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Originally Posted by Warren  Been a while since my last post...I found out that if I spend the hour I spend here everyday on my trumpet it's an extra hour of practice. 
I have a question though: What are the fingerings above G3? The G two octaves up from the 2nd line G on the treble cleff.
Also..Does anyone playing on a Bach 3C find that they can't play loud? Went to a practice last night with a wind ensemble of about 500, about 100 trumpets and I can't hear myself play. So afterwords I went to chat to one of the pro's and he said he moved to an 11.5C to help his volume. Is there any truth in that or do I just need to practice louder? |
I use the same fingerings as an octave lower. It is easier to keep track of what note that I am playing when incorporating "old habits".
Your problem is not "volume". It is a characteristic of our hearing called masking. When you are subjected to sounds in the exact same frequency range with a similar or more complex overtone structure, your brain cannot sort the two sounds out. Switching to a smaller mouthpiece thins your sound out, making the overtone structure different enough to prevent masking. A smaller mouthpiece cannot be louder!
This "masking" effect is what makes mp3 files possible. Everything that the encoder assumes that we can't hear (ie. is masked) is left out, making the file much smaller.
Many times we are told to play more softly when volume is not the issue at all. The very dense, harmonically complex sound of many modern trumpets with big mouthpieces masks the sound of strings and woodwinds. Even playing more softly does not always "solve" the problem. Lighter equipment could.