This boldly titled post, which has proved to be one of my most controversial, takes a slightly satirical poke at the trumpets made by Taylor. This particular post discusses my views, opinions and experiences of this particular make of trumpet and is written in a pretty light hearted manner in order to promote discussion. Which I’m very pleased to say it has and did.

Which left me a little surprised when I received the following email from Mr Andy Taylor himself.

Dear Matt.

Mind telling me where you get off on all this personal slagging off stuff??

I read your rant with interest. Pity you didn’t have the good grace to pick up the phone and address this to me. What is it with some players who think ‘all’ instrument makers are fair game to be insulted at will? We are a small band of guys who pretty much all know each other, so this is not new, or big, or useful. We exchange stories and sometimes have a good laugh about them, and sometimes not. Believe me there are number of players out there who some would like to see put against a wall for far less!

Next time, face your accuser and stop hiding behind the blog veneer. You are obviously still young and relatively inexperienced, so I shall put your rudeness down to that and hope you learn some humility in time.

Kindest regards.

Andy Taylor.

First of all I’d like to say what a shame it is that you have taken this so personally Andy. But I’d like to answer some of the issues you’ve brought up in your email.

I don’t appreciate you’re opening line as that seems to start off your email as a ‘rant’ and as a personal attack on me, however, that aside I’m glad that you read my post and I hope you enjoyed the rest of my site. I’d like to say that I have plenty of good grace thank you but if I picked up the phone and laid into all the manufacturers and service providers that I wasn’t a fan of I think it’d waste a lot of time and come over as quite rude.

However I would like to say that I am sorry if my post insulted you personally. If you carried on to read the many comments you’ll see that I’ve tried to be fair and state over and over again that these are my opinions. You are clearly very proud of your work to be so passionate and respond in the way you have. That’s great! Unfortunately it doesn’t change the way I feel about your trumpets. But then again, what do I know? I can’t make a trumpet! But I can play one. And I know what makes a good trumpet for me. Let me restate that last point; I know what makes a good trumpet FOR ME.

As for your final unfounded statement…

Next time, face your accuser and stop hiding behind the blog veneer

I’m not sure of whom my “accuser” is but I’d like to point out that if you continued to read the post you could have seen the comments of pro-Taylor players. Some were quite forceful with their views but following a post like this one I can understand why. That’s why the least I could do was write back. Please take time to read the comments and see that I am not hiding in any way. If I was I wouldn’t have put up the post in the first place.

I hope that this addresses the issues that you brought up in your email.

I think you might be right in saying that you can forget there are people who create these trumpets who might read a post like this and feel a certain amount of resentment and hurt. I hope you understand a little more now that my post isn’t a personal attack. It was perhaps a little insensitive but by the same token you can see that there are a fair few pro-Taylor comments there too. That should make you feel better about the debate.

I hope that you will leave your own comment on the post (providing that it’s not too rude or confrontational so that you can put your own views across in the right context. All the best Mr Taylor!!

Back to regular blogging; I hope to find the time to write a post on what I’ve been up to over the past few weeks over the weekend although things have been and are very busy with gigs. I’ll try my best to get something online soon!!

As you know my blog is a little over a year old and since it’s birth it hasn’t stopped evolving. When I started off it was just a bit of a laugh and something to make my online CV a little more interesting. Since then I’ve added, music, photos, my first animation, a documentary series and after christmas I’ll be releasing a podcast.

(Breath)

This is on top of my regular blog about being a young pro trumpeter!

You will also have noticed that within the past couple of months my site has had a complete face lift and the addition of adverts. My site has never looked better and there will be some more design changes in the future in order to make it even cleaner for my audience and for Mr Google.

Don’t worry though. I’M not going to change. You’ll still be able to read about life as a young musician and my other random fun content.

However since I’ve been taking my blog more and more seriously I’ve learnt how the blogosphere works and how I can go about increasing my traffic. This lead me to something very interesting.

As you may know one of my best pals, fellow pro trumpet player, former trumpet tutor and blog-guru, Ashley Morgan owns and writes for Upstartblogger. Ashley has taught me for half of my life, whether it’s been on the trumpet (back when I was at school) or as a young pro looking to market himself and his site. That’s why he has my complete confidence.

Because of this I’m going to take the next step in blogging and have decided to join The Inner Circle. This is a big decision for me as it’s a fair amount of money especially being at the start of my career and having just moved to London. However this is an investment that I know will come back to me. Even though it’s a little scary. But hell! The most rewarding things in my life have always been the most scary!!

I’d love to know if anyone else was considering joining as well.

You’ll be happy to know that I have finished putting the final touches on Eurobusk 07 Episodes 4 and 5!! The penultimate episode will be up on Sunday!!

(If you haven’t gotten the pattern by now they are being released on every Sunday)

All the final touches have been made on Eurobusk 08 and I’ll be writing about that very soon. I have 3 gigs to play over this weekend so I’ll have lots to write about. Actually one of them is with The Shades as a warm up gig for Abu Dhabi on new years at the Emirates Palace Hotel. Hopefully the set on Saturday won’t be as long as the one scheduled for new years.

I’ve had to put Master Musician Episode 2 on hold until next year as Eurobusk 07 took far longer to finish than I’d expected and I don’t want to rush it. Podcasts are also scheduled for next year now to. But I might get the chance to do a Eurobusk 08 special before we leave.

I’ll keep you posted on that when I’ve spoken to the rest of The Quarter Tones.