I am in 9th grade and play baritone horn in marching band and concert band. I played the trumpet 4th and 5th but havnt played much since i got back in band at the beggining of 8th. I am just starting jazz band with trumpet and i am having some problems with my set-up. i have a Blessing intermediate trumpet with the 7C that came with it. During the first practice I soon noticed that a few things were out of place. 1) my sound was aweful after the first 10 minutes (most likley fatigue), 2) my lips hurt like crap(I have rather large lips), 3) my range for ok playing ended at about hight F-G. If I try I can go as high as D above the staff but it is almost impossible to use that in normal playing. Any way I am pretty sure these problems are do somewhat to my lack of recent experience with a trumpet and alot to do with the size and brand of my mouthpiece. I have played my friend`s 3C and it feels OK but im contemplating on going up to a 1-1/2C because my mouth is definatley built for a bigger mouthpiece like my 6-AL baritone mouthpiece. Any advice on this prediciment would be greatly appreciated.

try the bach 1 1-2c and a bach 1b and maybe even a bach 1a and a 3a. order them from woodwinds and brasswinds and you can try out the mouthpieces for 3.50$ each and you pay for the one you buy... those might do you some good. p.s- it might have been easier to play trombone instead of trumpet

I tryed trombone. I know all the positions in correspondence to valve fingerings but there is one problem...I dont read bass clef. I dont really have the patience to learn a whole other clef just to do jazz band. besides i would like to get back into trumpet for fun with other stuff too.

well that`s cool then... you should probably try those mouthpieces i told you... they`re the biggest ones that bach makes.

oh yeah i meant to also say that once you`ve been playing for a while you will probably find that your chops are getting back in shape and you`re mouthpiece is too deep to get a bright sound on for jazz. at that point you will need to switch again to continue on with jazz if you want to be good. That should take you about a year to do though... maybe even 2 years.