Jon Faddis’ 1977 and 2013 Embouchure Comparison (and “guess the embouchure type”)

Check out the following video of Jon Faddis performing in 1977, when he would have been only about 24 years old. It’s amazing trumpet playing, but take a close look at his embouchure formation and see what you would think if you didn’t hear the sound.

We get to see Faddis taking a breath up close a couple of times and you can see how much he pulls his lips off the mouthpiece and has to reform after every initial attack. His mouth corners don’t look all that symmetrical, which may not necessarily be a bad thing, but his upper lip looks like it’s a little loose on his left side.

It’s always interesting to see such great playing, even when you can spot things that are “wrong” with it. Of course it’s hard to argue with playing like in the above video.

Now compare that to this video from 36 year later, in 2013.

In this video you don’t see so much of Faddis pulling his lips off the mouthpiece when he takes a breath in. Instead, his lips stay in place on the rim and he breathes in through his mouth corners. His corners look more symmetrical to me in this video. There’s overall less excessive moving going around with his embouchure in this more recent video. Everything looks more stable overall. At least this is how it looks to me.

I find the idea of being able to view great brass players’ embouchures early on in their careers and compare their playing later on to be an interesting avenue to explore. How do players in their early career compare to years later? Do players with more longevity tend to have certain embouchure characteristics or develop those features as they continue to play?

And while I’ve mentioned Faddis in some other posts here concerning his embouchure type, I don’t think I’ve actually done a “Guess the Embouchure Type” with him. After watching the above videos, what’s your guess? Mine after the break.

One of my teachers, Doug Elliott, once showed me some photos he took of Faddis playing into a transparent mouthpiece (Doug has a huge collection of a ton of different players). Faddis was also a subject in Daryl Gibson’s dissertation, A photographic study of twelve professional trumpet embouchures while playing from the low to the extreme upper register. Even without seeing those, I think you can also see pretty clearly in the above videos that Faddis places the mouthpiece with more lower lip inside, making his embouchure the “low placement” embouchure type.

Did you have a different guess? Have you discovered any “before and after” videos of brass players that would be interesting to compare? Leave your comments below.