The inspiration of sound

I saw this really inspiring interview with Belgian trumpet player Bert Joris, and one of the things he was talking about is the way his sound influences his inspiration and ideas. That is a very interesting thought.
In my case I am certain that I play differently on trumpet than on flugelhorn, really different notes and licks, just because they sound different. When I got my Van Laar B8 trumpet, I instantly could play a ballad on it, something I just couldn't do on my former Holton MF Horn. The sound just wasn't right for that. On the Holton I could play in a bigband very well, it was a bright sounding, light playing horn, but whenever I had to play a solo, I wanted to switch to flugel, because the sound didn't inspire me to play a good solo. The moment I had my current Van Laars, I had to reconsider all my concepts and I had to experiment a bit with what sounded best and what felt best for a certain piece. I have to say that it is not a very conscious process, it has a high degree of subconsciousness, but it matters a lot. Some pieces I cannot play on flugel and the other way around. Or maybe it is more like I cannot find the right inspiration for a certain piece if I don't play it on the right horn. It even goes as far as a different mouthpiece can give a different sound and feel and give me a totally different angle. That is what I like about the Curry TC. It gives me instant access to another part of my brain to play different things.

So sound is, at least to me, very important in terms of inspiration. That can be very annoying if you have bad sound equipment on stage. If the sound from the monitor isn't right, it instantly cuts off some inspirational directions. I have to be very aware of that and try to concentrate on my inner voice for inspiration. But it makes it harder to play the way you want. It can also enhance your performance if the sound is right, or even simply change the way you play on a given moment, if the sound coming from the monitor is different, because it can give you different ideas. If for instance, a monitor has  much high in it, I like to take my trumpet and inspiration goes in the direction of lots of notes, bravoura kind of playing. I shouldn't take out my flugel then, because all the 'flugely' ideas immediately drop down on the floor and never hit my soul (or anyone else's for that matter).

So, yes, sound is a very important inspiration.

Read this and...fail!

I got the link to this article from CDBaby. Great stuff to think about. And I think we all use these incredible tips sometimes, don't we?

And the winner is.....

I am sorry to have kept half the world out of sleep with this mighty cliffhanger, but I am now very close to revealing the winner of the mouthpiece that won the headpouch. I had a terrific concert with the Guus Tangelder Bigband featuring Jasper van 't Hof on piano, who is really amazing, check this guy!, and I played the 8.5C Curry and the flugelpiece with the same rim. And they made it to the headpouch!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, I am officially playing the Curry 8.5 now. It still needs some finetuning, but the sound is bigger and more open, and endurance is good now. It is easier to keep open for a whole concert than the smaller 10.5, which tends to go out of control when the lips swell a bit from playing. The only thing I want now is the 8.5TC to make the set complete. I simply love the feel and sound of the TC, and don't want to give that up.

Will the 8.5 make it to the headpouch?

Tomorrow is an exciting day! Will the Curry 8.5 make it to the headpouch? In other words, will it be my main mouthpiece or not? If not I will put my 10.5 back in the pouch, and that'll be the end of the experiment.
I have to play a bigband gig tomorrow, and that is always a good testcase for new mouthpieces. If I can make it through the gig in one piece without loosing teeth or blood spreading all over the place, then it could be the mouthpiece I need to become the best trumpet player in the world. If, however my teeth start rattling and my eyes fall out of their sockets within two sets of bigband playing, then it just isn't meant to be.
I will report tomorrow (if I am not looking for lost teeth and bits of lip).

What a cliffhanger! Tomorrow we will all know!

rest-home for brass

A former student of mine, Han Savelkoel, has a beautiful site with pictures and info of Dutch and Belgian brass instruments, plus some oddities. Once in a while I visit this site and I can really feel and smell these dear, old horns. I started on a Schenkelaars flugelhorn when I was 8 years old, exactly the same horn that Han has a picture of.

A sentimental yourney for me and maybe other brass players, too. I know that he is always looking for new stuff and tips and information about the horns on his site, so take a peak and enjoy.

What is also very nice, is that in maybe hundred years ago, Holland and Belgium had a fine and acknowledged brass instrument builders culture. The last one-First Brass-closed not so long ago, but there is fresh blood, and he is getting famous very quickly: Hub van Laar. He continues the tradition that once was.

Testing new mouthpiece

I have about 60 different mouthpieces. I played them all. Some of them only for five seconds to know that they aren't right, others for years.

I have been playing Curry 10.5C consistently for over a year now. That means that I am pretty satisfied with it. It is a lean and efficient piece with nice high and warm low. Milk chocolate with a silver wrapper. The only issue is that it feels a bit small on my lips, and that it has a rather small sound. I wanted it to be a bit bigger, but with the same character, only pure chocolate with the same silver wrapper.

I ordered a Curry 8.5C, and together with that a flugelpiece 8.5FL-Y (since my Van Laar has a Yamaha receiver). From the time I play Curry, I am confident that I can order a trumpet and flugel set of pieces, because they really do have the same rim. I had to figure out if I needed an FL or an FL-M (a bit shallower), and the FL gives me the best warm and yet projecting sound I want from my flugel. One of the reasons I have such an amount of pieces, is that I always had trouble matching pieces. If I had a good flugelpiece, I had to find a matching trumpetpiece and vice versa.

Anyway, the 8.5C came on thursday, the day of the concert with Patrick Votrian. I unpacked it on stage during soundcheck and after a few tones, I decided to play the concert on it. It sounded good enough and felt playable. What surprised me was the width of the rim. The 10.5 has a pretty narrow rim and the 8.5 is rather wide in comparison. I hadn't expected this big difference.
Halfway I noticed that I was tiring a bit quicker than I wanted. The 8.5 obviously takes a bit more strength to keep together. Sound was good, especially on the flugelhorn I was very pleased with what I heard and felt. It gave a bit more room for my lips to move within the piece. I switched back to my trusted 10.5 and played the rest of the concert without trouble.
I decided to practice some more on the 8.5 and give it a week or two to adjust my lips to the somewhat roomier inner diameter and the wider rim. I definitely liked the flugelsound, and also the trumpet has a bit bigger sound, but the first couple of tries it seemed a bit harder to control and get a focused tone on it.
I have been practicing on both flugel and trumpet for a few days now, and I might have found a better match. I am not quite sure, on trumpet I still tire a bit quicker, but I like the bigger tone so much, that I just give it another week or so. On flugel I am already convinced. In a couple of days I have a bigband gig and that is a good testcase. If my embouchure holds through this gig on the 8.5 I know I can do other things as well.


If the 8.5 didn't fit, I wouldn't have played and practiced on it anymore already. A lot of mouthpieces are so clearly not my thing, that after a minute it is clear that it isn't going to work. With Curry's it is a bit different. They have a very open high register, which no other piece I ever tried has quite like it, and it has a very versatile sound for what I do. For bigband and pop it has enough sizzle (though I don't play lead. I tried a 10.5* and a 10.5Z, and these have lots of sizzle!, but too shallow for me), and for my trio, which needs a bit of a classical sound, or at least a more mellow approach, it is just right. Like I said it feels lean (the 8.5 even more, because of the bigger diameter) and gives a nice warm low.
I am curious if I will keep the 8.5, and if not, the 10.5 has been a good choice for over a year now. Stick to that for some time.


A special word about the TC line of Curry. That is really something worth to check out. T=trumpet, C=Cornet. It has a flugellike cup, it is a bit shorter than a normal trumpet piece for tuning reasons, and it plays just great. It has a very cornettish sound, but if you step on the gas, it gives a fat and warm sound. It is perfectly in tune an I can easily play the same range as the other pieces, and for ballads it is just what I need sometimes. It is even easy to switch inbetween songs if you need a more intimate sound. Super for my trio gigs. If the 8.5 dtays, I really have to get an 8.5TC. I now only have a 10.5TC, which I use very frequently.

What makes the sound of a band?

Last thursday, I played with tuba player Patrick Votrian, an American tuba player living in Utrecht. It was a very good experience. We played the repertoire of our LBH CD. Patrick is a beast of a player, with a super groovy time and sound. That gave the band a totally different feel, which was a strange experience, because I thought the sound of the tuba determined the sound of the band, but that is only partly true. It is the sound of Daniel Herskedal that really determines (one third, hehe) of the typical sound of my trio. Patrick did a hell of a job, and he played his ass off, I really liked it, but it didn't sound like the trio I have with Daniel. Which made me think again of what makes bands sound the way they do. It is the bandmembers personality more than the instrument they play, I guess, at least if you assume that somebody's sound comes from ones personality, which I believe to be true. So, that brings up the question, if Daniel played the violin, would the band sound more like my trio than if Patrick played the tuba again? It's almost philosophy.
I had the same experience with my other trio. Trumpet, guitar, double bass. This trio also sounds totally different with another guitar or bass player. I sound different from the illustrious Chet Baker Trio, same instruments, different personality. That is something very obvious of course, but last thursday, it struck me, I think because the tuba is such a prominent instrument, I assumed that that determined the total sound of the band and made it what it was, but that just isn't true. I learn every day!

Very funny

I am happy to say that this never happened to me, but it has come close some times in my teaching carriere.
Enjoy:

Another tuba player

Today I am going to play with an other tuba player. this is very exciting, since the only tuba player I played with in my trio, is Daniel Herskedal. I don't know the other guy personally, his name is Patrick Votrian, and he seems to be a very good player. He also lives very close to where I live. I am very curious, will see this evening. We play a few pieces of our Lochs/Balthaus/Herskedal CD and we do some standards together with Simone Honijk, so it will be a bit of a jam, which is always nice if there are good musicians around.
I will keep you updated.

Inspiration!

I came across this video of one of my heroes, Terence Blanchard, and with this song he demonstrates what it is that makes the trumpet so special. It sounds brilliant, haunting, fat, screaming and sad at the same time, he does a great job in this piece!
And the Dutch government wants to dump this orchestra...how dare they?

Oh, by the way, I finally learned how to place a video on my blog. Looks better already!

To my first follower!

Derek,

You seem to be my first follower. Tjeez, that is incredible! Thanks for signing in on this blog. I wanted to mail you a little something back, but I couldn't find my way through all kinds of login stuff, so I decided that it is quite something that I have a first follower and I just make a post for you.
I hope I can live up to the expectations. I do my best to come up with some stuff that is interesting or fun.
I would really want to able to load up some Youtube movies, but I have no clue. If you or anybody knows how to do this, please let me know.

Thoughts on focusing on one type of music.

As a professional trumpet player it seems that the best thing to keep yourself and your family alive, is to be able to play as many styles and settings as you can. But I also noticed that if you really focus on one thing, that the audience will recognize you for that and want you for that. That is a bit of a dilemma.
When I was a kid I learned to play the trumpet in a brass band. At that time it was simply not done to play popular music in those bands. We played arrangements of the classics, like La Gazza Ladra or original pieces, but always classical music. My first teachers only taught me to play classical, too, but when I was 16, I played in a bigband for the first time, and I started to listen to Clifford Brown, Wynton Marsalis and Freddie Hubbard. It appeared that I had a talent for improvising and I loved playing in a bigband.
I went to the conservatory in Hilversum, which was the first conservatory where you could learn to play jazz and bigband. The first years I couldn't really choose between jazz and classical music, so I tried to play both, which didn't work out so well, because of severe embouchure trouble. I had to make a choice and I chose jazz as my main object. This narrowed down other playing possibilities, but I wasn't too aware of that at that time, nor did I have much of a choice. I only had so much time.
In the end I really dug into jazz and even specialized a bit further. I became an improvising soloist. I still play in a bigband, my reading is still very good, and occasionally I play in horn sections, but how things are developing now it looks like it isn't so bad to specialize and focus on being an improviser. I mean, there are a lot of great players out there, but if you listen carefully they all have their fortes and their flaws. If they stick to what they are really good at and go that way, they may well be on their way to have a lot of work in that area. So, the message here might be that contrary to what seems logical or wise to do-try to be able to play all kinds of different styles and settings-, maybe it isn't so bad to focus yourself on what comes most natural to you.
However, to find out what you really want, you need to play everything, listen a lot to all kinds of music and be open to music that doesn't seem to be something for you. I mean, I was classically trained, I didn't know what jazz was, and the first time I heard it, it didn't feel like something I was going to do for the rest of my life...
By the way, that doesn't mean that I never play or listen to other music anymore. Maybe the other way around. I keep my eyes and ears open to all kinds of music and make my own stew out of it. That is what makes it my music. I love to try and play classical music and I love to play in a bigband section or in a pop band. That keeps it fresh and alive. But professionally I think it isn't so bad to have a clear image of what you are best at and go from there.

Editing cont.

We did it. We edited nine songs in two half days !. I think that is a very good result. There were some important decisions to make, but all in all we just played very well indeed. I think it will be a great CD.
Actually I think it is my first live-CD ever. That calls for champagne! I never dared to do it before this one. Afraid something might go irreparably wrong. Now I would have wanted more recordings to be live recordings. Jazz is music of the moment, and you just get this one time to play it right. If you get this moment on tape it is really magical. I think we did a good job with this one. There are definitely some magical moments on it. Sometimes I was smiling inside when I heard back what we did. That doesn't happen too often, actually.
Now it is a matter of backing up everything as safe as possible. Wouldn't want to do it all over again. My Time Machine is running, the USB stick is loading with the edited files and I already have a back up on my harddisk. That should be enough.
After that we are going to the next step: mixing the edited tracks. I will keep you updated.

Next step towards a new CD

Today I am finally making the next step for the new CD from Trio Bert Lochs featuring jazz singer Lydia van Dam. We already recorded the CD at two live performances in the theatres of Boxmeer and Emmeloord. We shifted out the best takes some time ago, and today I am going to the guitar players house in Cologne to edit the recordings. Not that there is so much to edit. They are all live recordings, there is a lot of crosstalk between every instrument and the singer, so, not much that can be done about small or larger mistakes. Not that I mind. I think we played pretty good, and shouldn't a live recording be a representation of how we sound live? So, yes, there are some little flaws here and there, but if you listen to recordings of the great masters, that can just be the thing that makes those recordings stand out. Their honesty and purity of the moment. Isn't that what jazz is all about?

To be continued...

Practice and simple tunes

My students know that I am very fond of exercises. Little, isolated pesky difficulties. I like to isolate problems in my playing, myself. I turn everything in to an exercise. That can be beneficial, but the danger is that you loose a musical view on playing.
For this reason I, myself, love to play easy tunes (relatively easy: depending on your level of playing of course). That way I can still concentrate on flaws in my playing, but play music in the same time. Most of the time, the flow of the music helps to diminish technical problems. If you can play a simple tune very musically, it is (at least to me) very satisfactory in both my obsession with exercises and my musical sense. In other words, in my practice room, I don't have to play difficult music to improve my playing or to satisfy my musical needs. If you can play a relatively easy tune correct, technically and musically, that can be the best fundament to play everything a little bit better: the system is the same, the techniques are the same and the musical feeling is the same.
A few books that I like very much in this area are Bel Canto for Trumpet (Concone-stuff, but with a play-along CD) and Trumpet Sonority by Allen Vizzutti.
It also works the other way around: playing a simple exercise as musical as you can. Take Colin's Lip Flexibilities and treat them as the most beautiful piece ever. That makes them easier to play, and a lot more fun, too.

Left wing hobby

Yes, I will admit it, I have a left wing (politically) hobby, or even worse: a left wing profession. I make music! I play an instrument. I compose, and listen to music (although I think that is considered more right wing). For people from abroad who don't know what is happening in Holland at the moment: stay away and wait a couple of election rounds. The government-to-be is extremely right wing, islamofobic and not democratic. They think that culture: music, art and dance, is not important. They think people that practice this are parasites that live off the money of hard working people. I don't know if they know that it is hard work to be an artist (certainly in such an environment!), but anyway, they want to cut subsidies to zero and leave it to the free market. I don't think that is a good idea.
Even worse than that is their ignorance of the social reality of this and many other countries. The world is quickly becoming a village, and they just ignore that. Keeping foreigners out, condemning people ground on their religion and origin.
I fear that we just have to go through this phase, I just wanted to say it just once: I didn't vote for this government, and I don't agree with what they stand for. And I know that a lot of people agree with me, so I hope that the rest of the world forgives us this stupidity. This will go by in time.

Of old and new

Yesterday I played my Couesnon for the first time in three or almost four years. It played very well indeed, but the reason I switched to a Van Laar became obvious only after a few notes. Everybody who ever played a Couesnon will agree, I guess: those horns are not easy to play in tune. Once you are used to it, it is OK, but I hadn't played it for a long time, and I forgot the pitfalls and that wasn't pretty at all.
Today at home I practiced some more on it, and played it along with my new one, and although I really love the somewhat smokey and intimate sound of the Couesnon very much, the playability, versatility and intonation of the Van Laar convinced me that I had chosen the right gear a couple of years ago. The Van Laar, like the trumpets he builds, sings much more. It just delivers more sound and the sound is easy to manipulate and make it your own. The Couesnon just has a beautiful sound, and if that is what you need, than it is a great little friend.
When I first played my Van Laar, I wrote a song with the same title as this post. You can watch it on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Hubjazz?feature=mhum#p/u/11/2R8cmdWdQnw

Old love

Today I have an informal gig in a nice jazzclub: Artishock in Soest. I was cleaning up the attic of my house and saw the gigbag of my old Couesnon flugelhorn. I decided to check it before putting it back, but when I played it, it was like meeting an old friend. I simply love the sound of this French lady. It is so warm and lovely, and it didn't play as bad as I thought. The valves rattle a bit, but still do their job. And playing it was actually a pleasure. The sound is somewhat smaller then my Van Laar B2, but it felt quite good. If I don't have to step on the gas then I guess this flugel is as good as any. Soundwise it is the best. I bought it from my former teacher Ack van Rooijen when I was still a student of his. The story is that this was a prototype that Couesnon made for him. There are two different types of waterkeys on the instrument. He told me that he wanted one on the first valve, too, and this looks different than the other two, indeed.
Anyway, this is one instrument I will never sell. It's like coming home after a great and long journey. I will play it tonight, and see how it plays in a real playing situation. I am actually looking forward to it.

This is a commercial picture of me playing my Couesnon. It is a nice shiny horn. I had it revised a couple of years ago, and it was compeletely stripped and newly lacquered.

Maybe I will write something about another love of mine, the Constellation, but that is for later.

The button exercise

I am always in for new ways of making improvement to my practice, make it more efficient and improve my playing. Since I do BE, I am pretty experiment proof, which means that in the rare case that my embouchure really starts to falter, I can always find my way back again. There were times that this was really not the case at all!

Anyway, triggered by the Ads on my page, I want to share my experience with something quite like the P.E.T.E, a little device from the Warburton company. Years ago, when I was struggling with my embouchure and looking for new ways to improve my playing, I got an idea. Later it appeared to be an already existing idea, but I got it all by myself (proud!). I took a small button and a piece of string. I put the button in my mouth between my lips and teeth and pulled the string and tried to hold the button in place with my lips. This is exactly what the P.E.T.E does. A good exercise, I still think. But, at that time I wasn't aware of the risk involved in this. I did this for half an hour or even more, and eventually I couldn't play a single note anymore, so, I stopped doing this altogether. Now that I know a bit better how to pace myself and read more about how muscles work, I figured, why not experiment with it again? I now experiment with 3x10 seconds, 3x a day and try to build it up a bit.
So, anyone who wants to try, be careful, do not overdo, and stick to small amounts of time. If you feel a burn in your muscles, you've already done enough.
Oh, and never do it close to practice or as a warm up before a concert. It's like weight lifting, make sure you have enough time to relax again!