| Erik, you are right! It's The Man Behind The Horn (as Leon Merian states) that in the end counts when it comes to making the trumpet work to make music for people to enjoy. The horn could be a dime a dozen, mass produced one or a specially hand crafted one. The horn itself is not going to make you something that you are not and for sure it will not play itself for you.
Erik, I am also right. I started this thread focusing on the Taylor trumpet for its personal personality "stamp" that Andy put on this horn and that he puts on all of his horns. I consider it as a valued item that money can't buy in other horns much the same as an artist puts a part of his self into his work that others can feel and enjoy. I have always tried to come back to this point throughout this thread. Through my studies in Kabbalah, this awareness of soul by recognizing these feelings more in people, things, events, etc has grown considerably and has improved my musicianship greatly. I tried to relay this to you all as musicians thinking that you all would pick up on this readily but nobody has picked up on it. I suppose then that I should be on a Kabblah thread for they would know exactly what I was talking about.
First, you wanted to see the horn which I don't blame you for I would have liked to see it also if I have not seen one before; so, I edited my first post and put in a picture. Then you wanted some specs which I also posted which was all good and fine. You wanted then to know about its technical features which I explained to let you all know that not only does this horn carry an "artistic soul" to it but is of the latest of the State of the Arts in technical developments. Now you want to talk about who plays what horn which I do not want to address for this was not the purpose of my thread. I only wanted to let you all know how much I enjoy Taylor's horn and why. The sound is so rich that it makes me want to play better and I do!!
One last point on the technical side of things here before I leave this thread. Erik, you are concerned about the one piece bell as being more alive vs the two piece bell as not being likewise. I really can not address that issue for first we have to define our terms of what "alive" means. By alive you could mean "bright" of which is not the standard character sound of Taylor horns. He may want to change this in the future, I don't know. Just for now, we'll just say that the word "alive" means to have a better sound. The bell is only one of the areas responsible for sound production; however, there is another area of the horn which is even more critical in this regard, the mouth pipe. If we were to take your logic, Erik, of less pieces make a better sound in a horn, then Taylor's single piece mouth pipe should make the sound very much better than many other horns that are made with a mouth pipe of three pieces.
Now, one last point on the subject other than technical that I have been trying to convey from the very first post before we got caught up in all this technical stuff. I know that we live in a highly technical world and everybody has this on his mind these days. This technical frame of reference has displayed itself in amazing trumpet abilities that few can accomplish. The area that I tried to address was not technical but rather in the line of something very personal, spiritual or what ever term you want to call it. I will leave this thread by asking you technocrats and other musicians with this question to help illustrate my point in this thread. Which would you prefer to listen to from a trumpet player, many notes that will baffle you as to how difficult they are to play or just one note that will make you cry with joy and love and that sound that has been known to bring down walls (in Jericho) and it is not because of the volume?
Liad Bar-EL |