Posts made by tjcombo

I think that this is about to become my favourite cornet. It just arrived. Incredibly complete with two sets of valve slides and appears to have all or most of the famous Mechanism in pieces.
It's in way better condition than the eBay seller's description. The case is tatty, but seems original. Third valve was rotated and so it wouldn't make a sound at first. Oiled and refitted the valves and it plays quite nicely. All slides except the main tuning slide move freely. The tuning slide crook fell off in my hand so I guess that the inner tubes are seized. Will clean it up and have a gentle go at freeing them this weekend.
I'm as happy as a pig in manure. I think this is a keeper

@stumac said in An exercise in futility?:

A friend gave me his piccolo trumpet to see what I could do with it. (Oswal India, nuff sed)

Pulled stuck slides, easy enough, removed valves, casings numbered 1 2 3 4, Valves 2of numbered 1, other 2 no number,fun to sort out on reassembly, valves appear to have been greased, very sluggish.

2 leadpipes, assume Bb and A, both receivers just parallel tubing, Bb the mouthpiece goes into the start of the leadpipe and is firm, in A pipe does not reach leadpipe and wobbles.

This is as far as I have gone, the next step is to give it a good cleaning and then reassemble paying particular attention to valve alignment. I have Blackburn Bb and A pipes that will fit.

More to come.

Regards, Stuart.

Maybe add a lampshade?

I've been using The Progressive Warmup by Eric Bolvin (a sometimes inhabitant of TM) for quite a while now. It's supposed to be a 37 week program, but the mix of flow studies, tonguing and slurred exercises is a really great way to start a practice session - you can always try to play them better or sound nicer. $12.95 for a downloaded soft copy is good value.
https://bolvinmusic.com/product/progressive-warm-up/?v=6cc98ba2045f

@Peter-Mac I look forward to seeing you play. I hope the weather hangs in there for a few more weeks. And yes I would like to have a tootle with you some time.

@Peter-Mac Congrats Pete. That's a serious commitment. Do you have any gigs coming up? From the clips on your FB the band sounds great and I'd love to hear a full set.

Edit... Should've clicked on more links... Is the Cherry Lake gig a current thing? First Sunday is the day they have the market I think?? What time?

@Doodlin said in My journey starts here . . . .:

. . . although I never was an accomplished player, more like a "Book 2" Essential Elements kinda guy. Did not see a "Beginner" section here. ....

You're expecting trumpet players to self-identify as beginners??

@stumac I noticed that you avoided the question about "any cool horns"

@SSmith1226 I haven't mastered the iPhone piece yet. I tried, but ended up using my desktop to load the image.

I recall MJ posting from time to time about Monettes for sale on eBay. Google search doesn't show any recent postings, last that I can see from in were in 2017.

(search site:trumpetmaster.com MJ)

Always enjoyed the joke thread on TM. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so let's see if I can successfully upload an image (if not, failure always has a funny angle...)
NoMoreBlues.jpg

@dupac What a thing of beauty Mikel. I've just taken a roll-of-the-dice and bought a "fixer-upper" one of these on eBay. It looks to have the bits and pieces of the mechanism. Waiting for the postman now!

@BigDub here's where it gets dangerous - my take is that the trumpet is kind of incidental at first. Breathing is a natural thing and we don't hold our breath after inhaling, the air almost falls back out without any physical effort. Greg Spence's take on the circle of breath is that breathing is like a golf swing - you don't hold the club at the top of your back-swing. Inhaling and exhaling is one continuous (no tension) exercise.
Another important component is not using your tongue to start a note when getting this whole concept working. I think it was a post from VB that started me working on "breath attack" (attack is almost too strong a word here). It's easier to excite a trumpet into making a noise by releasing an explosion of wind with your tongue, but a lot more factors have to be right to reliably start a note just by breathing into the horn.
So circle of breath as it works for me is full, (but not huge, forced) breaths, put the horn gently on your chops and exhale through the mouthpiece at the top of the circle, backswing, whatever you want to call it. Just let the notes flow. It's beautiful thing and it would've been nice to have this advice when I started to learn as an 8 year old.
Does that make sense?

@BigDub remember that we are trumpet players, here for our good looks and ability to play fast, loud and high, let's not question the underlying why's and wherefores
The teacher from whom I benefitted most in my early teens taught me to maintain rock-hard abs whilst playing. He was a leading pro trom player back in the day. I know from talking recently to older teachers (who teach a much more relaxed breathing method) that the hard abs method was advocated back then by the 1st trumpet from the Melbourne symph. At the time he was the go-to trumpet for many genres and a leading teacher.
My vocal teacher introduced a similar concept to circle of breath. I picked up a horn after a long layoff and noticed that it seemed easier to play when applying the vocal breathing techniques (along with the relaxed muscles needed to sing). Nowadays, my range is a little better than it was back in the days of tensed-up guts, but it's certainly way easier to play, control and make (JMHO) a nice sound.
So circle of breath is a real thing, it reinforced the ideas from my singing teacher and nicely articulated the breathing technique.

Now whether it's the basis for a religion

Here's a local Aussie band from the mid-70's. We didn't get colour TV until 75 from memory. Anyhow it's monochrome and check the host of the TV show - Paul Hogan who I believe went on to perform with Crocodiles.
Kush used to put on a mighty live show with their 4 piece horn section and played at my old uni a few times.. I see one of the sax players, Ron Anderson playing at local jazz festivals. He's also a gun jazz pianist and I make an effort to see him play whenever he's on the program.

@ButchA thanks for posting Butch. I saw them play at Concord Pavilion last year and they still sound great!

@LaTrompeta (sadly?) my only test blow of a Committee left me cold. I know that it's not a good idea to judge a horn by a short blow of one example, but my favourite horns all had something to like from the first tootle. Unfortunately the prices of even "renovator's delight" Committees now makes it unlikely that I'll get to live with one for long enough to try again.

Hope I didn't miss the bus. Thanks Tobylou8 for the tip-off. And I can read this site on my mobile too . The last century layout of the other board was driving me crazy!