Just listened to Green Hornet from the soundtrack of the film Kill Bill vol. 1; it is superb. It is a trumpet piece played by Al Hirt, a phenomenal trumpet player who sadly died 4 years ago. It has elements of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee in it.

Whilst I’m talking brass I might as well mention that my cornet practice last night continued to show improvement, although my eyes seemed a bit funny as I couldn’t read the notes well. I even managed to squeeze out a couple of the high Cs in Buster Strikes Back. I’ve been told that I’ll be performing this with the band in May at the blind centre. Martyn reckons that this should alleviate my nerves as the audience won’t be able to see me, to which I countered that they’d still be able to hear my nerves through the playing. Hopefully it should be okay with plenty of practice, and it’s an informal gig anyway.

I read an interesting article on the Trumpet Players International Network (TPIN) mailing list regarding spread embouchures. What is a spread embouchure, well according to this post from Timothy Jon Phillips:

Main symptoms are:
can’t play long phrases on one breath
Fatigues quickly
Air before the sound during attacks
No subtlity in attacks… explodes or wiffs
Have to blow your butt (can I say butt?) off to play out of the staff Low register attacks will be thick and inaccurate Usually requires very large facial movements to do “lip slurs”

This pretty much sums up my playing quite a lot of the time. Anyone reading this who may have hints as to how to overcome this please contact me!