Foghorn Mouthpiece for Low Brass

DIY mouthpieces for brass instruments have always been an interest of mine. One of my first projects for the wood lathe was to make a mouthpiece wide enough to facilitate access to low pedal notes on trombone, which became a mainstay swap-out for my years in the London Schools Symphony Orchestra and the Cornell Winds Symphony.

While taking the course Bending Instruments at Cornell, this hobby of mouthpiece crafting offered a way to extend my techniques further when combined with my experience in making PVC foghorns. Brass instruments have a brighter timbre than PVC instruments while offering more robust pitch-shifting mechanisms like valves and slides. Since foghorns require no embouchure, the player can focus on humming and/or buzzing into the mouthpiece to emphasize higher overtones. The exposed membrane of the foghorn can also be pressed and stretched by hand, lending itself to vibrato, changing volume, and even acoustic distortion/wave-shaping.