YouTube user “Suiram1” has uploaded a video of his embouchure.
Suiram1 asked if I had any comments for him. It’s a pretty short video, and it’s very difficult to diagnose or suggest anything without being there in person, but I thought I’d point out some things I notice.
First, his embouchure is definitely one of the downstream types. If you look closely at the lips when he’s playing in the transparent mouthpiece you can see this. There’s more upper lip inside so that lip predominates and the air strikes the bottom of the cup. This is more common than the upstream embouchure type.
This question comes from “albrt2890” on one of my YouTube videos.
I am going into my third year of college as a music ed major. I teach private lessons as well. I do have a question though regarding the position of the mouthpiece on the lips. I have a student (f horn) who plays with a large amount of lower lip however when he descends into the lower register of the horn he changes his mouthpiece position so that he has more upper lip in the mouthpiece. Would it benefit him to try to play horn with the “Standard” embouchure through all ranges?
Like pretty much any question about embouchure issues, I’d have to see it. Still, that’s an unsatisfying answer and since albrt2890 is learning to teach music, he/she probably wants to learn more about embouchures. I’ll try to explain how and what I’d look for in a case like this. That said, there are a lot of variables at work here (breathing, tonguing, all sorts of embouchure features, etc.) and something that I don’t mention here may completely change around the following suggestions. Caveat emptor, or maybe more properly, this is free advice and you get what you pay for. Take everything that follows with a grain of salt.
There are a couple of somewhat common situations that come to mind here. First, some players will change to a different embouchure type for different ranges. Or, some players are just altering their mouthpiece placement slightly for different ranges while not actually type switching. I would recommend players avoid both these situations, but checking out which is going on and how to correct it depends on some different factors you need to look for.
If you look around at a number of different resources for brass players and teachers you will notice that while there is a general consensus on topics such as breathing, there is a lot of contradictory advice on brass embouchures. In the above video I look at five commonly held myths about brass embouchures.
1. If you want to sound like a famous player you should use the same embouchure as that player. If you want your students to have a well functioning embouchure, they should use the same embouchure as you.
Most players and teachers seem to feel that the embouchure that works well for them personally must be the correct one, so they instruct others to play similarly. Sometimes students who emulate a famous player believe the key to sounding that good is to adopt the same embouchure as that player.
The trouble with this logic is that everyone has a different face and what works well for one player doesn’t for another. There are examples of successful brass players with very different looking embouchures. A one-size-fits-all approach to embouchure development will be successful if you or your student happens to have the anatomy suited to that instruction, but others will fail.
Looking around on the internet for information about brass embouchures will often lead to references or instructions in a playing method that is commonly referred to as a “tongue controlled embouchure,” or sometimes just TCE for short. While I generally don’t recommend this method, I wanted to put together a resource for players who want to learn a little more about it without having to purchase a book or video. At the same time, I’ll also explain my reluctance to endorse it.
There isn’t a widely agreed definition of what constitutes a “tongue controlled embouchure.” Generally speaking, however, a tongue controlled embouchure can be defined as a method where the player keeps the tongue on the lower lip while the pitch is being played. Most also will keep the tongue on the lip at all times, attacking pitches as if “spitting a seed.” Often the tone is stopped with the tongue closing off against the lips as well. Additional characteristics that are sometimes described with a tongue controlled embouchure include a more open jaw position, looser mouth corners than typical, and puffed cheeks. For my purposes here, any embouchure method where the player keeps the tongue anchored on the lower lip, including but not restricted to the “spitting seeds” attacks, will be what I’m referring to as a “tongue controlled embouchure.”
Today I’m going to go after one of brass pedagogy’s sacred cows, Arnold Jacobs. Since so many teachers and players have been strongly influenced by Jacobs’ teaching (myself included), I should give a little background first.
Jacobs sometimes summarized his teaching philosophy as “Song & Wind.” This influential concept is sometimes described as the musician’s focus should first and foremost should be on being a musical communicator, the “song.” After that, a brass musician’s attention should be placed on good breathing, the “wind.” One of the reasons that this is such a popular pedagogical method is because it’s very effective. Putting attention on the musical expression does have a tendency to work out the kinks in a player’s technique. Efficient breathing is also an extremely important part of good brass technique.
Just so I’m clear here, I’m not advocating that we throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, just because Jacobs had an expert understanding of the physiology of breathing and application of that knowledge to playing brasswind instruments doesn’t mean that his statements on other areas should be taken for gospel truth, as many seem to think. Case in point, his statements on the embouchure.
Lip Vibration of Trombone Embouchures is a documentary film made by Dr. H. Lloyd Leno sometime in the late 1980s, I think. Leno was the trombone professor at Walla Walla College, in Walla Walla, Washington. I’m not certain exactly when he passed away, but his son, Michael Leno, gave me permission to post his father’s film on YouTube. Dr. Leno made this film after doing research on his dissertation, A Study of Lip Vibrations With High Speed Photography (he wrote an article for the International Trombone Association Journal based on it in 1987 and I think his dissertation was completed just a year or two earlier).
Dr. Leno’s dissertation research was designed to confirm that the lips actually vibrate at the same frequency the pitch oscillates. It turns out that they do, which is what physics states must be happening but prior to Leno’s research no one had actually tested this. What became so interesting about his study wasn’t the slow motion view of the lips vibrating but that out of his initial pool of 4 test subjects that three players were found to be blowing the air past the lips downstream and 1 was blowing upstream.
Not having been familiar with Donald Reinhardt’s work, Leno was surprised to see this and went on to film a number of trombonists to see what he could find. The result was this documentary film, Lip Vibration of Trombone Embouchures.
Michael Bowlus, a friend of Michael Leno’s, sent me the audio portion to a screening Dr. Leno gave of his film. I dubbed in Leno’s comments at the screening into the film, as he clarifies a few things in there.
It’s long enough that I had to split it into three parts. Part 1 deals mainly with the downstream embouchures and shows James Fulkerson, George Roberts, Stewart Dempster, and Bill Watrous. Part 2 shows the embouchures of Drew Kaptur, Larry Kitzel, and Larry Wiehe as examples of upstream embouchures. Part 3 shows the differences of a free buzzing embouchure to a playing embouchure and multiphonics, using Stewart Dempster’s embouchure as an example.
While others had discovered the different embouchure types earlier, Leno’s work is important because it not only independently confirms what was already known, but also allows us to look at the functioning embouchure slowed down for the first time. Since Leno’s study using high speed photography others have duplicated this by using strobe lights to simulate the high speed filming, with fairly decent success. The pattern of vibrations is interesting to watch and may lead to improved insights into practice and pedagogy for the different embouchure types.
I’ve got some projects currently underway that are keeping me from adding some new content, so today’s entry will be a repost, of sorts. The above two-part video was the “pilot” for my embouchure research. I had just bought the video camera and was testing it out to see how well it would perform for the purpose of my research.
I put together the above video to show an unusual embouchure I happened to document for my embouchure research. This case is particularly interesting for a couple of features. First, since it’s more challenging to get clear video footage of embouchure characteristics on a smaller mouthpiece, the tuba embouchure makes i very easy to see examples of certain embouchure characteristics. Secondly, this tubist plays very well, in spite of some embouchure idiosyncrasies that make for noticeable flaws in his technique.
First, a little background about the subject. At the time I recorded this video he was a college music student, actually majoring in piano. He had played tuba for quite a while, though, and was continuing to perform and study tuba as a secondary instrument. While a fine player, this subject complained of some difficulties playing in tune at a couple of points while taking this video footage. He had some difficulties with his high range and at a particular point in his range chipped a lot of notes.
I’ve recently got a couple of email inquiries about my thoughts on Jeff Smiley’s text and trumpet method, The Balanced Embouchure. I’ve gotten questions about it in the past, so I thought I’d reread this book and compile some of my thoughts here while they’re still fresh.
A common analogy that even I often use is to compare the bow of a string instrument to the air on the brass. Just as the bow moves across the string to create vibration, the air must move past the lips on a brass instrument. Usually I hear this comparison to make a point about breathing, such as there is no sound without the air.
It’s interesting to view the vibrating bowed string and compare it with the vibrations of the lips. Here’s a video showing the vibrating string is slow motion.
