I Love a Parade

Today I got my parade fix for the year at the Tempe Veteran’s Day Parade. It is very much like the small town parades I grew up with in Kansas– but longer–with antique cars, politicians throwing out candy, Shriners driving around in little cars, Cub Scout troops, and of course marching bands.

In the bands category this parade always strikes me as being a bit too much like the small town parades I grew up with. The best band to my ear was Corona del Sol and the close runner up was Mountain Pointe. Too many bands were however astonishingly small for the size of the school they represent, they look and sound to me like a band from some very small town in Kansas, not a band from a large high school in greater Phoenix.

Back in my day I marched with a French horn. In terms of horn there were of course no concert horns seen. One band used B-flat marching horns and the rest used mellophones, so far as I could tell all with something along the lines of a Mello 6 mouthpiece. It is a standard stock model and probably won’t ever go away but I personally dislike that mouthpiece and I think it is a big part of why some horn players have such a visceral hatred of the mellophone. It is a mouthpiece very much geared to a trumpet embouchure, not a horn embouchure. The sound is as a result cutting and a bit harsh.

F marching horns have been made that take horn mouthpieces but they seem to never really sell, band directors seem to totally have bought into the mellophone concept (and price point). In relation to that, I very much wish that some maker would get smart, actually consult with horn teachers, and ship mellophones with a “Mello 5.5” that was a little bigger and horn player friendly right there in the case.

One maker that looks to be making progress in that direction is W. Nirschl. The recently published review of the W. Nirschl E102SP Marching Mellophone posted to The Middle Horn Leader website gives me hope again that some experimentation is happening in the right direction in terms of mouthpieces and instruments. The 6DV mouthpiece sounds like a good idea, I would be interested to try one. This instrument might be one to check out if you are in the market for a mellophone.

UPDATE 2011: The instrument described above is no longer in production. But I still enjoy a good parade and especially so Veteran’s Day. For those curious, ASU uses Curry mouthpieces in their Mellophone line; I have a longer article on mellophone mouthpiece options here. Also I would note the boy in the blue coat in the photo, that is my son.