TromboneChat

Hey y’all, long time listener, first time caller, sorta. Okay this is actually my second rodeo(?), yadda yadda.

I’ve been working up my (tenor) chops after many years wasting away doing anything but. I had a stint during lockdown where I practiced pretty freely but regularly and it was productive overall, but I like to think I used to be pretty dang good when I was in college.

The mouthpiece I was using was a (newer gen) Schilke 51 and I used to sound okay on it. It felt open, and slotted well, but I did think my tone fell apart easily at higher dynamics with it. ANYWAY…


It’s too large for the weakened state of my current chops, and sometimes I actually feel like I’m kinda letting my lips smoosh inside of it, thereby limiting overall flexibility, which has been a huge issue. FAST FORWARD

I buy a used Schilke 50 - it turns out to be the old gen with the long shank; the one that’s tapered just a little differently, so that it just barely wobbles in my Conn 88hcl.

What I immediately noticed was that the horn was considerably sharp with this MP, but also that my pitch center seemed to drift, or was just overall quite dispirit across partials. I did like the sound of my long tones, though. Something about this mouthpiece really messed with my playing.

As I continued to play this mouthpiece, thinking, of course, “I’m just getting back into this; of course I’ll run into difficulties.” I realized that it seemed to create a sort of hesitance when articulating that I associate with the lack of pitch center, or slotting. More fast forward…

Even though I know have stopped trying with that MP, that uncertainty has now seemed to carry over and left me with a gruesome double buzz on many of the notes in the 2nd partial, usually when coming from a note lower or higher.

This is tremendously frustrating and I’ve been reading and watching various things trying to figure this out, but I’m afraid to accidentally reinforce bad habits. I know this has happened to some of you.

What worked; what didn’t?

edit: sorry for such a long post, I got to rambling. I also realize there are many resources for info, but please, this is a community of players and I thought this would be a great opportunity for community knowledge. Thanks.

If you search you may find some of my previous posts about the double buzz. It can be an issue of strength, injury, embouchure configuration/ form, mouthpiece size, or any combination of those.
In this case it sounds like the mouthpiece switch precipitated it, but that's not the only cause.
I can better diagnose and fix it if I can see you play... interested in a Skype lesson?

I had a similar thing when I started doubling on bass trombone and I assumed it was the sudden change from a 5 to a 2. Whatever caused it, I think it was a mixture of mouthpiece being too low on my face versus my muscle strength. Buzzing with the mouthpiece (don't bother without) pitched exercises, buzzing as loud as possible and trying to eradicate all the air from the sound sorted it out after a month. Getting rid of the air sound in the buzz I find most beneficial to sorting out most problems as it tends to be a sign of inefficiency.