7. ¿Qué es una boquilla?
How could we define a mouthpiece?
We start this entry with a bit of irony:
"A piece of metal with a hole in the middle, larger or smaller depending on the instrument." Could this be a valid answer?
Actually, the mouthpiece by itself doesn't do absolutely anything. But, why does it cause us so many problems?
The mouthpiece needs air, lip vibration, and an instrument to be useful; and with these elements, then yes, the music can begin! But often, complications and problems also start..
To summarize the usefulness or purpose of the mouthpiece without going into technical details, we can say that when playing, we take air, push it against the lip, which, being tense, vibrates and produces a buzz. The buzz (sound) made by the lip passes through the inside of the mouthpiece to the instrument, where this sound will be transformed into musical notes richer in harmonics. To make different notes, the air we push needs a certain resistance, as we saw in the latest Boquilleando post. And this is where the mouthpiece becomes the protagonist.
To check the importance of resistance inside the mouthpiece, you can try a trumpet like a “Vuvuzela,” which is a conical tube whose mouthpiece is part of the tube itself without any resistance. How many notes can you play? 2? 3 at most? This happens because the mouthpiece part does not have the ideal resistance for the lip to make the different notes that we can make with current instruments and mouthpieces.
Image of a “Vuvuzela”
But let's take a closer look at how the mouthpiece works.
At the beginning, we said "it's a piece of metal with a hole in the middle." And it is, but obviously it's not just that! It's much more and its functioning depends on a mix of factors external to itself. Specifically, 4 factors besides the mouthpiece itself:
- Air
- Air pressure in the mouthpiece
- Lip vibration
- The instrument's resistance
The mouthpiece would be the intermediate factor between the lip and the instrument.
Don't miss this video provided by our friend and trumpeter Joaquim Palet https://www.lipcam.de/ where you can clearly see the lip vibration:
Video about the vibration of the lip
If these 4 elements align perfectly in relation to the mouthpiece we are playing, it will become our best mouthpiece.
But if one of the four elements is not aligned with the others, nor in relation to the mouthpiece, it will NOT work properly for us. And if there is more than one misalignment, we can forget about this mouthpiece because it is not working for us at all (which does not mean it can't give excellent performance to another musician).
Air, air pressure, and lip vibration will depend on the performance of the musician themselves, but you also have to take into account the part of organology or how the inside of the mouthpiece is constructed, the hole we mentioned at the beginning.
If we take a mouthpiece and change the shape of any part of its interior, whether the cup, the bead, the rim… no matter how small the change, the result will be a totally different mouthpiece. In some cases, even a tiny modification, of just a few tenths of a millimeter, can represent a big difference!
Image of a tenth of a millimeter (one tenth of a millimeter)
How can such a small change make the mouthpiece stop working for us? Or on the contrary, how can such a small change make the mouthpiece work perfectly for us?
The answer is very simple. That small change can make the pressures align or not: the one we produce with the resistance offered by the mouthpiece and the instrument.
I’ll give an example you may have experienced:
When we change instruments, the air resistance (of the instrument) can also change and often the perfect mouthpiece we had for one instrument no longer works for the other.
Continuing with modifications to the mouthpiece (in the cup depth, the bead, the inner shank…) we can open or close the air passage and modify the pressures, but what happens if, for example, we make the inner rim diameter larger?
Well, actually the same thing happens. By making the inner diameter of the rim larger, the cup is bigger and therefore we change the air resistance inside the cup. As you see, we modify the resistance and everything changes! And like this, we could give examples with all the parts of the mouthpiece.
But what happens if we change? What happens if the musician's execution changes? Well, exactly the same!
For example, imagine that when we play we blow air with a pressure of 5 kg and we are delighted with our perfect mouthpiece, but due to a supernatural reaction the next day we blow air with a pressure of 10 kg. What will happen? Our mouthpiece will stop being perfect, it will no longer work! It was a perfect mouthpiece for playing with 5 kg of pressure, but with 10 kg the mouthpiece no longer works. Therefore, we see again the great importance of air pressure.
Regarding this point, it is also important to clarify that many musicians believe that by playing the same mouthpiece as another musician who plays better than them, the instrument will sound the same. For me, this is a big mistake. Why?
Every musician has a way of blowing air and a different pressure. This means that a mouthpiece may not work the same way for both, so the best thing is to adapt the mouthpiece to the way of playing.
Our best mouthpiece will always be the one that best adapts to the resistance, pressure, and speed of the expelled air.
I look forward to your comments,
Greetings and lots of music!