Let's talk about mouthpieces!

Should you be using a mellophone specific mouthpiece? Should you be using a french horn mouthpiece + an adapter? A trumpet mouthpiece?

It is my professional opinion that you should ALWAYS be playing on a mellophone mouthpiece when you're playing mellophone, regardless of your primary instrument.

Here are three reasons why a mellophone mouthpiece is a better fit, will protect your embouchure, and will feel easier to play and keep the instrument in tune:

1. Thicker rim size. A mellophone mouthpiece has a much thicker rim compared to a french horn mouthpiece. This is going to give your embouchure more cushion for a front facing brass instrument like mellophone. This provides more surface area on your lips to help protect the embouchure and feel more comfortable on your lips. It's also going to help with endurance and playing for longer periods of time compared to a thinner rim, like on a french horn mouthpiece.

2. More shallow cup size. The mellophone mouthpiece has a much more shallow cup size than the french horn mouthpiece. This makes it easier to be flexible ascending into the upper range, where the mellophone will play more often. Playing a on a french horn mouthpiece with a deeper cup is going to make it feel more challenging to be flexible and you'll have to manipulate your embouchure more than necessary to play higher.

3. The size and length of the shank/mouthpiece stem. The mellophone mouthpiece is designed with the right specifications to seamlessly fit into the lead pipe receiver of the mellophone. The french horn mouthpiece's stem is much smaller in diameter and length. In order to make it fit, you have to use a small adapter piece to allow it fit into the lead pipe. When we have to use an adapter or a mouthpiece that doesn't fit, our air stream and intonation is greatly affected. When you have a french horn mouthpiece, your air has to travel through a smaller opening, then all of a sudden a wider opening - it's not a consistent path. This disruption creates inefficiencies in our air stream, when it could be traveling through the exact same size path with a mellophone specific mouthpiece. This also creates a lot of intonation issues, and you'll have to manipulate your embouchure in order to find the center of the pitch.

Trumpet mouthpieces: while these fit inside the mellophone lead pipe shank, they have too long of a stem, which will create intonation issues, and too small of a cup, which will make you sound different than the rest of the section.

Mellophone Mouthpiece Recommendations:

• Blessing MPC6MEL

• Upgrade mouthpiece: Hammond 6mp