Expand these notes to see the horns identified at the bottom.
I recorded these clips from George Marshall's solo, "Sing Glory Hallelujah," after spending one week on each instrument. It's a solo I've played often and have relatively "in the bag," so I didn't need to practice the solo to avoid it sounding better on one instrument because it was more prepared. I spent each week as though it was the instrument I was going to keep and ended up using different mouthpieces based on what I thought sounded, felt, and worked best with each instrument. The recording for each was made in the same space with the same equipment on the same settings. I didn't edit or use multiple takes as I wanted the recording to also capture the ease of play, accuracy, and tendencies.
Instruments are remarkably personal, and while there are some objective standards in quality, some horns work better for some musicians than others. There can also be quite a bit of variance in horns of the same model. So this playing test is nothing more than my experience after a week on each horn. Ultimately, I found both horns to be made excellently, but there was a clear winner in my evaluation of my playing on each horn and in the opinion of those to whom I sent the recording.
Horn 1 - Besson Prestige (1/12 musicians I sent this to preferred my playing on this horn)
Horn 2 - Willson 2420TA (11/12 preferred my playing on the Willson)
Disclaimer - A year after selecting the Willson they asked me to represent them as a Willson performing artist. Besson also asked me to represent them as a performing artist and sent me the Prestige to try for this reason.
www.willson.ch...
You can hear me perform on the Willson with High Bridge Brass (highbridgebrass.com)
19 авг 2020
