Some may remember my first post (How to place your mouthpiece in your horn) which was written to disprove a practice which stresses the importance of placing your mouthpiece in the proper position to benefit your consistency in playing. This practice is called “Clocking” and the reference to positioning your mouthpiece in the best rotation in your mouthpiece receiver turn out to be true. What I started out to disprove, I ended up totally agreeing with.
The reason for this second post on the same subject is again to verify the importance of the correct rotation of your mouthpiece in your mouthpiece receiver.
Recently, I made a mouthpiece change and for the past few months I have not been happy with my consistency in tone, response, openness and smoothness between slurred notes. Then, today I realized what was causing my problem. I forgot to “clock” my new mouthpiece. So this afternoon I repeated my exercise to find the correct rotation of this new mouthpiece. It took me about 30 minutes to find the best position and once convinced I had the perfect position I marked the mouthpiece with a dab of my wife’s finger nail polish. Done!
If you have not read my original post on this subject, be sure to do so as it tells you how you can correctly “Clock” your mouthpiece.
