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It would best if we played on one good mouthpiece for our entire career and never changed it! That way our progress would be steady and upward. Changing mouthpieces is serious business and should not be undertaken lightly. We are upsetting the delicate, natural balance between our lips, the tongue, the airflow, everything! It takes months to really adjust to a new mouthpiece. This is time lost forever. It is a set-back every time we change, but if you are playing on a bad mouthpiece design you should change it.

I recently sold a Kanstul 1070 to a fine young student of mine is Brisbane Australia, and he has been emailing me with glowing reports regarding his new horn. Here is one: “Bruce, I really can’t tell you how much I love this trumpet!!! With the CG Personal in it, it’s incredible. It’s like the two were made for each other, the two designs perfectly compliment each other. It’s like the other trumpets I’ve played were just toys! I was worried about it being too bright but with the CG P it really is so versatile and just amazingly easy to play!” Several of my students have bought this model in the past year and they are all thrilled with how it plays and sounds. Their comments are typically about how little effort it takes to play and how big and rich the sound is. They can’t wait to get to their practicing each day! A trumpet that makes you want to practice? Now that’s a great investment!

I believe that there has been quite a bit of confusion over the phrase “the Claude Gordon method.” In reality, what Claude Gordon taught regarding playing a brass instrument was not new and was not really a “method.”He would tell you this. He would tell you that his teaching was squarely based upon the foundation of the teachings of Herbert Clarke and the other great virtuosos of the last two centuries, all the way back to Arban and Saint Jacome. Claude taught us that the great virtuosos of the past all played basically the same way, and that even though certain players might look a little different on the outside, on the inside , where things really matter, the greats all did it the same way. Sometimes, a great player can’t even explain how he does it! But thanks to Herbert Clarke, Arban, Saint Jacome, and others, we can learn from what they have passed on and save ourselves a lot of time and grief.