Paul Du Bourg

Been watching the site for some time now. Surfing very rewarding but eating into my work time. Here goes 1st post.

Introduction:

Name : Paul
Age : 47
Occupation : Civil Engineer
Family : Wife and Naughty teenage daughter
Trumpet : Yamaha 8310 sp
Playing : 5 1/2 Years
Style : Jazz
Ability : Relatively Bad


My daughter came home from school 6 years ago insisting I buy her a trumpet as she had heard one of her masters playing and she loved the sound.

Response was " Borrow one and see how it goes with a couple of lessons". She packed it in after squeecking for a month or so!!

Pleased my baby showed the interest as without it I would no way have ever picked up the thing and given it a go. At the end of the year it will be 6 years of perseverance. I think I can count the number of days off practice on 2 hands.

Played piano and classical guitar as a kid but no ways got the thrill I have had from this nasty piece of bent pipe. To potentially achieve +3 octaves with the aid of a brass tube and 3 valves has still got me fascinated from the natural accoustics perspective. Only God knows how this thing really works!!



Question,

I see a hell of a lot of technical jargon on mouth piece bore size, make, etc. thrown about. How much attention should be paid to it as I have only ever played with the Shew mp that came with the trumpet apart from the few blasts on my daughters borrowed Blessing.

Has a mp ever made a profound difference to the quality of performance by anybody you know.

Heard a rumour that Sandoval learned to play without a mp.
Please confirm!!

Cheers

pAUL.

ComeBackKid

Paul - Welcome to TM. Great first post. You touched on a lot of hot topics that make the rounds here. I won't try to touch them all, especially the one about Sandoval as I have not heard that. As far as the whole MP issue goes, I have fallen into that abyss myself. I started playing 55 years ago and a Bach 7C was the only MP I every used, or even heard of, until I started again 5 months ago (I also had only one trumpet). Now, 40 trumpets and 50 MP's later, I still cannot tell you any revealing truths about them. Being a scientist, I did some research and came up with a listing of several dozen MP designs and configurations - many of which seemed contradictory - and posted them here as a topic shortly after I joined - only to be told by many members to ignore all of that stuff and simply find one that works. That is when I started 'the odyssey' and bought everything I could find. So, where am I? The 7C is still close to the best one and the only one that I really like better is an old Conn 4 from the 1940's. I have not tried all of the very exotic ones yet as it finally dawned on me that the MP was not the secret to my success - it was practice. Now, since you have been at this 5 1/2 years longer than I have (on my latest comeback attempt), maybe you are in a better position to start noticing some difference between the models than I am but even so, I doubt that anyone here can tell you what to use. You will just need to keep trying, although I don't know how to tell you to do that. Apparently there are some online stores or makes of MPs that will let you buy some with a liberal return policy in case you don't like it but I have not tried any of those so I can't tell you how it works. I did buy a MP with interchangeable rim and cup so I could try various combinations. It was not too expensive - maybe $40 on ebay - and it gives me some interesting configurations to try.

Good luck on your search.

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Come-Back Kid
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Selmer Invicta London (T)
Olds SuperStar (T)
Olds Super (2T)
Olds Special (2T+C)
Olds Ambassador (9T+7C)
Andreas Eastman (2T)
Conn Director (T+C)
King Cleveland Superior (T+C)
Holton (T602+C605 Shep Crk)
Holton Collegiate (T+C)
Blessing (T+C)
Yamaha (T+C)
Getzen 300
Amati ATR213
(+Revelle, Bundy, Alcazar, & ?)

Paul Du Bourg

CBK

Thanks for the reply.

The idea of going to the music store, opening boxes, spitting into brand new mouthpieces, replacing mouthpieces in boxes, feeling guilty about the whole thing, walking out of the store, not paying any money for the privilige of mucking the kit up, doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

I think I'll stick to what I,ve got thanks.

Ideas to throw about but must do a bit of graft.

Cheers

Paul.

tedh1951

G'day Paul, Welcome to TM - you Lucky Duck, you have discovered the "Holy Grail" in terms of the hunt for the perfect MP - you've already found the one for you.

Practice will help you learn to play it (unless of course your MP is absolutley and totally unsuitable, and only a good teacher can sort that for you), and 5-6 years suggests that you are well on the right track.

You say your daughter is 'naughty' - she must get lots of 'attagirls' for introducing you to the Trumpet.

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Ted

Paul Du Bourg

Hi Ted,

Making nice sounds at C6 so maybe you'r right.
If I look at the mp there is no stamping with size etc, only
"Yamaha Shew Jazz" so no idea what equivalent size would be.

Proud daddy went to daughters provincial regatta meeting this weekend.
Bronze medal in Pair so loads of attagirls again.Must tell everyone.

By the way I see the OZZIE Contingency has hired a brand new,entire, hotel out for the World Cup just down the road from my house.

Going to be interesting to see who can drink more beer!! Can't wait.

tedh1951

Paul, I reckon that sounds like a pretty even contest. Wasting beer by allowing it to sit in a container is .... unworthy.

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Ted

uvagrad90

Paul:
Rowing and Trumpet Playing...are there any two better pastimes?
Beer drinking maybe.

Mike