TromboneChat

A few things I haven’t heard much about recently:

1. Mouthpiece clocking.
2. cryogenics related to musical instruments
3. Caruso. I’ve gone back to the Landsman videos. (Where did Alex end up?)
4. Car wax on slides.

Others?

1. ??
2. There was a recent video from Schmidt Music re a Yamaha trombone that cam e from the factory this way.
3. Still there for those who seek it, but I feel a lot of this was promoted by Sabutin, and he's not on the site anymore.
4. The Berp biolube for trombone slides reminds me of a hard wax/in this vein.

clocking?

I'd never even heard of it before...

How to Clock Your Mouthpiece

Hmmm. It doesn't have April 1 on the date...

1. Clocking can be useful, even for non-Wedge mouthpieces. The theory is that no mouthpiece is perfectly symmetrical and you find the orientation that works best for you. Note that for most good mouthpieces the effect is VERY subtle and you have to be at least a good player to notice (I never did, and it certainly didn't affect my amateur playing opportunities). If you are looking for that last 1% you can see if clocking makes a difference. Otherwise, I'd work elsewhere.

2. Shires offered this treatment because Steve learned about it from Bob Osmun when he worked there. Does it work? The jury is still out. There's sure a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo about what it is supposed to do. I confess I never noticed the difference, but then again I'm certainly not among the elite players out there.

3. Caruso Exercise #1 became a nice warmup for me. If you try it and find it helps, great. Is it a universal cure-all? Probably not.

4. Car wax was not a big deal, although I like to use it on unlacquered brass to preserve the finish. What they used to use was a floor wax called Pledge. Pledge used to come in a pump spray bottle and you could control the spray pretty well. The pump spray is gone and now all you can get is an aerosol can, which generates a LOT of overspray. Some people liked the pump spray Pledge, although I never found it to be that good. When Steve Shires fixed up my ancient Olds with its messed up chrome inners he put a layer of aerosol Pledge on the slide and then lubed it up with Trombotine. That worked great. I guess Pledge works well as an undercoat for other lubes on bare brass inners.

To #'s 1,2 and 4 .. OMG! .. .. I better shut up at this point .. Most of you know how I don't get the gimmicks despite being a physicist.

#3 .. I'll have to look that up.

Watch any video of the much missed Bill Watrous put his mouthpiece in his horn and you see him doing that, as do many others

Caruso, I use the 6 note every time, yes Sabutin (Sam Burtis) promoted the ideas, but remember Sam did study with the man himself.

I think out of habit I put the mouthpiece in the same "clock position" each time. But I also think this is just a superstitious behavior.

I like my horn set up the same way as I can every time: the distance from the bell to the slide and the orientation of the mpc in the receiver. I never slam the mpc in and I never twist it in. There are barely any insertion marks on the stem.

It's just harmless idiosyncrasy and not much more, IMO. Instead of the term "clocking", I have always thought of it as referencing or witnessing.