MGTrumpet

When I was at this year's ITG, I thought the best thing that could happen was if the various dealers could carry around bags of the Brass Spa mutes or the Best Brass mutes and every time they heard someone playing too loud or too high (or both), they could shove one of those "silent" mutes in and tell the player to "go ahead and blow your brains out".

The guy (Dan Massoth) that was doing the demonstration of SmartMusic had to spend his entire day in with the "screamers". Very unfortunate.

I couldn't stand more than about five minutes in any of the rooms. Then I'd have to leave to let the headache subside.

Joe DiMonte

You're not dating yourself.
The problem as I see it is,we are accepting mediocrity over ruffling one's feather by NOT giving him/her straight talk and/or informing them of their weakness.
Owning a trumpet does not make one a trumpeter !

cornetguy

Last time I was at Midwest it was the same type of thing. I was trying out a Scherzer Piccolo and the people at the booth really appreciated 1. that I could actually play the thing and 2. Was playing music (Christmas Oratorio). When I try the larger horns at a conference I usually do things like scales, long tones, and then maybe some music depending on the horn (excerpts on c and Bb, Haydn on Eb, cornet solos on cornet, Bach on piccolo etc...) and try to keep in the softer range, if I want to try loud I find a place that I can play away from the crowd.