Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for musicians, students, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Many years ago I was experienced and occasionally substituted for a symphony bass trombonist.
When learning, I remember a major breakthrough in sound came when starting with a smaller mouthpiece (e.g. 6 1/2 AL), becoming proficient, and then opening up the embouchure with a 2 or 3G and ultimately ended at with 1.5 to 1G with a big round sound.
Should I do that again or just start with the 1.5 or 1G?
The common wisdom I got from the brass faculty at my university was:
You won't be able to make an informed choice on a mouthpiece until you're skilled enough that you can tell whether it's the mouthpiece making the difference.
In other words, a mouthpiece might make a 5% difference to your playing (within reason—we're excluding very unusual mouthpieces here). So until you're skilled enough that 5% is going to make a real difference to your experience, you won't know whether it was the mouthpiece that made the difference, or any of the posture, embouchure, technique, etc. changes that you inevitably make while learning.
I would suggest going with the most middle-of-the-road mouthpiece you can find—just ask someone at a music store, or give a quick phone call to a local player or teacher!
