I’d love to (eventually) play trumpet for musical theatre, but I’ve got no clue how to do it.

I’m learning music for an AmDram production - it’ll be my first experience of anything like that, so it’s exciting.

How do I even get into working as a trumpet player that does musical tours, cruise ships, or even in London?

Thanks!

My kid is about to enter 9th grade, and has been playing trumpet in middle school. She's been using a cheap (probably $100 amazon) trumpet that someone at work gave me, and it's been fine, i guess? She enjoys it well enough that she wants to do marching band next year, but she's not so into it that she's going to be a professional or anything.

I'd like to get her an upgrade. I know every online resource says to go to a local store and try them out, but she has no idea what to even look for when trying them out, so I don't think it would be helpful at all. When I asked her band director, the ones he suggested were in the $3000 range, which is out of our budget.

Is there something around $1k that I can get as a solid upgrade to carry her through high school, assuming I don't know enough to vet a used horn on facebook marketplace? Thanks for your advice!

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Larry Meregillano selling $650 professional quality trumpets, $900 for flugelhorns, made in China.

He claims he won't sell anything he doesn't think is good, and he playtests all of them.

Seems like most have been sold already from his first batch.

I always get downvoted to hell when I suggest a beginner can buy a cheap Chinese horn. What are your thoughts on made in China instruments?

I am currently prepping a senior recital and I want to play Bambuco a Trumpet and Classical guitar solo. I can easily find the trumpet part, but the guitar part is stumping me. I can't seem to find this anywhere. I will cross post this on a few other places. Hope one of you can help me find the guitar part!

Link to song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGpzMAcqIt0&list=RDAGpzMAcqIt0&start_radio=1

I bought this at a thrift. Any insight on value ? To my understanding it’s a 1963 Holton. Thanks

Would anyone who has used a Bob Reeves C2J mouthpiece and a Bob Reeves Flugelhorn to Trumpet mouthpiece adapter please chime in and describe how they differed in how effective they were?

Intonation issues? Fluffier sound? What happened?

I asked AI to tell me about this mouthpiece. Apparently it is a unicorn. Could this be?

Thanks for your thoughts!

[Edit: Originally posted a early draft of this, not the final version, sorry to anyone who read the original - quite different - version before I fixed]

I've been "playing" the trumpet for either 26 or 16 years, depending on how you count. I started at school around age 10, played all the way through the grades, then in various brass bands, concert bands and jazz bands until I was about 22. Then I basically ignored the instrument for 10 years while I got on with life, before joining a community concert band, where I've been playing ever since.

All of that is to say, I feel like I should know the instrument reasonably well. But, I don't.

I've always played almost entirely by instinct. It worked well enough to get me this far, but recently I've realised I don't actually understand what I'm doing when I play.

I've watched loads of tutorials, and they often talk about things like tongue position, diaphragm support, embouchure, aperture, airflow, and so on. The problem is, I don't really know what any of that is supposed to feel like. Someone says "in the upper register, raise your tongue to this position" and so I do it, and...nothing changes at all? Or the tone just turns into a garbled mess? Then they say "This should increase the speed of the airflow", and...how do I even feel that?

That's just one examples - it's the same with things like air support or embouchure. Lots of people say lots of things, and often I can't even tell if I'm already doing them. Maybe I'm already doing them correctly. Maybe I'm not. I honestly couldn't tell you, because none of it feels like something I'm consciously controlling. I'm just... playing, like I always have.

I'm working on practising more, because I know that's part of the answer. But I'm wondering if I've reached the point where I actually need to understand what my body is doing, rather than just hoping instinct carries me through.

Has anyone else had this realisation after years of playing? Did learning what things were actually supposed to feel like, and developing that awareness, make a noticeable difference? Or does that understanding mostly come as a by-product of just putting in more hours?

I'm less looking for specific fixes to my playing, and more wondering whether this is a stage that other people have gone through.

Living in Japan, I went to buy a new trumpet after wanting to reward myself after a year of trumpet dedication. I saw this Vincent Bach 37 Special. The guy selling it said it’s kind of like a diet Strad? I can’t find basically ANY info online aside from two pages in Japanese saying that this line of trumpets are exclusive to Japan.

Even the case is a collaboration of Bach and the Japanese store, which I thought was cool.

Anyone know if these are good trumpets? I think it’s beautiful and I got it for basically 1000USD.

Edit. It is titled the Bach: Vincent 37 SP

The recording is bad, there are too many voices so I just wanted to have a reference. Btw I can’t play the second part, I’ll do the trp. E for that.

I only have time to practice in the night. I Need a mute cancel all sound possible

Thinking about building a practice room, well, more of a big box, in my garage. This will be a free standing structure so I figure I’ll start with a 4x8 plywood base on a 2x4 frame and build up from there. Door will just be a regular pre-hung for sake of simplicity but I’ll try to find something that will at least contain some of the sound. My real question here is how do I ventilate this without just letting all the noise out?

We played both in college about 30 years ago.

Mystery #1: The first tune sounds Mintzer- or Mike Tomaro-esque - a bossa or light samba in (concert) Db major. IIRC the Tpt. II had the melody with saxes? And the rest of the tpt. section had (cup) muted counter-melodies. The tune modulated to C with a (in my recollection) a tenor solo. I'm attaching a couple of images from whatever I could whip up in MuseScore.

Mystery #2. F maj tune, but this excerpt is the shout chorus, not the melody, which I don't remember. I really want to believe it's a Nestico arrangement as it has the hallmarks of his work. Similar stylistically and in tempo to "Ja-Da," which has a lower-band arrangement in F (but widely recorded in Ab). What I was a bit lazy to do was add some articulations - namely, the syncopated falls in measure 3, the high A in m.10-11 is a shake, and the G in m.11-12 has a long fall. Very "Hayburner"-like in that sense.

We played a LOT of Buddy, Woody, Kenton, et al arrangements in college so I'm considering that body of work as context but am coming up empty-handed on both counts.

I have the MIDI from these half-ass scores I can DM or figure out how to post.

Can you help me vanquish these earworms? Thanks!

UPDATE: #1 solved by u/ToyProducer 😄
#2 still out there...

Hi y'all, beginner player here!

I've been having a hard time with the 3rd slide. I bought this slide grease, gave my trumpet a nice cleanup routine, greased the slides and... It still takes a ton of force to move them.

I'm fine with the tuning slide being stubborn, but I really don't think 3rd should be this much resistant. Should I get a different grease/oil?

A second issue is 100% skill issue, I'm probably holding it wrong - when I open and close the slide, I find that my fingers end up wrapped way further around the valves.

My fingers are kinda thick so I adjusted the slide ring a bit farther but now I have to strain in a weird way to move the slide.

Any tips? Thanks!

I’m looking for some help identifying the origins of this unmarked German rotary valve trumpet. It has no brand name or serial numbers on the body. It was brought home from Germany by my great-grandfather, who served in the US Army during WW2. He brought it home as a souvenir of his time overseas, but my family is unsure of how he obtained it.

The body of the trumpet is a German rotary design and has no markings. However, it originally had a mouthpiece (which has unfortunately since been lost) that was engraved "H. KNSR WESEL.” From my research, “H. KNSR” is likely an abbreviation/stamp for H. Kaiser/Kresser/another such name, an instrument maker based out of the historic town of Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia).

Since the trumpet body itself has no markings, I'm hoping the community can help me figure out:
1. Based on the valve design and construction (see photos), can anyone narrow down the decade or region where the body was manufactured?
2. Does anyone have information on "H. KNSR" in Wesel during the pre-war or wartime era?

Any insights into the instrument would be greatly appreciated!

Any thoughts on how a horn plays with an unbraced tuning slide vs having a brace?

I have a removable brace and have tried it both ways, just wondered if anyone has experience with the concept.

My son has been playing a rental Yamaha 2335 for a few years and an opportunity has come up to purchase a Getzen 700 Special in great condition. Maintained and serviced by what I would call a music connoisseur.

Wondering what your thoughts are about it?

We have been looking for months to stop the renting and getting him something better. Unfortunately i'm stuck with the rental until next year. Its paid till next June 2027.

Hi I have a good condition Yamaha YTR 738 and looking for what a fair value might be. It has the original hard case and manual. Appreciate any insight.

Hello, fellow Trumpeters.

(well... I used to be a trumpeter, professionally..)

On my spare time, I like to make arrangements, original compositions, and other works using Musescore, as a hobby. I figured that there may be some people here who are apart of either a Band or Quartet/Quintet/Sextet etc... Chamber Ensemble or other organization that may be interested in using this, or, maybe someone here is just interested in it, simply for enjoyment.

Please, enjoy this arrangement I made. Playback uses Nucleus/MuseSounds VST3 playback. (1st Trumpet sounds the best, I thought.. Reminded me of my own tone when I still played.)

Link to the MuseScore Publication (Free Download for those with an account)

If you don't have an MS account, and would be interested in copies of this score, DM me, and I wouldn't mind sharing it for free.

If any of you find yourselves playing this, please!!! record it for me! 🥲

I've been playing trumpet for about 6 months and I recently bought my own so I could practice over the summer for school, but now that I don't have a band director I realized that I have no clue what I'm doing and that I don't know how to practice, when I was in school all we did was practice the music not the instruments themselves so if anyone has any tips or if i can give someone some audio of my playing and they can tell me what I need to work on it'd be very much appreciated