What do you want to play today ?
Welcome to the Trumpet Assistant, a novel device which makes learning the Trumpet much more fun.
Gone are the days of struggling with notes, looking up fingering tables and blowing totally boring stuff.
Of course you can still do that if you like, but on the other hand ...
The Trumpet Assistant lets you practice whatever tune you want, in any key you want, as fast or as slow as you like, on your trumpet, cornet, flugel, piccolo, alto or tenor horn instantly.
Yep, you're right!
The neatly brushed brass-tube with its stainless steel end cap, the three evenly spaced Super-Flux LEDs and the cable coming out the other end, that's the TrumpAssist, your trumpet assistant.
And yes, the LEDs tell you what valves are going to be pressed, here's how:
CLOUD -> MIDI -> TRUMPET
Cloud, that's the internet, and it contains millions of free MIDI files (tunes in computer notation), that you can find and download to your MAC / PC within seconds.
Drop the MIDI file into a Music Program (i.e. Garage Band, Logic, Cubase) choose the melody track and hit play.
TrumpAssist is connected to your MAC/PC via MIDI and it will convert the MIDI melody into Bb-trumpet-language and show you the correct valve patterns during real-time playback.
We have made some VIDEOS for you. Grab your horn and check it out.
Again, absolutely correct !
The left LED, close to the stainless steel endcap is for the first valve of your trumpet, flugel, cornet, you name it ..
The middle LED is for the 2nd valve, and the LED close to the MIDI connector shows you, when the 3rd valve needs to be pressed. A note with no valves pressed will appear as a white backlight on all 3 LEDs and notes that are out of the range of the instrument (too low or too high) will appear as red backlight on the 3 LEDs.
The Altmann Trumpet Assistant can be connected to your computer via USB-MIDI or directly to virtually every keyboard via plain MIDI cable. TrumpAssist works in real-time and shows you the valves to be pressed in order to hit the right note. TrumpAssist listens to MIDI channel '1' only and will ignore all other channels.
GarageBand is a simple
yet powerful tool to play MIDI files. The melody track is duplicated
and put out to the TrumpAssist. Playback speed and pitch can be
individually adjusted, so you can to learn to play any tune in any
key fast and effectively.
TrumpAssist is cool, because you can start playing the stuff you want right now!
The old way was like this: You'd would first have to learn reading sheet music. Then you would have to learn the trumpet's valve patterns and their corresponding written notes. Then you would have to buy or organise the notes of the music you want to play, then you'd probably have to transpose them to the key you would like to play.
I don't want to prevent you learning reading sheet music if you want to, but it is a lot of paper work and probably a lot of wasted time that you could better use just playing your trumpet.
I think many people give up on playing the trumpet because the paper stuff can be a bit exhausting.
TrumpAssist is cool, because you can learn playing a tune without reading sheet music, without learning fingering charts.
TrumpAssist promotes an automatic neuronal connection between the note played and the corresponding valve pattern.
TrumpAssist is extra cool, because you hear the notes being played so you will not only learn to play a tune on your trumpet, but you will also learn to play in the correct pitch automatically.
You can start slow and then speed up. You can change keys instantly. Of course it also works with Flugelhorn, and hey it will also work with Alto- and Tenor-horns as well as non -Bb trumpets, because you can change the pitch correspondingly.
TrumpAssist is extra extra extra cool, because a keyboarder can show you what he wants you to play and you immediately know how to play it on the trumpet. Probably a big time-saver in rehearsals and studio-work.
As a small child I watched Louis Armstrong on TV. I was blown away by his playing and captured by the seeming simplicity of the instrument: "Only 3 buttons and beautiful music, this must be easy"!
I observed Satchmo's performance and realized that sometimes 2 buttons are pressed at the same time, sometimes even 3 and sometimes no valves at all. Okay thats 8 combinations, but only 3 buttons so it must be easy.
Many years later I bought my first trumpet and found out that it was not so easy at all. I was not able to get a decent tone out of the instrument and sold it to a friend who was already learning the tumpet for some years.
Funny, that same friend (Jan) made this awesome work of art for my birthday many years ago, you never know how things turn out and I must share this with you:
Then again many years passed until there was this rainy day when I bought a very old Flugelhorn at a small music-store, just because. This horn was so easy to play and had a great tone, so I decided to learn to play some simple melodies on this thing.
I loaded the trumpet fingering chart from the Conn-website and tried to learn to play tunes. But there was a problem. I could still not read sheet music and I also did not want to learn it, because many people I knew who could read music, were not able to play free, they were just robots: No paper in front of them -> no music.
A fingering chart may be a logical thing, as it corresponds to physical pipe lengths and overtones, however as you see above (and already know) it is not intuitive. The valve patterns are not the same for each octave within the trumpets range making them extra difficult to remember. If you manage to learn to play a tune in one key and then want to play it in different key, you can start from scratch, because everything changes.
On a guitar you just move up or down the fretboard and there you go. On a piano, keyboard or vibraphone you at least see what's going on, how many notes up or down to hit a desired interval.
Even a trombone is kind of intuitive, but the trumpet is an animal with respect to its counter-intuitive operation.
I struggled ... but the paper music was just way too boring and it was keeping me from actually playing.
Something had to be done!
That something now is the Altmann Trumpet-Assistant.
TrumpAssist takes away the inherent complexities of the instrument and lets you enjoy playing the trumpet instead.
When I had my first prototype running I started with 'Oh when the saints' and was able to play the tune within minutes. Such a great experience, so much fun. Then came 'Bye bye blackbird', Take the A train. But the coolest thing, I can also play the melodies of my favorite music: Santana, Clapton, etc. etc.
All it takes is to grab the MIDI file from the internet, drop it into Garageband (or virtually any Midi Sequencer), assign the melody track to the TrumpAssist and within a couple minutes start playing :)
For using the Trumpet Assistant you need :
A trumpet to blow or a cornet, flugel, piccolo, alto or tenor horn
A computer with USB, sound output and music software (i.e. Garage Band, Logic, Cubase, Reaper, etc.)
A USB-MIDI interface cable
and/or
A keyboard with MIDI output
TrumpAssist comes EUR 499,- incl. worldwide shipping, orders taken by email.
TrumpAssist is covered by a 5 years warranty and it is made in Germany.
TrumpAssist is integrated into a hand brushed brass tube with a MIDI connector on one rear side, and a stainless steel cap on the front and comes with a small bracket so that it does not roll over your desktop.
TrumpAssist is powered by the MIDI-port itself and therefore needs no batteries and no external power supply.
3 blue Super-Flux LEDs show you the valve pattern that is to be pressed. If a note requires no valve, then all 3 LEDs are backlit in WHITE. If a note is out of the range of the instrument (either too high or too low), then all 3 LEDs are backlit in RED.
TrumpAssist listens to MIDI channel 1.
Questions ? Ask.
ALTMANN MICRO MACHINES - Dipl.-Ing. Charles Altmann - Erlenstr. 15 - 42697 Solingen - Germany - +49-212-233-7039 - email
Garageband® is a software from Apple, which is in no way affiliated with AMM.
more AMM websites: mother-of-tone.com, jitter.de, amm.haan.de tera-player.com