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Originally Posted by trickg So, from that night, I went cold-turkey to the 14A4a whenever I was playing Latin Band. I quickly got to where I could play either mouthpiece at will and my life got a lot easier up on the bandstand. Keep in mind, I didn't get any magical extended range by using this piece, it just made what I was already able to do a lot easier, although I did (and still do) suffer a little loss of control with the shallow mouthpiece. |
Sorry to quote myself here, but I thought that I would add a little side note to the comment that I made up above.
EVENTUALLY, either playing on the shallower piece, or playing Latin Band did seem to force a bit of a change in my playing. My endurance on ANY mouthpiece got better, and eventually my upper register got quite a bit easier, and a side result of that was that my upper register increased a bit and got stronger. Mind you, I'm still not knocking walls down, but now I'm able to pretty consistently "hit" up to a G above high C (notice I say "hit" and not "play") whereas before, I could really only consistently "hit" up to about an Eb with a usable range just under high C. Now, I'm pretty consistent up to an Eb and I have much better endurance than I had prior to playing in the Latin Band.
I'm not sure if playing the smaller mouthpiece forced my chops to "deal with" a smaller mouthpiece and therefore making my embouchure more efficient, but that is how I remember it working.