Best posts made by Trumpetb

@Dr-GO I cannot imagine the pure joy of sharing such moments and sharing a space in time with Till and being worthy of it.

I am too late myself with so many of those who have now departed although Till exists, it may take me what remains of my lifetime to measure up to him.

Some would say that we would be lucky one day to be good enough and to have that opportunity.

I say there is no luck there is only hard work and we make our opportunities.

I believe we create ourselves and we forge ourselves on the anvil of hard work, Till has done so as Miles Chet Louis Harry and all those other greats have done and did before him and before us.

We stand on the shoulders of Giants and one day if we work hard enough we might stand beside them as you have done.

My personal opinion for what it is worth is the only magic in Cass mouthpieces is, they are suited to certain players whose playing style suits the Cass designs.

That is all that mouthpieces really offer and we have the capability to change the way we play to exploit the capabilities of the equipment we use.

Of course rubbish mouthpieces will always be rubbish and create barriers to good playing but all good mouthpieces give us room to develop.

And when we have gone down that road as far as we can and finally hit limitations of our equipment, we can change our equipment to take us further in the direction we want to go.

An ounce of polishing of our abilities is worth a ton of polishing our equipment.

If Cass mouthpieces work for you that is great but I dont believe they are a holy grail for everyone.

@Dr-GO

Wise words Dr-GO, musicianship in general and trumpet playing in particular is a very good therapy and is recognised as such.

When I am feeling down, and I generally do not suffer from this condition, I play and the problems evaporate.

Stress I feel comes in part from unrealised personal expectations.

Expecting high pay for our great skill and yet receiving low pay for that great skill is one cause of stress.

If we lower our expectations happiness can be the result.

I have very high standards but very few expectations other than being allowed to have a ball playing for both appreciative audiences and for myself.

Do we musicians deserve to be raised up. No, Doctors deserve that, charity workers deserve that, the emergency services deserve that, the armed forces deserve that.

So many in the world who are starving or have no water or are caught up in wars or suffer horrific injury deserve so much more than I do.

For a musician to complain because they dont earn enough money is taking yourself too seriously in my opinion.

We are all in this life together and so many suffer so much more than I or we musicians do.

I am not rich in money, I am enriched by music and will always be grateful to have my music and to help others through their lives by the meagre skills that I possess.

It is a privilege to be a musician.

I think we can easily be presented with so many areas to work on that we quickly become overwhelmed with the huge amount of work we then face, and we never seem to have time to reach any of our goals.

I would suggest deciding on where you want to go, then looking honestly at where you are now and then you will know the gap that you must cross, select just those offerings that will take you across that gap.

A great start is the ROWUK post, but our needs vary over time and it is always a good idea to often review and judge if what you are doing is still fit for purpose and will still yield the results you look for.

I know it is hard but the only true failures are those who give up before realising their goals.

@Kehaulani and @a-j-trumpet

I have come to realise that you are both correct.

The boat has indeed sailed as you say Kehaulani.

And Bix was a champion without the benefit of modern tools like internet youtube netflix. He broke new ground in his day totally unaided as did Louis.

Thank you for your comments and for illuminating my understanding.

If you like Earth Wind and Fire you might like C.C.S.

Led by Alexis Korner, need I say more.

And by the way I agree Earth Wind and Fire were the cats bananas

Hi Anthony,

Congratulations on purchasing a great instrument from a great manufacturer.

In my experience pistons do not accumulate any debris.

All of the air that enters the instrument comes from the mouth of the player.

Ever since I started brushing my teeth every single time before I play an instrument I have had no trouble at all with debris in the instrument.

As for oiling. I oil before playing and during playing, and I dont care how much oil I waste doing it.

Yes I am wasteful and over oil. I must be wasting as much as 20 dollars a year on oil.

Of course I could reduce the amount of oil I use, and if I do that I would probably have to spend 600 dollars every few years on repairing valves I have wrecked through under oiling.

And after the valves wear out because I am being a scrooge or a skinflint on the minimal cost of oil then the instrument that I love will start playing very badly with leaky valves.

I was playing today on an instrument that is 101 years old and it still has the original copper valves that were fitted to it in 1924 and they still work perfectly. There is a good chance that over oiling protects valves.

The question is this, is it worth destroying a beautiful instrument to save a couple of pennies on oil.

I urge you to keep your instrument in perfect working order by using plenty of oil, and then you have a good chance of sounding like a monster player.

I dont believe this is likely to be a conversion from a Bb

It looks like the spit valves on this instrument are more conventional spit valves typical of the Special, but the Ambassador spit valves are underslung spit valves.

The end of the mouthpiece receiver is of course Fullerton Ambassador, being hexagonal.

The second slide appears to be set at a right angle to the body of the instrument whereas on Ambassadors the second slide is angled strongly back towards the mouthpiece receiver.

Due to these differences I would guess that it is not a conversion from a Bb instrument but is an independently designed instrument.

But this is supposition on my part.

For me the right angle of the second slide most strongly says this is a different instrument than a Bb Ambassador.

Olds as far as I am aware only changed the angle of the second valve in one other instrument and that was the Super, the very early supers had the slide angled towards the bell and later supers reversed this and angled the slide towards the receiver as in the mendez and the recording.

I am unaware of any other Olds with straight out second slide.

This straight out slide perhaps was needed if this was built as an Eb and required a shorter second slide than a Bb and tooling made it convenient to set the slide straight out.

I would defer to more knowledgeable members on this however.

Very well studied opinion.

I would point out however that for the last 20 years all manner of commercial aircraft from the humble 727 to the majestic AIrbus 380-800 have been capable of taking off flying multiple headings and landing all without human intervention.

The only reason that pilots perform take offs and landings is because the CAA and FAA demand and decree it.

Many years ago a large american carrier decided to take all cockpit recordings uttered by all the flight crews in their fleet, and enter all the phrases into a database and then filter them for the most often uttered phrase on the flight decks of their passenger and freight flights.

The most common phrase uttered by Pilots in the cockpits turned out to be "What is it doing now???"

If that is even one tenth of the number of flights then that means 2.2 million flights a year are baffling the pilots.

I find that more scary than AI that for the last 20 years a significant number of flight crews on a large number of flights have not had a clue what the aircraft is doing while the flight computer is supposedly in control of the aircraft.

With AI the only change is likely to be that pilots will cease to not know what it is doing while on board, but instead pilots will not know what it is doing from a remote location.

@Dr Go

No the original Olds Super is an early model of Super and was quite different from the slightly later version of the Super manufactured a few years later.

The change was around 1938 and 1939.

There were several changes, the tone ring was much wider on the earlier model, the bell mandrel was different between the models and the angle of the second slide was flipped from forward to back.

I have no idea why the bell mandrel was changed and what difference that made sonically, but I suspect the two instruments play differently, much as the LA model of Ambassador and the Fullerton model of the Ambassador also play quite differently.

Robb Stewart in his excellent web page on the subject goes into great detail about the specific changes to the Super model in those years with images of both models of Super showing the changes although the bell mandrel change is not an obvious one from the images.

https://www.robbstewart.com/wright-hall-quinby-soprano-1

I deeply suspect that the earliest Super was based upon closely copying the pre war french Besson trumpet as many manufacturers did at that time - I believe that Bach Conn HN White Shilke among others closely copied the pre war french Besson design.

Most of the other manufacturers copies of the Besson design had rear facing second slide but the original Olds Super was unusual in more faithfully copying the forward facing second slide in that first incarnation of the Super.

Interestingly the Mendez which was later claimed to be a close copy of the french Besson had the rear facing second slide as all the Bb Olds instrument models had by that time.

Even Besson swapped the slide direction round in different instruments with some forward some rearwards and some straight out so there was no real consistency here even in Besson.

Hornucopia shows several french Besson Brevetes with second slides pointing in all directions and many towards the bell as in the early Super.

The water however gathers in this configuration and is not easily dumped and all subsequent models post 1939 in the Olds lineup have rear facing second slide possibly to allow for more efficient clearing of moisture during performances.

There was often no other option than to yank the second slide to clear water satisfactorily in the forward facing design or do the instrument spin method both of which are less than desirable during a performance.

Besson themselves reversed the second slide between different models as earlier discussed although the Besson manufacturing history is somewhat confused with Besson uk and Besson France both selling Bessons but with Besson France manufacturing the parts that were assembled in England and then sold as english Bessons often with english valve blocks fitted and not french valve blocks.

It is even said that stashes of Besson instruments that were hidden from Nazis when France was under German occupation were being discovered for many years after the second world war and released into the market with serial numbers that were inconsistent so we cannot assign years to instruments around that time. But that is another story.

The thing to remember is that nobody programs insects, animals or human beings. They all consist of a neural net of greater or lessor sophistication that programs itself by what we call learning.

The main reason that computer logic gates cannot program themselves is because they not yet neural nets of sufficient complexity to do so.

Each neuron in a human brain is connected to 7000 other neurons. This makes the synapse count in a human brain in excess of 600 trillion.

If we assume a logic gate to be a synapse which is actually difficult to argue, but cut me some slack here, then we need 600 trillion logic gates in a computer to rival human brains.

In computers we speak of around 100 million logic gates as available today.

I trillion is a million million

If a computer today has 100 million logic gates and a human brain has 600 trillion neural connections, then a human brain will be around 6 million times more powerful than a modern computer.

Once computers become 6 million times more powerful than they are today then true AI should become commonplace.

In the meantime they are simply programmable adding machines and administrator is completely correct.

According to Moores Law computers double in power every 2 years, so we can use this to compute when we expect to see computers with 600 trillion logic gates.

I have done the math it will take according to Moores, 44 years for computers to hold the 6 trillion logic gates to challenge the human brain for computational power.

I dont think we are up against it quite yet, but just wait the year 2067 is not that far away

@Shifty

I dont disagree with you in principle but the issue is, more than half the computers in the world are carrying errors many are carrying several errors many of which may take years to appear.

The argument here that we are discussing is that the computer will always obey the program that the human has inputted because thats what computers do. They execute lines of code as programmed.

Except they dont, that is a wrong statement. They simply appear to execute lines of code correctly for most of the time.

Never in the history of Intel computing have computers ever executed the code the programmer inputted and compiled.

The computer makes a copy of the code in RAM memory and executes that copy. It is fairly common for there to be a corruption in that copy, so you have a fail right there.

The truth is even if the copy is a good one, the computer does not execute the program correctly every time due to other errors that exist elsewhere.

And the computer cannot spot most errors it has to rely on checksums which dont reveal much and errors can cancel out in checksums.

There are several places where corruption of the program is likely to occur.

I can name several kinds of errors and in every case the program the human inputted is not followed by the computer.

FYI I worked as a second line support and a third line technical support engineer with Hewlett Packard working in Intel products SUN systems, coms and telecoms.

I designed and built several servers, designed and built a clustered supercomputer on Linux, I programmed distribution software for Hewlett Packard, I acted as an advisor to technical support companies and worked with Radio Networking companies.

I can tell you now computers do not always execute programs correctly due to fundamental issues in the way they are constructed configured and operate.

Check out Real Time computing and the ADA system

Ada is a strongly typed programming language that enjoys widespread use within the embedded systems and safety-critical software industry.

ADA solves some of these issues that plague intel systems

Computers were too unreliable for use on the Moon shot and NASA had to commission a new real time system that guaranteed that their computer would execute code correctly. NASA invented real time computing.

They would not have had to do that if computers executed code reliably and correctly but they didnt and still dont.

The only systems that do execute code correctly are real time systems, these are mission critical systems like air traffic control systems where lives are at risk or lost if code is not executed correctly.

I do know what I am talking about here.

Why do you think the most common fix for a computer is and always has been "turn it off and on again", it is because they often dont function correctly and they dont execute code correctly and turning them off and on again refreshes the OP sys the RAM images etc etc etc, for a few hours until the next error hits.

So does a computer execute code exactly how it was told to do in the code.

No - no way. Sometimes they do sometimes they dont.

@J-Jericho

excellent post you are absolutely right

Put simply, a cmos logic gate is in essence a flip flop based upon a 3.5 volt threshold

The problem is there is no such thing as a logic circuit outputting logic 1 or logic 0.

There are instead analogue circuits that output a range of voltages that we can force to behave like logic circuits.

If the voltage output of the logic circuit or gate is higher than 3.5 volt it is a logic 1 if it is less than 3.5 volts it is a logic 0. 3.5 volts has been adopted in CMOS as the threshold for logic 1

CMOS gate values are supposed to be either 0 volts or 5 volts for those logic states, but they rarely are because they are analogue circuits trying to behave like digital circuits, so we use threshold values to detect the logic states.

In realty there could be any value between those voltages and given losses in the circuits a logic 1 of above 3.5 volts could be pulled down below 3.5 volts due to a voltage sink of some kind and become a logic 0.

Then the logic has changed when it should not have changed and the computer program has then malfunctioned.

The logic state should really be unknown if the voltage in the gate output voltage is less than the 3.5 volt threshold set for logic 1, but almost 3.5 volts.

When does a 0 become a 1 at what voltage 3.50 3.49. 3.48

What happens if a gate output is at the 3.5 volt threshold and rippling slightly between 3.4 volts and 3.6 volts.

This is the computer logic equivalent of panicking.

The detection of 3.5 volts or more causes downstream logic gates to flip due to logic 1 being detected but less than 3.5 volts causes the downstream logic gate to a flop to logic 0

There is a period of indecision due to logic gate ripple where the gates are all in an indeterminate state during the ripple and they take a period of time to settle into the final state of correct logic.

The larger the number of gates the longer it takes for the ripple through and to settle

This period of settling in which the logic gates are performing illogically grows as circuits are miniaturised and with greater miniaturisation comes greater difficulty of determining logic 1 in any single gate.

The hope is of course that all logic gates will settle correctly to the correct logic value however as you quite rightly point out losses due to miniaturisation plus abnormalities can disrupt the logic gate performance.

We cannot wait forever for logic circuits to settle so we make assumptions that within a set period of time all rippling will have ceased and logic circuits will have reached the correct values.

A typical 4 logic gate cluster takes 300 ps to settle, we need not explore the ramifications of this, it is not much time, 300 trillionths of a second, but compounded by the sheer total number of logic gates in a system means that it actually can take a significant amount of time for all rippling to cease in all the gates.

This is one of the limiting factors on the growth of computer systems

After rippling has ceased we then read the output of all the gates allowing time for all rippling to end plus x, - a safety margin time. We cannot risk reading a logic gate output if it is still rippling.

But what happens when a passing neutrino enters a logic gate and trips a gate from logic 1 to logic 0 during the safety margin wait state.

Rippling must begin again. This passing neutrino could also by the way on the hard drive stab a binary value in a stored program changing the program forever and preventing the computer from obeying the designed code, because the code has now changed and is no longer as programmed.

We are bombarded by Neutrinos every day and most pass through us harmlessly but when a neutron interacts with the semiconductor material, it deposits charge, which can change the binary state of the bit and Neutrinos can only be stopped by lead or concrete so computers are vulnerable to them in stored programs in RAM in ROM and in the data carried on the bus.

We may then finish up reading the logic output during a new rippling state caused by a neutrino attack. We then have a 50 50 gamble that the logic is in error.

Exactly as you describe and pointed out J.Jericho.

And exactly as you suggest greater miniaturisation makes this effect more likely as gates miniaturise more, but neutrinos do not miniaturise and their effects could become more profound for logic circuits as we miniaturise more over time.

The more logic gates you have the more opportunity there is for Neutrino disruption.

This is a very long post I know but we are deep diving here into complex areas that usually are hidden from the general public and largely unknown to them.

The present state of miniaturisation of logic is called VLSI very large scale integration and it brings issues that are difficult to address relating to robustness and reliability of these very large scale integrated circuits.

I am comfortable J.Jericho that you already know all of this and more besides, possibly more than I do on this topic given your excellent posts.

We are in examining this topic very close to the cutting edge of computing and its far reaching implications for the future of computer systems as we plod ever onwards down the road of greater miniaturisation and with greater miniaturisation comes greater risk of failures due to the very miniaturisation that we seek.

I intended this post to illustrate exactly why your post is technically correct and on topic. I do not intend to slight other members very few people understand this stuff, and we can only know what we know.

Most members know lots of stuff I do not know and cannot hope to know and I want to make it quite clear that not knowing this deeply technical and difficult subject is no reflection on them at all.

Moores law says computer gates double in complexity every 2 years. I would suggest that Risk doubles along with that.

I am not at all surprised that most people do not know all this it is the province of micro electronics engineers largely hidden from the public and there is no need for the public to know these things only electronics engineers chip designers and systems designers need to know this stuff.

What does surprise me on a daily basis is how reliable computers are given their huge vulnerability to errors and mishap.

Computers seem to me to fly less like an F15, and more like a bumble bee, they just manage to get there despite being a bit poor at flying.

Dizzy Gillespie: "Some days you get up and you put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on and then you die, and the horn wins."

Who is to say whether on those days when the horn won the mouthpiece was not clocked advantageously, or the gap was not providential or the mouthpiece was a little loose in the receiver or something else we now accept as really helping was not applied.

All we have is our sound, and if something helps whether that be a known adjustment or a psychological crutch I dont care, it works out the same to the audience.

More than likely this is an effective adjustment.

If it helps use it.

All that matters is reliably discovering what really does help.

@barliman2001 Wise words

It is I am convinced a power thing mixed in with being seen to be sensitive to everyone and respectful of all customers regardless of good sense.

These people as you say think they are in a dictatorship and they have to protect everyone for their own good, or they have to feel they are in control.

I have been banned from performing by security staff while everyone there who heard me perform formed a mob begging and demanding that I be allowed to entertain them and the security didnt care what their customers said.

I have even had the experience of security staff demanding that I pay a venue that I happened to be near, 1000 dollars (uk equivalent) for me to be given permission to play in the street outside that venue.

These people are either thieves bullies or mentally ill or all three, but we have to suffer them.

The only way forward is to approach the people in charge and get an agreement allowing us to perform.

In the case of a cruise the steward of the cabins would probably allow quiet practice if they could hear just how quiet we can be.

I am put in mind of a trumpet player who travelled to an islamic country where music was banned and the immigration staff wanted to confiscate his trumpet on entry, but when the player played for them to demonstrate just how quiet he played they quickly realised they were quite wrong and then allowed the player in with his instrument without any issues, they just asked him to be respectful.

People think instruments are always loud offensive and nasty sounding and can wake the dead and of course that just is not true.

Amateurs who have no control or skill and recent offensive playing of the Vuvuzella for example has made people fear us and that instrument from hell and they now fear all musicians because of it.

A local agreement with the people in charge locally can go a long way to resolving these kinds of issues.

I think we need to work with people and change attitudes where we can.

The one thing we must not do I believe is to hide and sneak instruments in and then be discovered breaking the rules.