From Mellophone to Horn, a Summer Experiment

With a solo recital coming up in just over a month it is time to get back to playing my normal horn and reduce the mellophone playing and testing. The day MelloCast 15 went up was the first day back. [The context being, working on the draft of my mellophone book, I spent most of a summer playing mellophone].

The horn chops came back surprisingly quickly. The biggest initial problem was articulation, especially on the low F side, with a close runner up being the “break” in the low range, especially the area that you can’t even play on mellophone. The first time through my normal, Brass Gym based routine (a great brass routine by Sam Pilafian and Patrick Sheridan, more on this soon) felt very odd with the combination of those two factors making things feel pretty rocky. Also I was not breathing as well as normal, the mellophone seems to take less air. But within a few hours things were feeling pretty normal. Whew!

I believe that my playing mellophone mostly with mouthpieces that had a very close to my normal inner diameter helped a great deal, as did working out a “mello” warm-up that kept me centered as much as possible in the same place as on horn.

If I were to state my biggest single concern for the ASU mellophone transition after my trials this summer (this fall our marching band is changing to mellophones from B-flat marching horns) it would be that a mouthpiece that is very horn friendly be used by horn majors. As mellophone is, in the end, a less friendly instrument than marching horn for the horn player, mouthpiece choice becomes the most critical issue, especially during a school year. My fear as horn teacher is ASU will adopt a one-size-fits-all mellophone mouthpiece not well suited to horn doubling. Time will tell.

I would like to think that there is a mouthpiece out there that can make everyone happy. There is a market for one to be sure. I will keep going on my own play tests and postings as I have further thoughts on this. I have IYM and Curry TF mouthpieces coming, and I understand that ASU is also looking at other options including a new Hammond Design mouthpiece which sounds interesting. The important thing with any of these is hitting the right rim and inner diameter to be horn friendly.

I will probably play some mellophone most days for the remainder of the summer (I would love to try more jazz mellophone after my recital) but from now on out I will warm up only on horn.

It has overall been an enjoyable experiment. It brings back memories of another summer when I spent a month playing nothing but natural horn. Other years I have played nothing but early valved horn and Wagner tuba for weeks at a time. Variety of this type does bring new interest and new challenges into the practice. But, for now, I have to refocus on regular horn playing, and I am relieved to feel it is back quickly.