Trumpet Planet

Know Your Vincent Bach Mouthpieces

Have you heard of Vennture Mouthpieces? Doug McVey is making a big name for himself in the trumpet mouthpiece world and it’s absolutely deserved. As well as making his own lines of fantastic brass instrument mouthpieces he is a real master of custom work. His VennCAD software is available free-of-charge from his website and enables anybody with an idea to combine cups, rims and backbores to…

One (Mouth-) Piece To Rule Them All

The purpose of this post is to discuss my experience of having used a single mouthpiece for professional playing over a relatively long period of time. Some history Like many trumpet players I like mouthpieces. I really like them. Over the years I’ve owned a lot of them and my preferences have changed over time from one extreme of design to another. A major shift in my habits and opinions…

Reflecting On A Successful Year, 2019.

It’s January. This means that, in the UK at least, it is time to fill out the tax return again. Of course, I could have done it many months ago. Considering that the country was in lockdown and I wasn’t doing much of anything else. Actually, that’s not wholly accurate as I was working pretty hard getting the openArbanProject off the ground, teaching the TCE online, learning to program computers…

Does a better trumpet make you play trumpet better?

This is a topic that I’ve found myself discussing with people a few times recently. I think that instinctively people already know the answer but there is a lot of confusion out there over the definition of “better”, which is (of course) subjective. There is such a thing as a better trumpet for playing one style of music or another, but this post is more about better and worse quality…

How Copyright Spoils Music Education

My relationship with music education is fairly long. I first began volunteering in a training band when I was a teenager and during my year out before going to music college I took on the responsibility of running it. I was teaching occasional lessons whilst I studied and teaching was something I began doing straight away once I finished my degree. Like many musicians in the UK, faced with the…

What is the openArbanProject?

I recently began working a new project that I have named the openArbanProject. Strange name, right? Well this way of naming things is a reference to something called camel case, which is a naming convention often used by computer programmers… why I’d do that will become obvious soon. The openArbanProject has an initial goal of recreating Jean Baptiste Arban’s Cornet…

Did Claude Gordon Play How Herbert Clarke Played?

In my time as an internet trumpet nerd I’ve had more than my fair share of run-ins with fanatic advocates of various trumpet playing methods. I’ve posted on that subject in the past and if curious you can check that out here (don’t forget to come back).

I think that in the pursuit of facts and understanding we need to disconnect from our emotional connection to our teachers and primarily focus on…

TCE and Superchops, same or different?

I was recently involved in a discussion on Facebook with a trumpeter called Chuck Par-Due. Chuck knew Harry James when he was younger and received some help and direction from this great master of our instrument. About that he said the following:

When I was 16 years old, Harry James taught me the embouchure I still use almost 50 years later. Harry very clearly taught me that the bottom lip is the…

Which Books Should You Read About Brass Embouchure?

Recently I saw a post on Reddit’s r/trumpet group in which someone asked which books they should read about embouchure. This blog post is simply me sharing my answer to that question. I figured that as I took the time to write it then I should post it here too.

I see reading the following list of books, of which there are fifteen mentioned, as a basic requirement for anyone who wishes to call…

Is there actually a trumpet method by Jerome Callet?

Jerome Callet was a truly unique figure in the world of brass pedagogy. He was a constant innovator in everything that he did; instrument design, mouthpiece design, embouchure methods, trumpet teaching. I have spent most of the last decade digging around online, chatting with his ex-pupils, travelling to Europe for lessons and conferences and studying his books and videos. I think it’s fair to…

Legacy Superchops – A Piece Of Trumpet History

In recent years the name Jerome Callet is most closely associated with way of playing the trumpet commonly known as the Tongue Controlled Embouchure. This method is also known as Superchops and even True Power Trumpet Fitness (as taught by Ralph Salamone). Superchopsis also the name that Callet gave to his latest line of trumpet mouthpieces, since 2008, which are based upon Harry James’ actual…

The first time I ever saw a brass player using an einsetzen embouchure was in a brass band in the early 1990s. I was only fourteen years old and our brass band was on tour in Germany. A member from another band was helping us out on the tenor horn and this guy set his mouthpiece in a very strange way. In all of his playing he played with the mouthpiece positioned inside his bottom lip and the…

Trumpet Guru Conspiracies Part 1: The Failing Student

Intro

This is the first of a short series of articles that are written partly tongue-in-cheek but also completely based in fact. It has been quite some years since I began devoting time to studying the world of trumpet pedagogy. My research consists of a few things: Reading trumpet history and method books, reading doctorate research (dissertations etc.), reading online forums and trumpet…

New Book For Learning TCE Now Available

Exploring The Harmonic Series With The Seven Bugles

My third ebook is finally finished and available for purchase! Rather than explain it in detail here I have added a page titled Books to the menu bar of this site. On that link you can find out more about my ebooks and there are links to purchase them from the Trumpet Planet Store.

Happy spitting!!

Rich ~iii<0

How effective is my practise?

As an instrumental music teacher the subject of practise is one that I discuss almost on a daily basis with all kinds of people. Usually it’s my pupils or their parents but it is a topic that comes up in social situations too. Maybe I’m chatting with someone about cookery, open source software or learning a language; eventually the subject of practising to learn new skills will creep into the…

TCE-UK is very near to releasing the new TCE-RC mouthpiece. I have been working over the last few months to bring a custom mouthpiece to market at an accessible price.

At this point you can pre-order your TCE-RC mouthpiece by contacting me using the link above. Full information about the TCE-RC mouthpiece is available on the Trumpet Planet website. Follow this link!

For those interested in…