain aspect.

Relax your embouchure and you will get the F instead of the Bb.