cmcdougall

Manny, i am an 11th grader and i just recently(2 months ago) switched to Prana mouthpieces, lately i have been doing some jazz lead playing with stuff up in the double range so i had to break out my LT B6L, ( i am playing a Prana B1-5M), after a week or two of playing predominantly on the LT when i picked up the Prana I noticed a SLIGHT fuzziness in the sound, i consulted my teacher, but he couldn't really hear it, i know it is there, but no one else can hear it very much, I consulted Tom and Dave at Monette and Tom feels like it is an airspeed issue, i have been focusing on slowing down my airstream a little bit and really backing off into the upper register, this has cleared it up for the most part but there is still that little something. You play Prana MPC's what do you think it is??

Heavens2kadonka

Collin,

I'm no Manny Laureano, but I also have been working on this issue a bit, so I want to kinda drop my two cents, and then back away for the real pros here.

Have you ever payed attention to how you aim the air through the mouthpiece? We sometimes dont aim very well, and a lot of sound can be swallowed up by the mouthpiece cup. Actually think about aiminy your air through the throat of the mouthpiece. That may clear some of it.

Van

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Manny Laureano

Collin,

Think of the Prana as a very, very efficient speaker. It picks up everything in your sound that you probably hadn't noticed before especially now, that you're switching around mouthpieces and doing a lot of high playing. What it's picking up is a certain amount of fatigue that is spreading your aperture a litle bit.

When you warm up, do what you can to ensure that your embouchure is stable and not over-opening up and then freezing in a "too-open" position. It's like playing an arpeggio from up to down and back up. What is probably happening is that you're opening to play in the lower register and when you ascend your lips are "stuck" in the open position for the low register! Do you get occasional double buzzes as well? It comes from the same thing in this case (there are several reasons for double buzzes). I'm also going to guess that you are starving the embouchure by not supplying large enough breaths and then tightening your abs when you exhale. That's not good.

So,

keep your embouchure stable but not frozen,
take deep breaths and get rid of it it all

and
only think about all this crap in the practice room unless you enjoy the experience of paralysis by analysis.

ML