The 4th Dangerous Addiction For Trumpeters

I’m out on a gig today but I’ve prepared this post for you:

For musicians we all know that sex, drugs and Rock n’ Roll (Feel free to insert your particular genre into this space) are our potential down falls. For trumpet players though, there is a 4th addiction that can be just a s dangerous.

My post yesterday made me think about a few guys that I’ve gigged with in the past and their obsession with the technology they use to play – Especially their mouthpieces. Don’t get me wrong, these players are perfectly nice guys but they are little misguided in my opinion.

One chap I’ve played a few shows with has a case for his mouthpieces. I don’t mean a little mouthpiece sized case. I mean a briefcase case!! When he opened it I wondered if he was some sort of James Bond villain or an assassin. He has a several stems with 20 or so different cups and the same number of different rims. They lined they top and bottom of this case and fit together a little like a sniper rifle you might see being taken out of a case in the movies.

Unfortunately he spent so much time working out the optimum cup depth and rim size for each piece of music he was unable to hear how poor his production and tuning was.

It’s such a shame that some people take technology to such an extreme and lose sight of what it made to do. Spending so much time on gadgets and other gismos (like boosters, thicker valve caps etc) makes them forget to put time into practicing their craft. The thing which will really help them reach their goal.

It’s dangerous in other ways to. Shifting mouthpieces mid gig is detrimental to your development. But so many potentially good players do it looking for an instant. Answers rarely lie in technology as the tech is made to enhance abilities that you already have. They can’t work miracles nor give you things you’ve never possessed.

I have 2 mouthpieces. One for lead one for everything else. The best players often only have 1 and can create everything that they need with their air stream. I’d like to be able to grasp that ability myself one day but unfortunately it can’t be bought.