I wasn’t familiar with British trombonist Roy Williams until I came across this YouTube video of him playing the ballad Old Folks. There’s not much about him online, but I did find a discography here. He’s definitely a player I need to check out more. Watch his playing here and see if you can guess his embouchure type.
While you’re watching, pay close attention to how stable his embouchure is at all times. When he breathes he almost always keeps his lips inside the mouthpiece touching and takes are in through the mouth corners. Speaking of his mouth corners, they are firmly locked in place throughout his entire range. His jaw remains pretty stable as well, not moving up or down when he changes registers and his chin remains firm (don’t confuse his dimple for a bunched chin). These are good characteristics for players of all embouchure types, so it’s a good model to watch and emulate.
Video no longer available
Unfortunately this upload is very low resolution, so it’s has poor video quality. That, along with Williams’ very minimal embouchure motion make it difficult for me to guess with much confidence.
Here is a cleaned up version of my 50 minute video presentation called Brass Embouchures: A Guide For Teachers and Players. While I’ve had this presentation up on YouTube already, I had to split it into 6 parts when I initially posted it. Later I tried to post it in a single video, but the audio and video didn’t sync up towards the end. This time I believe it should work just fine all the way through.
Tip of the horn to John B. for spotting this video of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Brass Quintet. Back in high school I took a semester of Japanese and recognize the characters in the video as the kana. I gave up after a short while trying to work out which of the orchestra’s brass players are performing here, so if anyone knows and can supply us the names of the individual performers, please leave a comment. (Update – Dan F. worked out the trombonist, it’s Jorgen Van Rijen. Thanks, Dan!)
You can get a pretty close look at all five of their chops in this video, but it’s tough to spot all of their embouchure motions because most of the time there isn’t enough of a range change at that moment in the music to see one (this is why in my videos I demonstrate this with octave slurs, it’s a large enough interval to clearly see them). Still, we can make an educated guess based on mouthpiece placement and there are a couple of points in the video where you can spot a player’s embouchure motion. Take a look and make your best guess of their embouchure types. My speculations after the break.
I don’t remember exactly how I happened across this, but I while ago I found interesting discussion of air pockets by trumpet player Tim Morrison. According to this link, Tim Morrison plays intentionally with some air pockets under his lips.
The primary pocketing spot is the upper lip and cheek area above the corners. It’s important to keep corners and cheeks firm, but to allow the air pockets to form. I’ve found this dramatically reduces counter-productive embouchure stress, yet keeps strength where you need it, which is in the corners and through the middle of the cheeks. One more thing. There is always air present under the upper lip/cheek area and even more noticeably when playing in the lower register. This is paramount in getting the “trombone effect” in lower register playing. As you ascend, the facial muscles come more into play and the air pockets become less noticeable, but are still present.
Take a look at this video of Tim Morrison and look at his upper lip. The resolution is a little low, unfortunately, but I think I can see his air pockets. Also, I have to say how much I loved watching the composer, Joe Hisaishi, conduct this piece. It’s unusual for an orchestral conductor to not use a baton, but he is a very expressive conductor.
While I’m at it, I’ll play “Guess the Embouchure Type.” Take a look and I’ll have my guess after the break.
My best guess for Morrison’s embouchure type is the “medium high placement” type. His placement seems to be just a bit more upper lip inside the mouthpiece and he also appears to have the correct embouchure motion for that type. His horn angle is close to straight out, though, which isn’t typical for this embouchure type. Still, I have seen some very fine players belonging to this embouchure type with the same straight out horn angle, so it isn’t necessarily wrong for these players.
Donald Reinhardt wrote a little about the air pockets.
Sometimes a little puff will form under the upper lip while playing at great volume in the upper register. This, however, is of little consequence as long as it does not interfere with the mouthcorners. Never permit a puff to form under the lower lip regardless of the performer’s physical type; this fault makes a trumpet sound like a cornet, a cornet like a flugelhorn, a trombone like a baritone, etc.
– Donald Reinhardt, Encyclopedia of the Pivot System p. 220
Both Morrison and Reinhardt agree to keep the air pockets away from the mouth corners. Reinhardt did have some specific exercises he used that intentionally required cheek puffing, but did not encourage his students to perform this way. He used cheek puffing as either a diagnostic tool or correctional procedure at times.
In general, I feel it’s best to reduce any air pockets when possible, but it does seem to be helpful for some players and may be necessary at certain stages of development. It’s probably best to keep any air pockets away from the mouth corners, unless you’re being guided by a teacher who understands how to keep it from hindering your playing.
Hank stopped by to ask a question I’ve also had to personally deal with.
I’ve found that the only way I can get the sensation of “embouchure motion“, i.e. the MP/embouchure/jaw `tracking’ along the teeth foundation either for ascending or descending, is on a so-called `dry’ set up. If I try a `wet’ set up the MP tends to slip down onto the red part of top lip in stead of the whole assembly moving/tracking. Thanks, Comments?
This is actually a pretty common issue for some players, particularly those who belong to the Low Placement embouchure type, but also sometimes Medium High Placement players as well. These types both have an embouchure motion to pull the mouthpiece and lips together down to ascend. When the lips feel slippery, sometimes the mouthpiece placement will slide on the lips to a lower placement like Hank describes.
First of all, there’s nothing inherently wrong with placing the mouthpiece so the rim sits on the red of the upper lips, in spite of what many teachers and players believe. My own embouchure, shown at the right, has the rim right on the red of my upper lip. This just happens to be where it works best for me, and is a quite a bit lower than most Low Placement embouchure types I’ve seen. Perhaps the reason your mouthpiece wants to slide down there is because that’s where it works best. Try it out and see what happens. But without watching you play in person, that’s just a wild guess. Caveat emptor.
I did mention above that I’ve dealt with this issue myself, though. As you can note from the photo, if my top lip starts to slide up it goes right off the rim, so I have to be careful. I’ve tried a few different things, all of which help to a certain degree. Here they are, in no particular order.
Jeff stopped by a while ago and left a comment on one of my pages. I wanted to take a bit of time and try to get to his question. Jeff writes:
I have been typed as having 3b chops (I am a trombonist) and have benefitted from several Skype lessons. . . One subject I have been unable to get a clear answer on is this: As a 3b, what should I be good at (eg, good sound) and what will need extra effort because of my downstream type? The reason I ask this is because it would be helpful not to beat myself up over certain areas of my playing if, in fact, it is an area that needs extra study because of my physical make up!!
First of all, I prefer not to use Donald Reinhardt’s embouchure designations, as they are internally inconsistent and also simply confuse too many people. Instead, I use the embouchure types that were first taught to me by Doug Elliott, a former student of Reinhardt’s. Doug’s types are descriptive and simple enough that even non-brass players can understand and make use of them. So for the remainder of this post I’ll talk about your embouchure type as belonging to the Medium High Placement embouchure type.
Secondly, while you many get some benefits from online lessons, I would be cautious. I try to remember to qualify my advice whenever I’m not able to watch someone play in person. Skype lessons are nice, in that you can see and hear things that you just can’t spot through words, but they are still flawed. You may very well be a Medium High Placement type player, but you may also have been mistyped. The closer to 50/50 you are, the more necessary it becomes to watch you play in a transparent mouthpiece to see for sure. Even if your embouchure type fits the Medium High Placement type, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the type that fits your anatomy best. Caveat emptor.
I’ve been posting a lot about Wycliffe Gordon lately, partly because I recently had the opportunity to back him up in concert, but mostly because he’s a great trombonist. I got emailed the link to this video and was asked about what I thought of what’s happening with Wycliffe’s chops at 4:10 into it.
You get a few good looks at his embouchure in this video. His setting is very stable, with very little excess motion. This makes it hard to spot his embouchure motion, but I think I can see some examples of it in there (could be my confirmation bias, but I’ve noted his embouchure motion in person close up, so I’m pretty certain it’s down to ascend, up to descend). One interesting exception happens around 4:00 into the video. About 4:07 he takes the mouthpiece off to lick his lips and then resets just before he pastes a double Eb! The rest that follows is only speculation.
I don’t think Wycliffe is using this to reset his mouthpiece placement to a different position on the lips here. Some players do that for extreme ranges, sometimes to just a slightly different setting and sometimes completely switching embouchure types. While the placement does look a bit lower for the Eb, I suspect that this is just his downward embouchure motion pulling his lips down. First, he descends down from there and his timbre is consistently the same as before. Usually a change in setting has a noticeable effect on the tone, which I don’t hear (although it could be the recording isn’t enough to bring it out). Secondly, Wycliffe plays into that extreme upper register all the time, often going from very low notes very quickly. If he was resetting the mouthpiece to a different placement for the high notes in this video, he doesn’t seem to need to usually.
Thanks to Paul for spotting this video and sending me the link. It’s got a nice look at a trombonist’s embouchure and is some great playing too.
I’ll be getting around to answering some of the emailed embouchure questions starting today, taking them in the order I’ve gotten them. Here’s today’s.
I’m a high school trombone player and I’ve been reading a lot of your articles on embouchures and have decided I’m probably one of the Type IVs (that’s how I’ve been playing for the last few years at least). However, when I play in the upper register, my lower lip seems to hide behind the upper lip and looks very similar to the “jelly roll” embouchure type, except that the mouthpiece placement is low as opposed to high. Is this okay or would you recommend trying to change that (or do you think I would actually be a standard type III)?
Since I haven’t seen you play, I don’t know if you’re typing yourself accurately. First of all, I prefer to not use Donald Reinhardt’s embouchure nomenclature, simply because it gets confusing for people who are unfamiliar with it. Instead of Type IV I use Low Placement embouchure type and the Type III I use Medium High Placement type. These types were coined by Doug Elliott, a former student of Reinhardt’s, and I feel better help communicating how brass embouchures actually function.
I’m back from visiting Starkville, MS and playing with the Starkville Symphony Big Band. Starkville is almost a 9 hour drive from where I live, but the trip was worth it to back up the great trombonist Wycliffe Gordon.
David Wilken, Richard Human, Wycliffe Gordon, Clifton Taylor, Jason Beghtol
Wycliffe was a consumate professional, amazing player, and all around great guy. He sent his charts ahead of time, which was good as some of them were very challenging. As I was practicing my parts (I helped split lead and second, mostly) I noted that several of the parts had solos to play (both written out and improvised). I assumed that Wycliffe would be playing the solos in the performance, but went ahead and shed them for the practice anyway. It was good that I did, as Wycliffe was very generous with solo space for the concert. I got to play two fairly extended solos and traded on a couple more with the rest of the trombone section (from left to right, myself, Richard Human, Wycliffe Gordon, Clifton Taylor, and Jason Beghtol).
It’s been a while since I’ve done a “Guess the Embouchure Type” post and this video offers a closeup look at two great players, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and trumpet player Wynton Marsalis. Take a look at their embouchures and see if you can guess which embouchure type they have.
VIDEO NO LONGER AVAILABLE
It’s not easy to tell based on what you can see if this video, but if you know what to look for you might be able to make an educated guess. Since I’ve seen several other good videos of Wynton Marsalis playing up close (and already pointed his embouchure type out in a video here), it seems pretty clear that he has a Low Placement embouchure type.
