| OK....Wynton Marsallis plays Monette equipment and seems to espouse Dave Monette's tenets of yoga, etc. Wynton is a "pretty decent" trumpet player in almost any genre of music. Wynton has good posture. Wynton is also "of the African culture". Any of the players of ANY ethnic origin that I have ever seen as sidemen (or women) in bands tend to sit or stand straight upright and play "out".
I don't disagree that one has to have "air" in reserve.
DISCLAIMER: Please do not take offense at my next statement...I do not mean it to be offensive nor to in any way indicate that any particular type of music is any "better" than any other. These are simply my opinions.
In the world of "legit" music, the "pure" sounds are achieved by an unrestricted air flow that comes from a counter-resonating cavity (the mouth/throat) so that there can BE resonance and a nice, "rich" or "fat" tone.
OK..back to the discussion: I do not mean to generalise about Mile's music but most of his stuff that I've ever heard (admittedly far from all of it) was played with a harmon mute (which muffles the sound terribly) into a microphone (which allows the sound man or sound engineer to pretty much do what he wanted to the sound). Miles was famous for several things and produced some fantastic music. He was undoubtedly and unarguably a leader and a giant in the music industry....but to me, his "sound" was second-rate BECAUSE OF the heavy muting that he seemed to use. I would hardly hold him up as a paragon of the mechanics of playing trumpet. |