Category: Embouchure

Embouchure Dysfunction: An examination of brass embouchure troubleshooting

~ wilktone ~ 39 Comments

In the above 2 part video I discuss five unique case studies.  Each of these five brass players has some issues in their embouchure which correlate with some noticeable embouchure features.  I try to show how making corrections in their embouchure form, using basic embouchure types as a guide, may lead to improvements in their abilities to play.

There are a few points I wanted to address with this video. The first was to show that the embouchure is an important part of any brass player’s technique, and is not something to be ignored.  Even very successful performers at the peak of their career can suddenly develop embouchure dysfunction.  Traditionally, brass pedagogy takes the approach that it’s best to disregard the embouchure and focus instead on breathing and musical communication.  Since all of the subjects in my video, and most likely in all the other research I’ve read about the topic, were ignorant of their basic embouchure characteristics they were unprepared to accurately determine what precisely was causing their troubles.

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The Three Basic Embouchure Types

~ wilktone ~ 26 Comments

When looking closely at a large number of brass player’s embouchures certain patterns emerge, irrespective of the player’s instrument or practice approach.  Using two universal features of all brass embouchures, the air stream direction as it pass the lips into the mouthpiece and the pushing and pulling of the lips and mouthpiece together up and down along the teeth, it’s possible to classify all brass embouchures into three basic types.

Since each of these three basic embouchure types function quite differently from each other it’s important for brass teachers to understand them, as different types respond to the same instruction in different ways.  Understanding what proper embouchure form is for each type will help teachers guide their students more efficiently and also understand when a player is playing on an embouchure that isn’t appropriate for his or her anatomy.  When confronted with a serious embouchure dysfunction it can help teachers discover the real cause of the troubles and how to best go about correcting them.

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Brass Embouchures: A Guide For Teachers and Players

~ wilktone ~ 9 Comments

On November 8, 2009 I gave this presentation to the North Carolina Music Educators Convention, held in Winston-Salem, NC.  I was pleasantly surprised to have a generally full room of musicians and music educators who mostly seemed genuinely interested in learning more about a topic that is typically ignored in favor of a “let the body figure itself out” practice.

In order to make this information more accessible for both my NCMEA audience as well as to the general public, I created a video that includes my slide show notes, video footage, and the narration from my presentation. 

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The Embouchure Motion

~ wilktone ~ 9 Comments

I made the above video about a year ago to demonstrate and explain a phenomenon that is quite difficult to describe verbally or even using images, the “embouchure motion.”  Most brass players are completely unaware of their embouchure motion, or they may be peripherally aware of it but have an incomplete understanding of it.  Even among people whose expertise I trust in this matter seem do disagree on some of the finer points of it.  It’s a very complex topic and our understanding of it is superficial.

To summarize my points in the video, when changing registers brass players will slide the lips and mouthpiece together up or down along the teeth behind them.  Some players will push the lips and mouthpiece together up towards the nose to ascend and others will pull down towards the chin.  Although the general motion is up and down, most players have some angular deviation in the imaginary line that their mouthpiece moves along.  Some players look almost as if they are making an embouchure motion that is closer to side to side than up and down.

Here are two photographs of the same trombonist playing a low B flat (a major 9th below middle C) and a B flat two octaves higher (a minor 7th above middle C).

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Brass Embouchures and Air Stream Direction

~ wilktone ~ 25 Comments

In 1962 Philip Farkas, a noted teacher and former hornist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, published a book called The Art of Brass Playing. Subtitled, A Treatise on the Formation and Use of the Brass Player’s Embouchure, this text contained Farkas’s hypothesis on the proper embouchure for a brass instrument. According to Farkas, the proper embouchure would have the lips and jaw lined up in such a way that the air stream would be blown straight down the shank of the mouthpiece, illustrated as below.

from Phillip Farkas’s “The Art of Brass Playing”

It wasn’t until later that Farkas tested out this hypothesis and discovered that this wasn’t the case.  In 1970 he published a shorter text, titled A Photographic Study of 40 Virtuoso Horn Player’s Embouchures. The photographs Farkas took told a different story from earlier. 39 of the horn players buzzed in such a way that the air stream was directed at a downward angle, and 1 subject blew the air stream upward.

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