Buzzing reply

        better tone (more focused and centered, not spreading)

        easier to jump intervals (the intervals feel closer together)

        easier articulation

excerpted from:
Playing the Barque Trumpet
Research into the history and physics of this largely forgotten instrument is
revealing its secrets, enabling modern trumpeters to play it as the musicians
of the 17th and 18th centuries did


by Don Smithers, Klaus Wogram and John Bowsher

[SNIP]
        The last writer who seems to have had some firsthand experience with
the daunting problems of playing the baroque trumpet was the 18th-century
German musician Johann Ernst Altenburg.  He wrote that trumpeters needed both
theoretical and practical instruction "partly because of these missing and
out-of-tune notes, but partly also because this instrument tends to remain a
mystery, more so than other and contrived instruments.''  

Recent scientific investigations--the first of their kind--have attempted to
give some definition to the mysterious and to provide a body of data relevant
to a better understanding of the technical difficulties of playing the
fixed-pitch baroque trumpet the way it was intended to be played in countless
works by Purcell, Bach, Handel and many other baroque composers.  These
investigations illustrate the inseparable union of science and practice.

        Earlier studies tended to concentrate on the acoustical characteristics
of the instrument.  Little attention was given to the integration of the
instrument, its mouthpiece and the player.  To understand the mysteries of
baroque-trumpet playing requires an examination of the dynamic interactions
among all three components, inasmuch as it is now known that the player has an
enormous effect on the sound production of an instrument, considerably
modifying its acoustical outputs.  Such variables as an individual player's
lips, teeth, tongue, oral cavity and throat also influence the sound directly
regardless of the particular physical characteristics of the instrument
itself.

        What occurs in the regions before (behind) and after (in front of) the
vibrating lips is equally significant; the antevibratory and postvibratory
environments are not mutually exclusive but interactive.  In other words, the
generation of a trumpet's sound is not entirely dependent on the region of
vibrating air beginning in front of the player's lips and extending to the
instrument's bell-flare termination.  The vibrating lips set up regimes of
oscillation in the air not only within the mouthpiece and instrument but also
in the player's oral cavities.  The way these resonances interact is now the
subject of  much study.  The preliminary data make it clear that the
interaction is a hitherto unexplained but important factor in the generation
and control of certain notes, particularly in the middle and upper registers of
the instrument.

        For example, any skilled brass player knows that nimble manipulations
of the tongue or the throat muscles, or both, on sustained notes make it
possible to perform trills without recourse to any mechanical devices (valves
or keys).  Without ecessarily understanding the underlying theory, the
practiced artist thus alters the postvibratory resonances, which in turn
control what is then heard from the player and his instrument.  So-called lip
trills are therefore a misnomer:  fluctuations of the resonances behind the
player's oscillating lips (in the antevibratory regions) are sufficient to
alter the dynamics of the postvibratory air column (within the mouthpiece and
the instrument).  Comparable effects can be generated by displacements of the
vibratory apparatus itself, either by shaking the mouthpiece on the lips or by
some movement of the lower jaw.  Such methods are generally unsatisfactory,
however.  They cannot attain the kind of control that can be exerted by subtle
fluctuations of the antevibratory resonances within the player's mouth and
windway.

        In contrast to all other types of musical instrument, brass wind
instruments have no oscillator of their own.  The sound is produced entirely by
the vibrations of the player's lips, which in turn modulate the air contained
within the entire system.  This is why the influence of the player on such
acoustical parameters as sound and pitch is highly distinct with these
instruments.

        The integration of player, mouthpiece and brass wind instrument can be
represented by an analogous but simplified model of these three distinct
components in an electrical diagram [see top illustration on page 112].  Theory
holds that for a trumpet player's lips to oscillate, the total of postvibratory
and antevibratory impedances should have equal magnitudes but opposite angles
of phase.  With an instrument this condition is easy to meet, and so the player
can control the precise nature of the oscillation with small adjustments of the
antevibratory impedances.  When the player sounds his lips by themselves or
with only a mouthpiece, however, the postvibratory impedances become those
corresponding to free radiation or to 

the mouthpiece.  The player in this situation has to make major adjustments of
the impedances to ensure that oscillation can take place.  Simple estimates of
the magnitudes involved emphasize how important the impedances under the
control of the player are and how relatively unimportant the impedance of the
instrument itself is.

        The least understood parameter of brass-wind-instrument playing in
general and of baroque-trumpet playing in particular is the dynamics of the
player's lips.  Since the lips make the principal (and initial) contribution to
the generation of sound in any brass wind instrument, it is ironic and
regrettable that the dynamics of the lip vibrations is poorly understood.  What
one must deal with in this analysis is the non-linear relation between the flow
of air through an orifice and the pressure across the orifice.



[SNIP]



        Next to the instrument itself, the mouthpiece is the most crucial
element for playing a brass wind instrument.  It is an integral part of the
instrument, equal to it in importance for generating specific impedance maxima
(the ratio of the pressure to the volume velocity at a given surface) and
achieving a favorable intonation curve (the curve that reflects the values of
the playing frequencies), particularly for notes above the sixth harmonic.  The
mouthpiece and the instrument therefore have to be matched.  Moreover, as we
have pointed out, the player is part of the total system, and so the 

mouthpiece must be matched to the player as well as to the instrument.  It is
the interface between the two.