Thanks for the reminder!
Darth recently competed with approximately 150 other trumpet players for a limited number of seats in the west-central Missouri district concert and jazz bands. We estimate the auditionees represented the top 5% of high school musicians in the district.
She said she really blew the audition. I don't doubt it. She practiced for it for a couple of months and I'd say she overdid it. When it was getting closer to the audition date, her playing seemed to get worse. She's really better when she's only played through a piece a few times.
Still, she managed to land 5th chair in the concert band and 3rd chair in the jazz band. And will be auditioning for State in a couple of months. With the same music, which I'm not letting her play for a while. Time to start working on her solo.
One of the other trumpet players from her school also auditioned, but he was ranked 26th, which put him 10 spots away from a seat. He's a senior and plays second chair. Used to challenge her for first chair nearly every week last year but has apparently thrown in the towel. Good thing. She's much better than she was last year.
Two of our other seniors landed 1st chair (concert band) on their instruments.
Supposedly, in addition to being the first student at this school to ever score a 1-plus on a solo, she's the first freshman to make it to all-district.
I just listened to The Technician again and, good as it is, it's not even remotely the same trumpet player. Her Strad was new to her at the time so she was still getting used to it, and that solo was done on a "cheater" mouthpiece (Schilke 14A4A) which is easy to play in the upper register (she can now hit the F above the staff with it) but is "thin" sounding in the lower register. Nowadays, she plays a Bach 3C, which gives a much warmer sound to the horn but makes anything above a high D a struggle.
So, she's using her Bach 3C fulltime for concert and marching bands, and the Schilke anytime she wants some more punch or is constantly playing high, like in the school's stage band or when they play the national anthem, in which she does a lot of flourishes to the high C. The Schilke is good for high stuff or for when her part needs to stand out from the band rather than blend with it.
I'm learning to play John Lynch's Asymetric mouthpiece now. Weird. It sounded awful the first couple of days, but now I'm starting to get decent tone out of it and it really increased my upper end. F's and G's are a piece of cake and I'm getting the occasional double C. We're talking an octave above the one that's two ledger lines above the staff. I may end up really liking this mouthpiece, but Darth can't stand it. She tried it for a couple of minutes, hated how bad her tone was, and handed it back to me. Maybe she'll try it again since her old man is now playing about a 4th above her with it. <g>
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
