| I think you guys a being pretty hard on Monette just because he does different things. To be fair, Monette says that not all his horns take 80 ft to sound good. Only the really heavy horns behave like that, the lighter ones focus at just a few feet.
Anyway, besides the fact that everyone seems to be forgetting about "different strokes for different folks" everyone also seems to be forgetting that you don't buy an instrument for your audience, you buy it for yourself.
How many of us have had to explain to friends or family why it's necessary to spend more money on a new horn when the one we've got works just fine? My parents can hardly tell the differnce between my first horn from school and my Yamaha pro horn. Do you think they'll know the difference if I were to pick up a Lawler or an Eclipse or even a Monette? They might hear a slight differnce but to us it's like night and day. Even to trained ears the difference is subtle.
When you're playing for audiences that can hardly tell the difference between a trumpet and a cornet you should feel free to play whatever horn you like and spend as much or as little as you like. I'm not going to say that certain horns don't have a certain sound or that us trumpet geeks can't pick out certain horns on recordings but don't fool yourself into thinking that the horn you play makes a big difference in the lives of the people on the other side of your bell. Buy your horn for how it feels and how YOU think it sounds and don't listen to hype and especially not your band director. |