Mouthpieces, Mind, and Matter

Last month Jane Bennett gave a talk at New York’s New School entitled “Powers of the Hoard: Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter”. She was interested in the question of whether or not compulsive hoarders have a particular affinity for matter, specifically, the matter of/in the things they so assiduously collect. The purpose of this post is to ask a similar question about trumpet players and their mouthpieces. Some have only a few, while others have hundreds.

From Owners to Hoarders

In launching her inquiry Bennett posited a continuum with ownership on one end and hoarding on the other. There were a number of positions in between, but I only remember two of them, connoisseur and collector, and there I’m not sure of the order. The point is that owners have a purely pragmatic attitude toward things and so only new one or two, whatever, of each, whatever is sufficient to get the job done. Collectors, however, have more than is functionally necessary; they are interested in the objects themselves, and in the differences among them. In extreme contrast, hoarders, acquire objects to the point where they are overwhelmed by those objects, which come to dominate their living space.

In thinking about Bennett’s presentation I was reminded of a similar phenomenon among trumpet players. The mouthpiece is physically separate from the trumpet itself, thus allowing one to use different mouthpieces with a given trumpet. As I said up top, trumpet players have only one or two or relatively few mouthpieces while others have tens and even hundreds of mouthpieces. What’s the difference? Why are some trumpet players satisfied with only a few mouthpieces while others must have many?

The point of this post is to see whether or not trumpeters’ mouthpiece behavior sheds any light on hoarding. This discussion must be provisional if only because I didn’t take notes during Bennett’s presentation and so have only a vague recollection of it. With that in mind, what’s important are the terms of the comparison.

Terms of Comparison

Bennett acknowledged that the hoarding behavior she studied was pathological. But she wanted to ‘bracket’ the pathology, that is, set it aside, on the assumption that one effect of the pathology is to make hoarders particularly sensitive to materiality. It’s the materiality that interests Bennett, the possibility of some vitalist ‘spark’ (my word, not hers) to which hoarders are unusually responsive.

That seems fine to me.

Now, among trumpeters there’s no sense that amassing a large number of mouthpieces is pathological. It’s recognized as extreme, but as well within the range of how trumpeters act. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very detailed sense of this phenomenon. I’m a trumpeter myself and, as such, I know and have known many trumpet players. Moreover, I’ve subscribed to the TPIN mailing list for well over a decade. The Trumpet Players International Network (TPIN) is run out of Oklahoma City University:

All kinds of "trumpet people" are represented on the network including amateurs, students, professionals of all types, professors, retailers, builders, repair people and even non-players. The topics of discussions are quite varied, including such topics as pedagogy, equipment (of course), performance practice, recordings, improvisation, famous and not-so-famous performers, literature and others. Instruments and accessories have been bought and sold on the network and many collegial friendships have been formed.

Mouthpieces are a frequent topic of discussion. Moreover, every once in awhile someone will post a message saying that they’re clearing out their mouthpiece drawer to make room for some new ones and then they’ll list 10, 20, 30, or more mouthpieces that they’re selling.

So, while I do not have any precise information about how many trumpet players have how many mouthpieces, I do have a useful sense of the phenomenon that I’ve acquired both through direct acquaintance and through reading thousands of email discussions about mouthpieces.

The primary term of comparison is, of course, number of objects. One or few vs. many. I have no sense of the composition of the general population of hoarders or of the objects they hoard, though I assume variety. The population of trumpeters is, of course, defined by the fact that they play trumpet. Further, there does seem to be a trumpeter’s culture such that certain kinds of people are attracted to the instrument. Just what those kinds are, and why they’re attracted to the trumpet, that’s an interesting question, but I’m not even going to attempt a discussion beyond providing an appendix consisting of some comments, mostly jokes or anecdotes, posted to the TPIN list at one time or another.

Before diving into trumpeters and their mouthpieces, however, I want to mention two things that I recall from Bennett’s talk. One is that compulsive hoarding is often triggered by personal loss, such as the death of a parent. The other is that hoarders often refer to their things as parts of themselves. This sets up an obvious comparison, not just with trumpet players, but with any musician. For one must assimilate the instrument to your body in order to play it. It becomes an extension of your body, one through which you express whatever it is one expresses in music.

Mouthpieces

As far as I know brass instruments are the only ones where the musical vibrations are produced directly by a part of the player’s body, the lips. Many instruments exploit vibrating strings—guitar, violin, piano, harp—while others use vibrating membranes—drum—or vibrating solids—marimba, bells. Many wind instruments use vibrating reeds—clarinet, oboe, etc.—or the oscillations of an air stream over a sharp edge, the various flutes, pipe organs. But brass instruments use the player’s own body. The lips are set in vibration within the confines of the mouthpiece and the instrument itself then amplifies those vibrations.

While this explains the importance of mouthpieces to trumpet players it tells us nothing of the difference between trumpeters and other brass players(who don’t seem to be so choosy about mouthpieces) nor, within the ranks of trumpeters, between those who are obsessed with mouthpieces and devote a lot of time, effort and money to finding just the right one, and those who are more casual about their mouthpieces. Some trumpeters on the TPIN list have indicated owning hundreds of mouthpieces and mouthpiece sales are common. Mouthpieces cost between $20 and $200 dollars each, which implies that a collection of hundreds represents an investment of three or four thousand dollars or more. Then you have someone like the late Lester Bowie--a premier trumpeter of the jazz avant-garde—who asserted that he used whatever mouthpiece was handy.

Now, let’s look at some mouthpieces. I own perhaps 20 mouthpieces, though for many years I had only two or three. Here’s four of them:

They are, from left to right: 1) a Schilke 13B, goldplated, 2) a Vincent Bach 5MV, silverplate, 3) a Vincent Bach 1 ¼ C Megatone, goldplated, and 4) a Claude Gordon Personal, silverplate. The model numbers indicate specific properties of the mouthpiece. Bach and Schilke were both trumpet players who became trumpet manufacturers. Gordon was a trumpet player who engaged various manufacturers to produce trumpets and mouthpieces to his specifications.

I could go on and on about the differences between these mouthpieces—and discussions on the TPIN list do that—but I’ll skip most of that. Concerning the most visible differences between those mouthpieces, some trumpet players believe that gold plating changes the sound produced by a mouthpiece; others find that gold feels smoother; and still others are allergic to silver and so need gold plating. Me, I like the color. Similarly the heaviness of the Megatone is supposed to produce a darker and more stable sound. Perhaps. But the weight changes the balance of the trumpet in my hands, and I like that.

The important point is that small differences DO matter, and the differences that matter most are inside the mouthpieces and so not visible in these photographs. They have to do with cup diameter and shape, rim shape, throat diameter, and backbore shape. Further, different mouthpieces are suited for different kinds of music. A trumpeter who plays with a symphony orchestra is likely to have both a different trumpet and a different mouthpiece from a trumpeter who plays in a salsa band, and so forth through a range of musical styles.

Thus it is entirely reasonable for a trumpet player to prefer one mouthpiece over another and look for a mouthpiece that is more suitable than one they already own. But it is one thing to try out a new mouthpiece every now and then, it is another thing entirely to be always searching for a better mouthpiece. Why these two different behaviors?

I don’t know, though I’ve thought about it quite a bit over the years. One possibility that I dismissed quite early is that one group of trumpeters is better than the others. But you find first-class trumpeters who have only a few mouthpieces and others who have drawers full of them; the same is true of lesser players. Whatever’s going on, I don’t think it’s a matter of technical or musical skill.

One could, I suppose, chalk it up to personality. And that, in a way, is what I’m going to do. But not in such a broad way.

I’m inclined to think of the difference as a matter of how these two types of trumpet assimilates the instrument to their body—a line of thought the runs parallel to the notion that hoarders view their objects as parts of themselves. A trumpet player uses a trumpet to make music. The acoustic system that actually produces the sound consists of both the trumpet and the trumpeter’s body. Some part of the body are obviously more intimately involved in sound generation than others.

One’s feet, for example, are not very closely coupled to sound generation. But they’re not irrelevant. For, when one is playing standing up or marching, one’s feet are critical to overall balance and support of the upper body. Upper body trunk muscles are important for breathing, which is directly involved in playing the trumpet, as one most blow through the lips to make a sound. The size and shape of the mouth-and-throat cavity are important. Trumperters can vary their tone by changing the shape of the vocal cavity by varying tongue position. Most important, of course, are the lips. It is the lips that produce the sound by vibrating, and the lips are the major point of contact between the trumpet player and the trumpet.

The interface between lips and mouthpiece is thus very important. It is the ‘control surface’, if you will, through which the trumpet player produces and manipulates the sound. Everything a trumpet player does to produce sound will be experienced on that surface. The lips are also very sensitive; they have to be, as one’s life depends on their effectiveness in eating, drinking, and in humans, shaping speech sound. At the same time, trumpet playing is a difficult and strenuous activity that can and, on occasion, does damage lip tissue.

We also have to consider the fact that musical performance often provokes anxiety in performers. There is always some anxiety there, but it varies from performance to performance, and from performer to performer. For some the anxiety is so bad that performing is difficult. For a trumpet player, any performance anxiety is likely to be focused on the lips; it is the lips that are most likely to fail, in the process producing wrong notes and bad tone.

With all that in mind, my hypothesis, which is no more than a crude guess, is that trumpeters who are ever-looking for a better mouthpiece are more sensitive to the fit between lips and vocal cavity and the mouthpiece than are the go-with-what-you-got players. Just what this greater sensitivity means, though, that is tricky.

After all, how can the fit between lips and mouthpiece change? A player can’t change the mouthpiece itself because mouthpieces are made of metal that doesn’t change shape over the range of conditions in which they are used. Thus any variation in ‘fit’ between lips and mouthpiece has to be on the trumpeter’s side. And trumpet players, like any other human being, can vary in mood quite a bit from hour to hour, day to day, week to week.

How does having a large collection of mouthpieces fit into this picture? One could imagine, for example, that a player with many mouthpieces would use a different one each day, or even different times in a day. My impression, however, is that the is not what trumpet players do. A trumpet player might use different mouthpieces for different kinds of gigs, but that’s a fairly limited and fairly stable kind of switching back and forth. Back when I played more than I do now I would use one mouthpiece for playing jazz and a different one for playing rhythm and blues; I might even use different trumpets. But I consistently used the same horn and mouthpiece for jazz, and the same horn and mouthpiece for rhythm and blues. Day after day, month after month.

My impression is that the players with lots of mouthpieces tend to be like that as well. They’ll use a given mouthpiece, or a given limited set of mouthpieces, for several months or a year or so at a time. Then they’ll try out a bunch of new pieces and select one as their next main mouth piece and use if for a good run. And so forth.

It’s as though the hour to hour and day to day variability of one’s moods and ‘chops’ is not the issue. No one tries to fit their mouthpiece to that. What’s in play is the ‘center point’, if you will, around which variability is allowed to ‘float.’ Every once in awhile that point will ‘drift away’ from the player’s ‘adaptive zone’, if you will, and so the player will look for a new mouthpiece that’s more comfortably in their adaptive zone. The player with only a few mouthpieces has a wide adaptive zone; they’re relatively willing to deal with the mouthpiece as it is, regardless of their current state of mind and body. The player thats changes pieces every few months or a year, whatever, has a narrower adaptive zone. They’re less willing to ‘wrap themselves around’ a given mouthpiece. They want the mouthpiece to adapt to them. Since, however, mouthpieces can’t change, this means that they’ve got to get a new one.

Now, do I actually believe this? Well, no, I don’t believe it. Nor do I disbelieve it. It’s simply then best account I can offer at the present time.

Another Comparison: Settings on a Digital Camera

But let me offer another comparison, one that’s quite different.

Consider digital cameras. They have a zillion settings you can control, many of which do interesting and possibly useful things. But, you’ve got to read the manual and experiment in order to get the hang of them. I’ve taken thousands of photos over the last several years and am quite good, but I have little interest in gaining control over all those settings. I mean, if I could drink the manual and assimilate all that knowledge in a couple of minutes, sure, I’d do it. But even then, I’m not sure what that would get me. For it’s not just a matter of knowing what all the different settings do; you also need to know how they affect the image. And learning that takes time.

I’m not a full-time photographer and I have no interest in spending a lot of time learning how to much around with the equipment. So I take 90% of my photos on autopilot. As for the rest, there’s only one or two things I adjust. The range of technical control I have is quite enough to allow me to take 10s or even 100s of satisfying images each time I go out shooting.

I’m thus suggesting that the trumpeter with 300 mouthpieces is like the photographer who learns many of the settings on the camera while the trumpeter with 10 mouthpieces is like the photographer who takes most photos on autopilot. That is, I’m suggesting that ‘control of many settings’ is more or less parallel to many mouthpieces and that ‘control of few settings’ is more or less equivalent to having few mouthpieces. Does the parallel really work?

What matters in photography, of course, is what kind of image you capture. A good many of those digital camera settings affect the nature of the images you capture. By not using those settings I give up some control saying, in effect, THAT level of control doesn’t matter to me. I can still get plenty of what matters to me without having that level of control. Similarly, with the trumpet, I still have plenty of control over my sound. That too is a function of that adaptive zone. Wherever its center is, I have plenty of room to move around, and that’s what matters.

Finally, what does this have to do with Bennett’s case, with hoarders? At first it might seem that their acquisitiveness reflects a failure to discriminate. So, rather than picking and choosing just a few, just the right items, the hoarder gathers any old thing. But, could it be just the opposite, that the hoarder makes exquisite distinctions among his or her objects and THAT is precisely why each one is needed? That is, the hoarder cares about and is alive to the differences among the objects and values each and everyone it all its particularity and individuality. Since the particularity matters, and no given object can be substituted for another, it is necessary to have each and every one.

Do I believe that? As before, I do and I don’t. I mean, I just made it up, how could I possibly know?

At the same time I should point out that, even if I’m correct or heading in the right direction, it’s by no means clear how that hypothesis squares with Bennett’s interest in matter’s vibrancy. Maybe object particularity is an aspect of such vibrancy, maybe it’s a different phenomenon.

It’s all up in the air.

Appendix: Trumpet Culture

On small differences and the trumpet, Stephen Reucroft and John Swain. "Physics and Trumpets." The Boston Globe, 30 April 2002:

The sound that comes out of wind instruments depends on details of their shape, and now physicists are turning the tables and using sound in order to see just what the shape of instruments like trumpets really is. James Buick of the University of Edinborough in Scotland and his colleagues have developed a technique that looks at the reflections of pulses of sound in order to construct an image of the leadpipe of a trumpet. Interestingly, the same technique has already been applied in medicine in order to determine the shape of human windpipes. The usual way of getting information about the shape of a trumpet is to just measure a few hopefully representative distances with calipers, but this falls far short of making a complete picture of the instrument. Dents of only a 10th of a millimeter can contribute significantly to the timbre of a trumpet, so there's a pretty clear need for good techniques to make this sort of measurement.

Attributed to Wynton Marsalis:

We grow up hearing that trumpeters blew down the walls of Jericho, that Gabriel’s trumpet announces the will of God, and that the largest and hippest of all animals, the elephant, has a trunk mostly (we think) for trumpeting. These grandiose images shape the classic trumpet persona: brash, impetuous, cocky, cool, in command. Anyone who has ever played in a band knows that if the conductor stops rehearsal because a fight breaks out, if somebody takes your girlfriend, if a tasteless practical joke is pulled, if someone challenges every executive decision no matter how trivial, it's got to be a trumpet player. That's just how we are.

Here’s a note posted to TPIN that focuses on perhaps the major obsession of trumpet players: playing high notes. Note the focus on mouthpieces (#2):

Hi. I'm starting on this. I love the trumpet and I wanna learn the newest techniques to play on it.

I have three questions, if somebody wants answer one of them (or two or three) i'd appreciate it:

1. What is the most recommendable technique to play high notes (for example G four lines over the pentagram or higher) I mean lips position, tongue position, throat, air pressure, mouthpiece pressure over the lips or whatever is necessary to do this.

2. Is the mouthpiece a very important thing to do this (play high notes)? Some people think yes, but some others think not. And if it is so important, does this affect the sound quality or pitch?

3. Is there any method to learn how to play high notes? Please, if you know about one good method or book or something like, just tell me.

I have this doubts 'cause I started to play with a salsa orchestra (we also play merengue and latin jazz) and the notes are too high (I only can reach E three lines over the pentagram) and I need to learn how to do this 'cause I'm trying to play the first voice and I can´t reach the notes. Other problem is that where I live there are very few people (at most 2) who can reach that notes, but they are very special kind of people (invidious?) and they don´t wanna tell me or teach me, so I'm looking for help.

More on trumpeter’s personality:

There are two sides to a Trumpeter's personality. There is the one that lives only to lay waste to woodwinds, strings, French horns, percussionists, and trombones, leaving them lying blue and lifeless alongside the swath of destruction that is the Trumpet's fury. And then there is the dark side....

* * * * *

This "debate" made me think of the "light bulb" joke in its trumpet version. How many trumpet players does it take to change a light bulb? Say....10 or any number. 1 to change the light bulb and the rest to tell him how much better they could have done it. Funny, but quite accurate it seems. Maybe it's just in the nature of the trumpet player personality....I'd like to think not.

* * * * *

In an emergency a jazz trumpeter was hired to do some solos with a symphony orchestra. Everything went fine through the first movement, when she had some really hair-raising solos, but in the second movement she started going improvising madly when she wasn't supposed to play at all. After the concert the conductor came round looking for an explanation. She said, “I looked in the score and it said ‘tacit’--so I took it!”