Have Mouthpiece...Will Blow!

I know some brass players who treat their mouthpiece the way some golfers treat their putters - i.e. they change them more often than they do their socks! I remember one cornetist with a mantelpiece full from one end to the other with Denis Wicks, Vincent Bachs, Adams, Blessings, Bessons, Kellys...standing like little ornaments on a shelf! Indeed, that's exactly what they WERE...waiting their turn patiently until my friend split a few too many notes and gave each another chance!

My eldest son, Morgan is a collector of mouthpieces. We found, just the other day an antique French mouthpiece with a triangular aperture! I have never seen anything like that before in my 40+ years as a player! Suffice to say there are mouthpieces to help you get high notes, ones to help you get low ones, some aim to improve your tone, plastic ones that are not too cold when playing Christmas Carols, heavy ones with boosters to help you

play longer by dispersing the vibrations to your lips...

Who would think such a small thing could come in such variations or make such a difference? But then...the amateur golfer probably asks the same about putters! I think it was Sam Torrance I once heard admit he had over 400 of them in his garage!

When I first moved onto euphonium it came about almost by accident: While playing with Camborne SA band I had formed part of a 'stage band' in the musical 'Hosea'. I had played cornet myself back then (aged 10) but our wise bandmaster, Ken Norton (left with Morgan and who, very sadly, passed away just a few months ago) realised such a small instrument was not for me. he moved me onto tenor horn and, within weeks, even I could recognise an improvement. When, a short while later, my parents were appointed across the Tamar to Torquay, the bandleader already had, ready for me, a shiny cornet. Oh-oh!

"But I play horn now," the 12-year old me piped up! He didn't have a horn - but he DID have a blackened 1912 euphonium with a bent 4th valve! If ever an instrument responded to some TLC it was that one...I worked and polished until it shone - the bath still had the marks when we left Torquay two years later - and I played and played and played. Six months later I am told I was playing some of the hardest solos in the euphonium repertoire using the SA manufactured Rangefinder mouthpiece my dad bought for me!

At our next home (Tunstall, Stoke-On-Trent) I played an Imperial euphonium (still with the Rangefinder) - although I looked with not a little envy towards our principal euphonium player's Bright Silver Plate Sovereign! At Bedlington (our next port of call) I played one of those strange design Yamaha euphoniums with the 4th valve 'up top' alongside the other three). This was a slightly larger bore and, therefore, necessitated a change in mouthpiece. Billy Webb, a friend from Newcastle, gave me a Denis Wick 6BM which I played until I left home for college.

At Colchester Institute I studied with one of the best musicians it has ever been my privilege to meet, Michael Clack - for many years the conductor of the world famous Chalk Farm Salvation Army Band. Michael was vice-principal of the college (and was an old friend of my parents) - which may account for the fact he managed to purloin one of the college Sovereigns for me to play (I finally got to play one...5 years after lusting after Kevin's back in Tunstall!)

The 6BM didn't fit the wider bore of the Sovereign, of course, and Michael kindly lent me a Vincent Bach 3G mouthpiece in my first college lesson, September 1981. I used it until Christmas then, using my Christmas money, I bought my own shiny new one from my fellow SA bandsman Dennis Todd's 'Rosehill Instruments' shop in Bedlington High Street. I think, even back in 1981/2 it cost me £30!

When I got back to college something was not quite right...the new mouthpiece didn't 'feel' the same. Michael and I did an A/B comparison and they weren't the same! I have spoken to Bach 'experts' who 'absolutely assure' me that I am wrong - but that 3G has a different internal contour and cup-size! My surprise (and slight disappointment) was somewhat tempered by Michael Clack informing me I'd been silly to buy a new mouthpiece anyway - he was more than happy to let me have his...for a fiver!

Fortunately, Dennis Todd allowed me a refund...I had the 3G I liked AND a £25 bonus into the

bargain (which, undoubtedly, was soon diverted to Parrot Records in Colchester!)

29 years later, I still use that very same mouthpiece! It has been re-plated once and the number of hours of usage it has been employed in practising and performance must be into tens of thousands of hours...best value for a fiver I will ever have in my life!

At this precise moment, due to some (and I choose my description very carefully) particularly

graceless and clumsy man-management I am without a band to play with for the first time in nearly 40 years. As my new Prestige euphonium belongs to the band who have discarded me I will also soon be without an instrument as well. Today, I enjoyed a good long blow, up and down my scales and exercises and through some favourite tunes and solos. I don't know how long it will be before I can do this again and made the most of it!

But when I DO re-begin to play...my Vincent Bach 3G (pictured left complete with my own reflection) will be

waiting - and, boy, I hope that day comes soon!