| Well, certainly, there was life before Dave Monette came on to the scene, wasn't there? He was inspired by the same people we all were, principally great jazz players and musicians of other instruments beside trumpet and they weren't playing equipment he hadn't invented.
I also like the choice of equipment in baseball gloves today, too. My dad has expressed how much nicer life was when he moved to the mainland and got to used toilets instead of outhouses. I like Amado style water keys rather than the old fashion cork style.
It's a question of taste in sound and the ease in producing that sound once you decide that's the sound you prefer. You know, for years the number 27 hole was the throat size served up by most mouthpiece manufacturers. Who decided that should be the size? I guess Vincent Bach did. Maybe he was going on a paradigm that was there before him. I'm sure someone around here knows. The point is folks open that up all the time once they reach a certain level of playing. Why? They find it constricting and once they open it up, it changes the sound. Then they take it to someone else and mess with the backbore. On and on they go, until they get something they like. Now there are so many varieties of mouthpiece combinations that there no excuse except for cost for someone not to have the equipment they want to play. Some folks leave it as it comes and accept the sound that they make as just what is and that's that .
I wonder what Gottfried Reiche would have thought of that new-fangled keyed trumpet. I wonder what Anton Weidinger would have thought of that new-fangled cornet thingy with the valves. I wonder what Stoelzel and Blumel would have... well, you get the idea.
The bottom line is: does it make it easier for you and does it improve the sound to your ears?
ML |