Mouthpiece practice tips

Many trombonists pack a mouthpiece in their holiday suitcase to keep their chops working whilst away. With this in mind, BTS member Alan Gall offers some tips for making the best use of the mouthpiece.

I find mouthpiece practice best with a bit of blowing resistance. I've tried the various brass tubes and little trumpets that attach onto the mouthpiece sold for this purpose, but I obtained much better results with a small plastic nozzle. It's one that comes with the tubes of silicone sealant sold in the “Todo a €0.60” (All at 60 cents) shops here in Madrid and other parts of Spain.

The large end of the nozzle has an internal screw thread of a diameter that provides a tight press fit on the end of my small shank mouthpiece. The amount of back pressure is achieved by cutting off the tip of the nozzle; it’s best to do this little by little until the desired result is obtained. For example, here is my mouthpiece, a new nozzle and two more of slightly different lengths and back pressures:

For both mouthpiece and normal practice I use Joshua Hauser’s Warm-ups with MP3 Play-A-Long tracks which can be downloaded from his website: Josh Hauser's Warmups

Alan Gall

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