I have recently re-studied , frame by frame, the newsreel film in a version where the sound has been properly synchronised with the picture. I would say that Bix does indeed puff out his cheeks for every note that he plays. It's worth bearing in mind that he does not actually play every note that the brass section can be heard playing, and that the unsynchronised (widely available) version leads to a different interpretation of sound/vision. .
Most importantly though, I did agree with Frank , originally, that it could be a Bach that he is playing; but now I am convinced that it is a Holton. I have a 1928 Holton-Clarke (identical to the one that Bix is photographed with) and a 1930 New York Bach Stad (identical to the one in the Putnam Museum). I angled both instruments to the near exact position on the frames where you can clearly see the instrument that Bix is playing, i.e. the last few frames where he is lowering the instrument prior to sitting down. I found the following to be true from this angle:
1. The bend in the lead pipe is in the same position as the Holton, further forward than on the Bach.
2. The mouthpiece receiver is in the same position as the Holton, whereas the Bach receiver is level with the curve on the bell pipe.
I can see Bix's finger going forwards a couple of times and cannot really comment on that. It is true that the Holton did not have a finger ring, but there might be other reasons why Bix moved his finger.
I am therefore fairly certain that the instrument in the newsreel film is a Holton; and why not ? the Whiteman Band had just been sponsored by them and I can imagine the Band Manager instructing them to play Holton instruments for the film, otherwise ..... !
Hi Malcolm, with regard to the arrangement and Bix's part, I think we've been talking at cross purposes here. For reasons of time, I can only address the issue of Bix's cornet part now. I'd like to address the highly interesting issue of the cornet itself at another time, if I may.
Last year I did a transcription of the "My Ohio Home" verse from the newsreel soundtrack (this "Finale" transcription was uploaded at
http://bixbeiderbecke.com/myohiohomeverse.pdf ) (1).
My conclusions were as follows: Ferde Grofé split the trumpets into two teams, which, for the sake of argument, I'll call Team A and team B. Team A has two trumpets, and team B has a trumpet and Bix.
Team A and B swap phrases, which contain either 3 or 4 staccato notes. The order is A - B - A A - B, and then A - B - A A - B - A.
Team A plays a total of 25 notes, and team B plays a total of 13 notes. All phrases are complete and consistently in duet form, which means none of the players missed a note (2).
Using my transcription as a basis, this would mean that Bix played a grand total of 13 notes. At
http://www.network54.com/Forum/27140/me ... Embouchure an extracted "Bix part" can be seen, together with screen shots corresponding with some of the notes, as well as my comments on Bix's embouchure. By the way, I did take into account the synchronization problem in the Yazoo version, which has the soundtrack running just slightly ahead of the images.
As far as I can ascertain, Bix plays his three high Fs and one Bb (phrase nr. 2 for "team B") with a more or less firm embouchure, but the other phrases are played with a very loose embouchure, i.e. his cheeks puff out.
Frank
(1) At the time, I used the clip's images only to ascertain which team Bix was on, and to compare my "Bix part" with his fingerings. In other words, the issue of synchronization (which I was aware of at the time) played no part in the process of transcription, which was done aurally.
(2) Grofé appears to have used the pentatonic scale from the chorus melody as a basic idea (very nifty) to construct the duets in the trumpet parts, which resulted in all those dissonant "major seconds" (G/F, C/Bb and one instance of F/Eb).
I also want to point out the possibility that Grofé actually wrote half-note triplets for the trumpets, instead of the syncopated figures I decided on. I think either notation would have come out more or less the way it actually sounds in the clip.