| Re: Why go below 3?
Many of the response so far seem to presume that we all play with the same embouchure. That's just not the case. Although there are literally hundreds of variations, let's just look at my own experience with rolled-in vs. rolled-out.
A few years back I was trying a more rolled-in setting and kept gravitating toward smaller and smaller mpcs and ended up around .64" in diameter (7C-ish). Because of troubles controlling that embouchure (no troubles at all with tone), Pops convinced me that I'm a rolled-out kind of guy and I moved to larger mpcs, ultimately landing in the .67" range.
For Bb trumpet my main mpc is a GR 66.8B2.8, which is a 1-1/2C-ish design but with an alpha, beta and throat that gives me the support I need. I've got around 6 GRs that vary slightly from my main mpc, but this mpc gives me the individual compromise between range, tone, endurance and ease that I seek. With only a few hours of practice per week I maintain a very solid (free and open at any dynamic) high-C and with just a little extra practice I can play cleanly up to E. The G is also there, but requires some build up to work there.
If I pull out the GR65M in my kit and play with my normal rolled out embouchure, it CUTS my range and endurance. There's not room for me to play that mpc with my lips rolled out.
OTOH, many years ago, when my instructor directed me to start using a 1-1/2C (coming off a 7C) with no auditioning or comparisions, he did me a disservice, because my embouchure did not support a 1-1/2C. At 12 I was already 6' tall and 175 lbs, so my lips were close to as big as they would get. It wasn't a matter of my lips not matching the mpc, but my embouchure did not and the instructor gave me no tools to transition. I suffered, unknowing, with this poorly matched setup for decades.
Finally, IMHO, if it takes four weeks to adjust to a mpc, then the mpc is a poor match. I think that you can hear and feel differences in a good match immediately and only two to three days of trial are needed to assure that it's not due to a compensation that's not natural. (We compensate for the weaknesses in our equipment/body matches and when an equipment weakness is taken away we need to "uncompensate". When the compensation is removed, then the equipment answer can be different than we first presumed when we were still compensating. This is the honeymoon effect.)
Bottom line; the mpc needs to match your embouchure type. Selecting a mpc by size is folly.
Dave |