Jason's first post

I'm finally sitting still in front of a computer screen ready to lay down my thoughts, goals and aspirations, which are so often the curiosities of my friends and trumpet family.

Let me start by stating that I am truly thankful for the thousands of fellow trumpet players and musicians who have taken the time to learn about my research and work. It has been my goal since I was sixteen to master at least some aspect of making beautiful music on brass tube with a bell at the end. And it was YOU, each of you, who challenged me day after day, year after year to listen, learn, improvise, innovate and create solutions to our shared challenges learning this incredibly challenging skill, playing trumpet. Thank you everyone...I consider you my family and considering I lack a traditional family (wife and children of my own), this means a great deal to me. Life is about sharing your experiences with those you love and my family has grown into an amazing network of musicians around the world. I see this as a very positive influence, inspiring countless hours of practice, performance and expression in a world that can use more smiles and fewer disappointments.

Since I've never really done this before, I'll simply tell you my thoughts for the day and go back to building trumpets...

Oh, one more side note! My upbringing was fairly unusual, so please excuse me if I tend to wander off course here and there. I tend to tell all things in some form of a story, almost always based on my personal experiences. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

It is Saturday and I got up late...really late. 11am. I usually get up at 5 or 7am and start building horns by 6 almost every day. Well, I've been getting over a cold that has been more harsh than normal and now my sleep schedule is all messed up. This kind of ticks me off as I'm really hard on myself when it comes to getting things done. So today is that day that happens once in a long while...the day where things don't go as planned and I try to make it all happen.

This reminds me of 6th grade living in Montana. I would get very sick when I was young. So sick that I would sometimes miss one or two weeks of school consecutively. I theorize that I was suffering from malnutrition, a result of my own hard-headed belief that I should not eat certain foods and maybe too much of others. I was a very thin tall kid, full of energy and very fit. But when I got sick, I was down for a long time. And I would hallucinate. I'm not kidding. I would get so weak that laying on the couch for hours turned into days of coughing and fevers with no appetite....and then came the hallucinations. I would imagine I was healthy and all the things I would do once I was better again. Running, climbing trees, building forts in the woods, modifying my Huffy dirt bike to make motorcycle sounds, catching more spiders, snakes and turtles for my living zoo (that my Mom didn't know about), and of course my mind wandered to engineering problems. Yep, as a kid I would hallucinate while sick for days about...engines, transmissions, energy, magnets, electrons. I was a seemingly normal kid with an obsession with physics. My parents knew this and encouraged me to learn just about anything that would interest me. We were a very poor family living in a run-down (and scary to this day) trailer court on the outskirts of a town in a dying economy. And yet my parents would go out of their way to encourage me to learn. My Dad once told me that if I could invent a magnet that would pick up glass, I'd be a millionaire. Well, let me say something about that little statement...at that very moment when he off the cuff said that, I was transfixed! Not only could we then pick up broken glass all over the world (very cool), but then the promise of enough dollar bills to allow my Mom to stop working two full-time jobs and buy us a car that worked and maybe even some clothes that didn't come from Goodwill. I devoted countless hours to trying to invent a magnet that picked up glass. I'm not kidding. Other things my Dad said that had a profound affect on me include mention of a perpetual motion machine, an infinitely variable electric motor/transmission system, alternative fuels and of course, always measure twice and cut once because you can never make it longer once it has been cut. My Dad had no idea he was the best teacher in the world and my sessions of focusing on these problems resulted in me finding actual school work very dull almost all of the time. Of course that didn't matter much as we didn't go to school all that often since we often lived on the road...but that's another story.

So here I am back in the present looking over my list of goals for the day:

1. machine a silicone mold to be used with fondant for my sister's upcoming wedding cake project (Jennuinely Sweet)

2. finish machining all parts for the latest New Orleans Summit ART trumpet

3. final assembly on an HT3 while my VMC cuts the parts above

4. play with Oscar, my Chorkie companion shop dog between picking up trumpets and improvising over 80's music

5. remember to eat food and sleep (I often get text reminders from friends and family)

So I better get back to work. I know I tend to ramble, but I hope you had fun hearing a bit about me and remember to check back as I hope to write every single day.

Jason