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Mellophones & Marching

Articles with a focus on the mellophone and middle brass

An Advocate for the Alto Horn in 1968

In 1990 a wonderful brass resource was published, Brass Bibliography: Sources on the History, Literature, Pedagogy, Performance, and Acoustics of Brass Instruments by Mark...

Vintage Brass Instrument: The Solo Alto

I have long been interested in horn history. My original website is well known for its horn history resources and I am sure has...

Thoughts on Playing on Piston Valves, a King Mellophone, and the...

As I have been preparing for my session at the IHS symposium that involves performing on a vintage piston valve horn, I have been...

Summer is Heating up and the Mellophones are Coming Out

This was the first post (2007) in what became a mellophone series of articles, which led me toward writing A Mello Catechism. Check out...

The Mellophone Intonation Smackdown

I am on episode 40 of The Mellocast, the weekly podcast on all things mellophone. This episode is one of their best, on the...

A blast from the past, a brief look at the G...

An element of the mellophone puzzle, and understanding where we are today with the modern marching mello, is the G mellophone bugle. For those that...

From the Mailbag: Trumpet to Mellophone–an Easy Switch

I was recently contacted by a parent who had a child that had been asked to switch from trumpet to mellophone for marching band....

Review: The Versus M1T mellophone mouthpiece. The one everyone has been...

A new product on the market, and a game changer, is the Versus M1T mellophone mouthpiece. Mellophone is, sadly, a hugely polarizing topic of the...

In Praise of the Olds F Alto

Annually our church has a retreat over Memorial Day weekend up at a camp in the mountains near Prescott. Most years I have brought...

Mailbag: How to hold a Concert Mellophone

Getting back to the mailbag, a question came in a while ago on how to hold a traditional, concert mellophone. The short answer is I...