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Re: Brass instruments



Yes indeed, Yamaha trumpets are designed to pull up D and E, whereas the
Bach trumpets leave them fairly flat. That's a big problem for trumpet
players as it is much easier to blow or bend a note slightly flat than
to raise it. If you use an alternate fingering (go up a harmonic then
use valves to lower the pitch) you end up with a fingering of 12 for
open E and 13 for otherwise only first valve (1) D. The problem here is
that the tonal characteristics even for professional players is a tough
issue and the 12 E sounds different than open E. It takes effort to
change your playing characteristics from note to note in order to match
the tones. The very best players like Maurice Andre and Wynton Marsalis
can sound the same no matter what note no matter what range they are
playing in.

Lest you think Yamaha somehow leaves Bach in the dust, all this business
of pulling and pushing notes is an exercise in compromise. Yamaha pays
for the higher D and E elsewhere in the range, particularly around high
A (12) and even ordinary F (1). So when you pick up a trumpet to play
on the spot, you have to mentally adjust to the pitch characteristics.
I once played a concert where I grabbed the wrong series of horns
(normally an orchestral musician will bring Bb, C, and perhaps D or F
trumpets along), and didn't have my C trumpet for Mahler's first. I had
a choice of transposing on the spot with my D trumpet or grabbing a
friend's backup C that he happened to bring. I choose to transpose on
the spot because his Yamaha C was too different from my Bach C, I
feared. Besides Mahler First trumpet solos (ugh, forget the 5th and
certain other symphonies!) are easy so it all went well and no one but
the trumpet section knew of my plight (besides they needed a little
humor I rationalized afterwards).

Another interesting exercise is to open the spit valve (oops, water key)
and play through the harmonics. You can tell when the pressure point is
near the spit valve as the tone disintegrates.

A further extension of this is to grab garden hose and trumpet or french
horn mouthpieces. We used to do this all the time for school demos.
Cut the hose into suitable lengths to form a trio or quartet. You can
play a few rudimentary horn calls as a trio or quartet. Cut all the
hoses so that the pitch rises 2 steps then play again. We used to let
the kids cut the hose sometimes in the old days, but hey, today, you
don't even need to bring a knife, some kid in the elementary school
class will have a knife with them...

--
Clear skies, Mel Bartels
http://www.efn.org/~mbartels