Posts made by Trumpetb

@Jolter

Absolutely correct Jolter Monster Oil is marked aspiration hazard.

The problem is health and safety has decreed that all products must be marked aspiration hazard even if there is no evidence that there is a hazard.

This is a legal issue to guard against litigation.

For example disinfectant that kills 100% of germs has to be labelled kills 99% of germs.

No manufacturer is allowed to claim that a disinfectant kills 100% of germs. However a disinfectant that does not kill 100% of germs is useless. They all kill 100% but they are required to say they dont.

Industry is often forced to make ridiculous claims of risk where risk is simply not there, to satisfy ill conceived legislation and by doing so remove threats that simply dont exist.

Tea cozys for example those are the fabric insulators placed over and around tea pots and coffee pots

In 2001, a government report in the UK found that tea cozies were responsible for about 40 emergency hospital treatments each year. The report also found that accidents involving tea cozies had doubled in recent years.

I cannot find any numbers of aspiration hazard from light oils. I can only find 46 cases of inhilation of oil following major oil spills.

A conclusion we can draw is tea cozys carry a similar risk to aspiration or inhilation risk following all global oil spills.

The risk is so slight as to carry no records of any suffering of this risk.

Water carries an aspiration hazard. There are many cases of drowning each year. Water however has not come under scrutiny by the legislators yet.

235,000 people drown every year. This suggests a trumpet player is 235,000 times more likely to die from using water as they are from using valve oil.

Additionally RV's carry a warning to avoid leaving the drivers seat while driving the vehicle. This was following Grazinski V Winnebago when Grazinski left the driving seat to make a cup of coffee while driving at speed and the cruise control was on.

His argument was that it was not stated in the owners manual that drivers should not leave the wheel while driving at speed on the highway.

So yes there is a warning on all oils that an aspiration hazard exists. And it is there not because there is a hazard but because it is required by law for all oils to carry this warning.

It was in 2020 and 2021 that oil manufacturers were forced to place aspiration hazard warnings on their products. You may recall that many products changed their labeling at that time.

Before that time many products did not carry that warning. Does that mean they carried no hazard before 2020 or 2021. The warning was and is a legal requirement and is not due to any quantified risk. It is just the class of products that now require the warning.

For this reason we cannot assume there is a real aspiration hazard simply because it is marked as such.

As I said earlier I have not performed any testing on Monster oil caution is always recommended.

Apart from this very minor disagreement I heartily approve of and agree with your posts on this topic.

I would add that I have never suffered any ill effects of using copious amounts of oils on trumpet including within the lead pipe.

I have never seen any evidence in cases of musicians using valve oil.

I have seen cases of children drinking paraffin based valve oil and then suffering difficulties.

I would also agree that WD40 is in no way safe.

In fact WD means water displacement. This product displaces water and removes it from any surface it falls upon.

Water makes up 75% of the lungs, to place a water displacing product into the lungs is likely to lead to a swift death. I agree with you on this product and would go much further.

WD40 should not be allowed anywhere near the body in my opinion. It believe it is far more dangerous than any traditional valve oil.

Believing WD40 to be food safe is in my opinion similar to believing that my left foot is a pecan pie. But thats just me.

Its not a pecan pie.

I respectfully disagree ROWUK

There have been a lot of advances in oil refining methods and the oil industry is now very complex in the range of products available today.

Some oils are food safe.

Many oils however as you say are not food safe.

Caution is advised.

White oils for example are food safe and some can be used as valve oil. I have tested white oils and found them to be quite safe. The problem they have is generally one of viscosity.

Food grade white oil tends to fall around ISO 15 which is a medium to thick valve oil. Viscosity of white oils does vary.

Additionally viscosity ratings are not generally published so we cannot be sure of the viscosity of any oil on general sale.

Traditional oils based upon paraffins have indeed caused serious medical conditions when ingested, these volatile oils hit the trachea oesophagus and stomach and the heat of the body causes them to evaporate. The fumes can enter the lungs and coat the surface of the alveoli preventing oxygen from entering the bloodstream.

Asphyxiation can follow.

However some oils are refined more than once and are food safe. I have personally drunk a sample of one of these oils to demonstrate that it is food safe and I suffered no ill effects.

Other oils are food based and are eco friendly.

One example is Monster Oil EcoPro Valve Oil, this is said to be 100% plant-based, is extremely long-lasting, very fast, and virtually odorless.

The threat to health is based upon high volatility and high vapour pressure. High vapour pressure means it evaporates easily.

The Monster Oil would be odourless because it does not evaporate easily.

I have not tested a sample of the Monster oil so I cannot attest to its safety. I suspect it is quite safe to use in the mouthpipe or leadpipe of an instrument.

I have taken a sample of a food safe oil used for valve lubrication and attempted to light it for several minutes with a naked flame and it refused to burn.

The traditional oils such as paraffin and paraffin based oils have high vapour pressure and burn easily and immediately.

We are very lucky to have very modern oils with low viscosity and low vapour pressure that are far safer than the more traditional paraffin based oils.

They do however cost considerably more to produce.

@Richard-III

Hi Richard

In answer to your question I have seen it a few times.

An old Conn 80a had a lot of rot in the leadpipe but was still playable and still is.

An older Besson New Creation trumpet was riddled with it and the mouthpipe had to be replaced.

I dont think either of them was maintained or cleaned properly by any of their owners before me.

Both of these came to me in very poor condition.

It is my belief that responsible owners who perform good maintenance such as yourself and most of our members will be unaffected.

However there is a caveat.

Some manufacturers instruments have a reputation of being affected by red rot more than others.

The proportions of Zinc to Copper in the mix appears to affect the resistance to red rot. There does appear to be a sweet-spot for percentage Zinc to Copper in the brass that leads to higher resistance.

Conn appear to have a poor reputation for vulnerability to rot. That however may simply be speculation

My opinion is there are too many variables, too few examples, and little or no information on past maintenance regimes to draw meaningful conclusions about resistance to red rot.

The problem is, there is a huge variety of maintenance it is either over applied or under applied.

For example on oiling valves some players appear to believe that one drop of oil per month on valves is sufficient others believe 30 drops a day are necessary

On internal cleaning some believe that internal cleaning is largely unnecessary, others believe that an instrument should be cleaned internally every day it is played.

With such a variety of maintenance how can we draw any conclusions about instruments reliability.

Sachmo reputedly flushed water through his instrument every single evening.

Should we all do this.

I welcome members experiences in this area but can I ask that they also include notes indicating their cleaning regime and the make of the instrument so we can link susceptibility to the rot with cleaning regimes and the make of instrument.

Interesting comments about the causes of red rot

My understanding is this, and I am not claiming to be an expert, however I have worked in construction engineering, automotive engineering, and several other engineering disciplines. My last role was as a principal engineer.

As we move a brass instrument from a cold environment into a warm environment and breathe into it as we play the moist air from our lungs is brought in contact with the inner surface of the instrument.

This can cause condensation and the closest area to the mouthpiece is the mouthpipe.

The mouthpipe then gathers the most condensation.

If the player has not brushed their teeth before playing then particles of food from the last meal accompany the moist air into the instrument.

The mouthpipe is then covered in a coating of moisture plus some food debris.

Brass is a mixture of copper and zinc with a very small amount of lead added.

Zinc is soluble in water, lead also is soluble in water.

The debris from the mouth carries with it droplets of saliva from the mouth. Saliva is slightly alkaline.

Water with alkaline forms an electrolyte as does water with acid and electrolytes support the electrolytic corrosion of metals.

What happens next is small microcurrents are created within the droplets of water sitting in the electrolytes on the inner surface of the brass of the mouthpipe and electrolytic corrosion begins.

This electrolytic corrosion breaks down the brass mixture into its individual elements parts of copper zinc and lead.

Now we have the perfect conditions for erosion of the brass.

The microcurrents attacking the brass liberate zinc from the metal and the zinc enters the electrolyte as dissolved zinc.

Then the action of physically cleaning the mouthpipe cleans away the electrolyte the debris and the dissolved zinc.

All that is left behind is brass with microholes where the zinc used to be.

This is a long process that takes decades for the holes to migrate completely through the brass and the holes in the brass slowly migrate deeper into the brass until appearing as holes in the external surface of the brass surrounded by darker copper.

The characteristic appearance of red rot is then present, several small holes in yellow brass with each hole surrounded by red copper.

In my mind there is no doubt and no uncertainty.

Moisture plus accreted debris if allowed to remain clinging to the internal surface of the instrument will result in red rot.

Frequent internal cleaning of the mouthpipe will remove the condensation, the debris, and the electrolytes and stop red rot dead..

Internal oiling of the mouthpipe holds the promise that a coating of oil would prevent the moisture from reaching the brass and therefore the electrolytic action that decomposes brass and results in red rot will be stopped.

I recommend research on dezincification of brass in water

I also recommend research on the solubility of lead in water

There are many documents revealing evidence of the dissolving of both Zinc and of Lead in water.

Water is called the universal solvent.

@Dr-GO yes indeed white for silver and red for brass I am glad to see you are on board with this.

On the topic of cost of the bottle, if you buy a 12 dollar cork you get a free bottle of wine with it and that cant be bad.

On the other hand a performer of your quality and reputation may prefer to select a cognac bottle to source an appropriate cork

As a middle of the road player myself I favour a robust cabernet sauvignon or a good shiraz for legit, a good sauternes for jazz, but I would heartedly recommend a dom perignon for a performance of the nutcracker.

I dont see what the fuss is.

I made a waterkey cork out of a used wine bottle cork. It worked fine and lasted years.

Most people have corks they throw out in the trash wine bars cant get rid of enough of em.

Many wine corks have a very suitable portion at the end made up of very fine grain cork and its this portion that we can attack with a craft knife.

You can make 4 water key corks out of one wine bottle cork.

If you cant find the right cork first time there will probably be around 1000 others in their wine cork bin you can select from in most wine bars.

Trim it slightly oversize and friction will keep it in place.

5 minutes work zero cost.

The only problem is making it out the door without sampling their wine.

You need to beware of swapping parts such as valve top caps.

Older instruments were built by hand and each part of the structure of the valve was hand fitted to each other and were unique to the original valve they were fitted to.

Buttons, top caps, stems, valve guides, springs, and the valve body itself, could each vary in size and while they work flawlessly when in their original hand fitted position swapping for example the stem from valve one to valve two could result in one or both the valves binding with the cause not being apparent.

All parts might measure as being identical but these are often close tolerance parts and can easily bind with each other requiring the hand fitting of each part.

Swapping the top cap from valve one to valve two or valve three could also result in the valves binding.

Only the original position at manufacture of each part of each valve will be the correct position.

I have experienced this issue where an old instrument had binding valves there was no fix for this until I swapped valve stems and valve top caps around and found the original manufactured assembly positions.

We dont know if a player many years ago when cleaning the instrument, disassembled all the parts and did not pay attention to which part belonged to which valve.

Why would we believe this is important in a modern age where all small parts are made by machine to be identical and do not have to be hand fitted to each other for them to work correctly together.

Once I had found the correct original assembly positions of valve caps and valve stems on this problematic instrument the valves worked perfectly and flawlessly.

This is the major improvement that has been given to us by modern precision manufacturing techniques.

Any instrument older than 1970 or thereabouts might suffer this problem.

Any instrument earlier than 1950 almost certainly would have each individual part hand machined hand lapped and hand assembled.

Scavenging parts from other instruments probably will be fine but this cannot be guaranteed.

My own feeling is this

If you wait until working the valves tells you they need oil, that means the valves are scraping.

The damage has already been done.

I oil too much.

Some people talk of how much oil they use per day. Like one drop per day.

So if you play for 30 minutes you use 1 drop, if you play for 12 hours do you still only use 1 drop.

This makes no sense.

I oil before I play then after an hour I oil again I might oil again if I play a third hour.

Oil stops valves scraping the valve block and wearing the block out.

I do not wish to turn my instrument into junk so I use a lot of oil. My valves never wear out.

I have a Besson that is 100 years old, it has the original copper valves which were fitted to the instrument in 1924, they should have worn out decades ago, but the valves are great and they are as tight as any I have played including a Yamaha.

The lesson is clear, over oil if you want your valves to last 100 years, under oil if you want them to only last 5 minutes.

I would not write it off

I have found the worst instrument can play wonderfully and sound professional with the right mouthpiece and the right player who plays in the right way.

Our tones are malleable if we are capable of it.

Even the cheapest Chinese knockoff wall hanger can sound beautiful and play well in the hands of the right player with the right mouthpiece.

Even the very best professional instrument can be condemned as worthless in the hands of the wrong player.

Our job is to adapt and conform to the instrument we use. It is not to spend our time seeking the one and only instrument that we can play well.

We are in control of our embouchure we are in control of our air support we are in control of our chops we are in control of our mouthpiece choice.

There is not one embouchure there is not one mouthpiece there is not one instrument there is not one approach to playing.

I would take this instrument and play it professionally in a heartbeat without even having held one. I hold Conn in such high regard

I once handed a cheap Chinese instrument to an older gigging professional, this instrument had been condemned as incapable of playing in tune or even playing well. I found no problem with it.

He handed it back after wowing an audience and receiving standing ovations with this supposed piece of chinese sh1t saying to do not ever sell this instrument.

It had the right mouthpiece and it was played by the right player, and it sounded fabulous.

Often it is the valves that let an instrument down, the valves are the heart of the instrument.

In my experience conn valves are among the finest valves.

Valves are let down by poor maintenance.

All of my instruments have great valves and they are all between 65 and 100 years old.

Maintain the valves well clean the instrument use the right mouthpiece adapt to the instrument, and it will repay you a thousand fold for your efforts.

When a player points a finger at an instrument and says that is crap, he or she is pointing three fingers back at themselves.

We have no connection and we have every connection.

We are distracted by our differences and attracted by our similarities

I see one similarity common to all

We strive for excellence in what we do and we strive to be the best we can be

I am here because my friends and we here are all friends, tolerate me and offer me guidance and a community spirit second to none.

Yes we might disagree but that is driven by the desire to help each other.

Welcome to a wonderful place full of wonderful people

Long may it prosper

To answer this you need to see a good teacher.

Analysis over the internet can lead in only one direction uncertainty and confusion.

Your tone is better with your mouthpiece pointing down, but what does that mean.

Is your embouchure solid, do you have good air support, do you have good range, do you have good flexibility.

Be led by your tone, All we have is our tone. but bad habits are easy to pick up and difficult to overcome. consult a good teacher.

Also what is your aspiration and goal.

To be the best orchestral or commercial player in which case working on technique is paramount.

To simply play well for your own enjoyment does not require perfect technique. It requires good solid beautiful tone.

The great Uan Rasey said when you play your tones make them as beautiful as humanly possible.

It sounds like you are following his advice already.

In case I have not said it before, consult a good teacher and he or she will review your playing and settle this question.

Word to the wise

On a conn of this quality and this age I would pay attention to protecting the lead pipe from red rot.

I dont think this instrument is suffering from this ailment at the moment but conns are susceptible to it.

Regularly running oil down the leadpipe and regular cleaning and maintenance of this part of the instrument should keep this instrument in tip top condition and playing wonderfully for many decades to come.

These adjustable rings came into favour on instruments that students would use.

They were generally missing on professional standard horns.

The reason for their existence was that as the student grows into adulthood the smaller child sized hands grow in size and the fingers reach further. A fixed ring can then be awkward for the student.

Students need the ring position to be conveniently adjustable and the adjustable ring allows this.

The adjustment to the ring position can be made easily so that the ring is always a comfortable distance from the valve block for the player no matter how large their hands and how long their fingers.

When they finish growing a fixed ring becomes convenient.

The Lyre holder is a different thing altogether.

Typically I see Lyre holders fitted as standard on cornets and not fitted at all on trumpets. The marching instrument was typically a cornet in Europe.

Trumpet players of course also marched with trumpets and to facilitate fitting a Lyre to a trumpet a Lyre with a clamp was developed. The Lyre then could be fitted onto any convenient tube.

I have always found that the clamp on the adjustable finger ring would loosen at inconvenient times so the fixed ring makes a lot of sense for a serious player.

On the other hand many players dont like or use the ring to adjust intonation.

Looking at images of players like Miles Davis I see that on some images he reversed the position of the ring so that the ring was positioned way beyond reach of his fingers. This got rid of it entirely during that session.

Some players inverted the third slide when the legs on the third slide were the of equal length so that the ring hung beneath the slide. An example of an instrument that allows this is the Olds Ambassador which has legs of equal length and an adjustable ring. This instrument allows three options for getting rid of the ring entirely.
1 is to keep the adjustable ring but reverse it so the ring is extended completely beyond the slide
2 is to remove it and leave it in the case.
3 is to invert the third slide so the ring is under the slide.

Some instruments of course were narrow wrap instruments which were built with ring hanging down.

The narrow wrap Selmer with underslung ring that Sachmo played which I believe was one of the Selmer Paris Grand Prix models was an example of this as is the Conn 58B.

This is what I have seen.

@barliman2001 Love it

Dreams are often in a different place to where we think they are.

Columbus had a dream and it was not where he thought it would be. The result of his folly was the discovery of the New World and the Mayflower.

We are chained to our aspirations we are fenced in by our expectations we are restricted by our desires.

I have never limited myself to whatever I am expected to achieve and because of this I have exceeded my own limited expectations.

I was condemned at school for being a dreamer. I believe it was the best part of me. I have excelled and exceeded in all things because of my dreams.

The founding fathers dreamed of a place where they could be whatever they wanted to be.

President Lincoln dreamed of freeing the Nation of the scourge of Slavery.

Dr Martin Luther King dreamed of a nation who would collectively judge a man not by the colour of his skin but the content of his soul.

President Kennedy gave the Nation a dream and the moon landings were the result.

The result of Dr Kings dream was the election of President Obama.

The world is not perfect and we are not perfect beings but all we need is our dreams and the courage to act upon them and we can make the world a better place.

The very best things we have are our dreams. They take us if we have the courage to follow them, beyond our feeble existence into a world of beauty and new capabilities beyond our wildest imagining.

Long may they continue.

No high temps here

This was a difference of opinion between two members who respect each other, and both stand by their opinions

@ROWUK

I am surprised at what has transpired here.

It makes good sense to change the mouthpiece when you hit a difficulty, just to see if that change helps to reduce the issue.

If it does not help, then where is the harm. A few seconds lost is all.

A mouthpiece can undoubtedly affect articulation and tone across the registers.

Trying a different mouthpiece is a healthy exploration for any player who experiences difficulties in their playing and it should not be denied them.

The high G# is known to be elusive. That is partly due to the design of the trumpet and the principles of acoustics.

Some mouthpieces may make that pitch more elusive to hit. Other mouthpieces might make it easier to hit that pitch.

I will for once state my position technically.

We must play each pitch correctly, and hit every pitch correctly centred, or we might miss the pitch on elusive notes. Not centering each and every pitch correctly leads to reliance upon the instrument to centre the pitch for you.

And that reliance leads to the exact problem the OP is experiencing.

This is in my opinion why so many players find the committee difficult to play. They do not centre their pitches correctly and robustly and they find the instrument to be slippery and difficult to control. This also leads to missing the high G#.

You have to play each pitch correctly and nail each pitch absolutely centred.

A mouthpiece change might assist in nailing the pitches by helping you pull them all to centre.

But the right way to play is to nail all your pitches strongly centred.

I call that Making the note. Make each note centred.

That is not the same as sliding into pitches in a jazzy manner.

I have experienced mouthpieces that assist in strongly centering pitches and I have experienced mouthpieces that do not assist in strongly centering pitches.

If your instrument centres strongly you can easily fall into the habit of letting it do the centering for you, and the high G# then becomes elusive because you are not playing the note centred.

The instrument is then playing you not the other way round. You should be playing the instrument not the other way round.

In my view this is critically important.

And why would a mouthpiece that works against the player centering notes, not make the high G# even more difficult to nail than it should.

Do not tell me that the experiences I have had and the successes I have had, are worthless.

I expect now to be nailed to the wall for telling people how to play the instrument even though I do already know how to play it and I know how to play the high G# without any issues.

I have said this many times over the last 15 years. Either you are in control of your instrument or your instrument is in control of you.

That is the top and bottom of the problem, and the core of the issue here.

The mouthpiece is important, the instrument is important, the chops are important, the mind of the player is important.

They are ALL important.

@ROWUK

I do have a large amount of experience and I have seen the profound difference that changing a mouthpiece can have.

I do not dispute at all that a player with monster chops can play anything from low register to the highest register with ease.

Unfortunately I am not one of these players. I therefore rely upon the mouthpiece to assist me in playing the notes I can reach in my range.

I fully accept the criticism that my chops are of low to medium strength.

On the other hand the meaning I seem to be gathering from your posts is that everyone has monster chops and mouthpiece changes wont help them at all. I would disagree with that if that is what you are saying.

You say that many in here could be hurt by my encouraging them to check out their mouthpiece choice.

It seems to me that they would be hurt more by forcing them to persevere with a bad mouthpiece and waste many years of their lives coping with bad equipment.

Do you know what trumpet the OP was playing on, do you know what mouthpiece the OP was using. Isnt it important to know that their equipment is good and functioning correctly before blaming the player.

Lets talk turkey. I have seen players using equipment so damaged that it was very difficult for them to play well.

It might take 20 years hard work to overcome equipment faults that are very severe. Or it might take just 2 minutes if they just swap the equipment for good equipment that works correctly.

I also seem to be seeing in your posts an assertion that all mouthpieces are fabulous, and no mouthpiece can affect a player badly.

If this is the case why do you not play on a cheap 3 dollar mouthpiece from India or from China.

Could it be that your monette mouthpiece plays more evenly through the ranges than the 3 dollar trashy item from AliExpress.

And if the monette plays more evenly through the ranges that must mean that other mouthpieces do not play evenly through the ranges.

And one last thing. Why are you so opposed to a player simply trying a different mouthpiece.

It costs nothing will give an instant answer. Then you know.

Or let us argue for weeks on whether or not we should pop a different mouthpiece in, and all we would lose is 15 seconds doing that.

You can lose weeks or months arguing about whether to try it, or you can lose 15 seconds trying it out.

If a player says a different mouthpiece cannot possibly improve their playing, my reaction is have you tried it or are you just talking.

And if they say oh no I would never under any circumstances try a different mouthpiece I would say ok no problem you do you.

Is it really blasphemy to say your mouthpiece might be holding you back.

I am willing to say that, and be condemned as an evil man for suggesting that some mouthpieces might be better than others.

When I recently passed an Olds Special to a friend who played on a 7c, I offered two 7c mouthpieces with it. An Olds 7c and a 7c by another manufacturer.

He tried both and found the Olds 7c played better. Are you saying it could not possibly have played better.

He was not a fabulous player with cast iron chops, and he found one of the mouthpieces to perform better than the other. Both were 7c and one suited him and his instrument better.

Is there something wrong with this.

I believe it is folly to claim that a mouthpiece change cannot affect playing. The entire mouthpiece industry is based upon the fact that a mouthpiece change can affect playing.

So what are we arguing about.

I say, find the best mouthpiece for your instrument, and your reaction is to say NO!

Can you make this make sense. I am all ears.

If it were me I would spend 15 seconds slamming a different mouthpiece in that I thought might improve things, and find out the truth there and then, and then move on. Job done.

But then I am a pragmatic guy and I just do stuff.

There is an approach to not getting things done called Paralysis through analysis.

Too many people spend months or years analysing things by research and it wastes their time.

They might spend months analysing everything to decide if they should try a different mouthpiece when all it takes is 15 seconds to try it.

No discussions or research or reports or investigation or polling the opinions of specialists or experts are needed. Just try it.

This is the core of the issue.

If a student cannot play as well as they would like, and the problem is the mouthpiece is wrong or bad. One approach would be to spend a couple of years on lessons in the belief that the equipment must be fine.

At the end of that couple of years they might play better or they might not.

Or

They change the equipment and if the equipment now functions better they have saved themselves 2 years.

That is 2 years they can now spend on improvement and not on coping with bad equipment.

Do we want to waste students time or solve their problems.

Over to you

@ROWUK I feel you misunderstand me.

I have 24 mouthpieces, that is correct, but I dont recall suggesting that constantly switching is a good habit.

My approach to playing is to understand how mouthpieces affect instruments, then zero in on the best mouthpiece fit for the instrument and the embouchure and then stick with it.

If something goes wrong when you change your instrument, then dont stay with the mouthpiece that used to work on that other instrument. That was a different instrument. Begin with that mouthpiece by all means, but be open to trying others.

If you change your style of play for example, then a mouthpiece change might assist with playing that new style.

You said yourself that you have changed mouthpiece several times.

I dont see how a player can use just one mouthpiece for 30 years unless they were playing the same style of music that requires one set of timbres.

A large bowl delivers dark and rich tones
A small shallow bowl delivers bright tones.

That is physics you cant fight physics.

If you want to play brightly then you are fighting the setup if you use a huge mouthpiece.

If you want to play richly and darkly then you are fighting the setup if you use a tiny mouthpiece.

If you are fighting your instrument constantly then you wont get the best from it or yourself.

Of course the very best players in the world like Arturo Sandoval can play anything on anything, but I am not Arturo.

We are trying to help players like ourselves play as well as they can and hopefully we can offer real world solutions to real world problems.

My advice is this.

If you experience a problem you cannot fix, then be willing to try a different mouthpiece.

@ROWUK I totally agree.

However when something hits us in the face and opposes the usual and published knowledge we are forced to question its validity.

Let me give an example pertinent to our discussion.

I have several instruments and around 24 mouthpieces consequently I have not tried every mouthpiece in every instrument.

One particular day I was using an Olds trumpet, and I swapped my usual mouthpiece for one I had not tried on this instrument before. A yamaha.

Prior to the swap the instruments articulation was precise and predictable. I found it easy to centre each note and therefore playing was a pleasure.

After the change to the yamaha mouthpiece the instrument was immediately very slippery in articulation, notes were not centering and it drove me mad.

I blamed myself. With a lot of effort I was able to control the instrument but it was still an effort to centre the notes.

I then considered the issue. The only change had been the mouthpiece.

So I changed it back. Immediately all problems went away notes centred easily playing was a joy.

I swapped the yamaha mouthpiece back in. Instant disaster slippery articulation and notes not centering.

I put the yamaha mouthpiece away and never had the problem again.

Convention says a mouthpiece change does not affect articulation much at all and certainly not to that degree. A mouthpiece change typically does not make an instrument a nightmare to play.

Experience shows that simply to be untrue. IN SOME VERY RARE CASES.

I have used that same yamaha mouthpiece on several instruments without any difficulties at all.

Simply put that mouthpiece on that instrument just does not follow convention.

Slippery articulation can be very desirable of course, but it can cause issues.

I have used that instrument with many other mouthpieces without any difficulties at all.

But

Put those two together and you get nightmare articulation.

This is a very unusual circumstance that I have only seen this once and I repeat my earlier statement that a mouthpiece change can affect articulation.

I do agree with you that we stand on the knowledge of far smarter people than we are who have worked out what happens.

But my position is that while this common wisdom applies to 99.9999999% of cases. It does not apply to 100% of cases.

If it did apply to 100% of cases I would not have experienced catastrophic issues when I changed that mouthpiece.

Some equipment simply and inexplicably behaves contrary to common wisdom.

We as professionals must accept this. We cannot say everything will always work in exactly the same way.

Some things just dont work and unpopular as that appears to be it is a truth we must accept.

The fact is some instruments do not follow convention and some instrument/mouthpiece combinations simply do not work well together.

And if you are unlucky enough to have a combination that does not work well together then you should find that out instead of blaming yourself and going on a crusade to play better that might last 10 years and be ultimately pointless because the equipment carries a major issue.

If you have to fight your equipment maybe just maybe the equipment is at fault.

And what does it cost to change a mouthpiece 15 seconds of effort.

Or borrow one.

It takes no effort to change a mouthpiece.

Find out if the mouthpiece is contributing to the issue, so change it.

I want to add something ROWUK our discussion in no way alters my respect for you as a teacher and authority on everything trumpet.

No man or woman can know everything. If you havent seen the devastating affect a bad mouthpiece/trumpet combination can have you would not know such a problem can exist.

And perhaps a poor mouthpiece/trumpet combination can affect the articulation subtly and badly and maybe this issue is more widespread than it appears to be and maybe it has gone unnoticed for a very long time.

Playing the trumpet is an art not a science.

Like Vincent Van Gogh or Monet or Michaelangelo or Turner, we have to find a way of doing what we want to do, we have to find a way of creating the thing we want to create.

It is like a painter using his brushes canvas and paint in whatever way allows the artist to create what they want to represent.

Our Tools are trumpet and mouthpiece, and that thing that lies behind our eyes and between our ears.

We have to be creative and find a way of achieving what we want to and need to achieve.

All we have is our sound and whatever we can do to create that sound.

Bix Beiderbecke worked out his own way of playing what he wanted to play using alternate fingerings and alternate ways of playing.

It does not matter what we do to achieve what we create, all that matters is what we have created in the doing of it.

Why should it be valves 1 and 2, why can it not be valve 3 alone.

why is it considered G sharp and not A flat

Our task is to find a way to achieve our goal.

This is the key to advanced playing, to abandon the conventions that are so often imposed upon students.

Students need these conventions of course but Students can be strangled by rigid methods and this can lead to preventing progress.

Embrace the freedom to explore and find a better way to achieve our goals.

A problem is both something to overcome but it is also an opportunity to do something new.

And in the finding of and doing of that new thing to solve a problem we have, now lies the opportunity to open a new chapter in our playing.

All that matters is our sound.

Find a way.