I like to remind readers from time to time that I’m not a scientist, I’m a science fan. So when I’m reviewing a paper published in a science journal, you need to take my interpretation with a grain of salt. Particularly in the physics domain, I’m self taught. I’ve been called out before for misunderstanding the physics of how we play and will probably be called out again.
The mechanics of brass instrument playing extend beyond simple lip tension. While the mechanical properties of human lips vary between relaxed and fully contracted states, these properties alone cannot explain the extensive pitch range achieved by professional brass players.
Strauss wanted to look at the existing models of brass acoustics and try to come to a better understanding of how the playing system and instrument interact with each other. The lips are often described in acoustics of brass instruments as a mass and spring system. In this model the lips serve as a flexible spring that move back and forth and set up a harmonic motion. At its most basic level, the “spring” of the lips bounce back and forth.
However, this model is too simplistic to account for the full range of pitches that professional brass musicians are required to play. Looking purely at measurements of how other muscles in the human body react and extrapolating how lip muscles might work, the authors conclude that if the lips were to function solely as a mass and spring system the maximum range of a brass instrument would fall somewhere around 2-3 octaves, well short of the 5 octave or more range that professional brass musicians play. This simplified system would require the player to have an elasticity ratio in the lips that is 16 times greater than the biceps. “This is unlikely,” as the paper says.
Strauss then looked at how actual musicians play and how that compares to what some brass pedagogy texts say. For example, in “The Art of Brass Playing” Phillip Farkas states that the lips should line up so that neither lip slides behind or in front of the other and the air stream should be blown straight forward into the mouthpiece. Strauss notes what I and many others have commented on here, “Interestingly, while Farkas advocates this method, none of the photographs of himself or other Chicago Symphony brass players included in his book demonstrate it.” Regardless, following this description Strauss modeled the lips as “two flat semi-circular vibrating plates.” Combining this concept with instructions by Arban, he added increasing mouthpiece pressure to play higher and reducing mouthpiece pressure to play lower. Then using Leno’s film showing brass embouchures functioning in slow motion Strauss notes that brass players’ lips don’t show any nodal lines inside the mouthpiece while playing. In other words, the lips vibrate in a single pattern and don’t segment into independently vibrating sections the way a string would for harmonics.
Using the Farkas-Arban-Leno model gets closer to reality than the simple mass and spring model, but only extends if from a 3 octave range to a 4 octave range. So there must be some other factors that come into play in order to allow brass musicians to play the entire range of the instrument. In order to investigate this, Strauss used a trombone that attached pickup microphones and pressure sensors at various points in the instrument as well as a pressure sensor that was positioned inside the player’s mouth. This allowed Strauss to confirm that the oral cavity is used by brass musicians as a Helmholtz resonator. As the air is blown into and out of the oral cavity the air inside the mouth will vibrate at a frequency that is tuned by the musician’s tongue arch and jaw position. The level of the tongue arch is an important part of brass musicians’ technique and this is another line of evidence that demonstrates that it does directly influence range.
The other mechanism Strauss found brass musicians use is the way players modify the vibrating mass of the lips. In other words, he found that brass musicians position the mouthpiece so that one lip or another predominates inside the cup and the player blows the air upstream or downstream. Brass musicians are able to reduce aperture length by positioning the mouthpiece with more than one lip inside (also off center), one lip gets clamped with the mouthpiece rim against the teeth more (the lip with less inside) while the other lip presses into and slightly overlaps the clamped lip.
One element of brass technique that isn’t mentioned in the article is the embouchure motion. All brass musicians use an embouchure motion to some degree and while many (perhaps most) are unaware of this phenomenon, it is a necessary part of efficient brass embouchure technique. It would be interesting to see what physicists have to say about the embouchure motion and how it actually helps players change register with less effort. It would also be interesting to learn why one of the basic downstream embouchure types push up to ascend and the other downstream embouchure type pulls down to ascend. I have some speculation, but I would love to read what someone who knows more about the acoustic principals can say about how the embouchure motion works the way it does.
The article is available here if you want to go straight to the source. Let me know if I got any of my summary wrong in the comments.
First, credit where credit is due. Harrisson Ball does play trumpet well and he does have a strong upper register. Therefore, it’s fair to take his advice on playing in the upper register seriously.
YouTube’s algorithm often suggests brass instruction videos to me and I guess when I look a bit at one to see what it’s about I end up getting a lot of videos from that content creator on my feed for a while. Harrisson Ball’s videos have been showing up a lot for me lately, so I watched this one carefully and will offer my comments and criticisms so you don’t have to spend 23 minutes watching it.
First, he acknowledges that he’s making this video because “it’s good for business.” If what Ball advises resonates with you then you can consider taking it to the next level and signing up for his email list or taking lessons. However, caveat emptor. More about this later.
He starts his video discussing how air should function in the upper register. He states, “more air does not equal high notes.” This is absolutely correct. A lot of players will misunderstand air “support” for “more” air with the upper register and they end up overblowing. Playing in the upper register actually requires less air than an equivalent dynamic down an octave or two, but it does require some additional air support. Ball’s aerosol spray can analogy is a good one. His advice to help a student work on breathing for the upper register here is to use a hot water bottle.
I’ve used away-from-the-horn exercises for some time now, but not all are created equal. In this case, I can see how blowing up a hot water bottle the way Ball demonstrates can help a player learn the feeling of support for the upper register, but I suspect it’s more of an overtraining exercise than “the same amount of energy” to get from high G to double C. I don’t have a hot water bottle, so I’m not able to try this out on my own right now, but they’re not very expensive so it might be worth a shot for someone who wants to try it out. If you do, let us know in the comments how well it works for you.
At 3:21 into the video Ball comes so close to offering a good description of functioning brass embouchures, and then drops the ball (pardon the pun). If you’ve read enough of my blog you understand already how air stream direction works on a brass embouchure and why it’s important. Ball says it’s important because “If you don’t know where the air stream is you don’t know where to put the vibrating surface.” He then proceeds to demonstrate how to determine where the air stream is going by simply hissing with open lips and finding where the air goes. That’s not remotely how air stream direction works when playing a brass instrument and it absolutely doesn’t tell a brass musician whether or not they should be an upstream or downstream player.
Ball then demonstrates the pencil trick exercise wrong. Or at least in a way that I don’t think is useful. Ball wants students to bite down on the pencil, form your lips around it in something like a buzzing position, and then blow air around the pencil. “Congratulations,” Ball says, “you’ve just discovered your first isometric exercise where you can work on the musculature driving a car…” No! Do not put a pencil in your mouth and drive! Not only will it distract your attention from your driving, but if you get into even a mild fender bender and the air bag goes off in your face you’re risking a serious injury. And since Ball’s pencil exercise doesn’t really work as well as the traditional pencil trick exercise, I would advise you to skip his version.
By the way, I don’t really use the traditional pencil trick exercise all to much any more either, for what it’s worth. I think there are better ways to work on developing the strength, control, and feel for where to put the muscular effort.
At 5:03 Ball tells us he’s going to show us “the biggest mistake trumpet players do on the internet.” To demonstrate this he first rolls his lips in, sets the “mouthpiece” (in his video he’s using scissor handles as a mouthpiece rim visualizer), and then purses his lips forward. I agree, this isn’t a good embouchure formation. Then we get to see a “cross section” of the “vibrating surface” in this graphic.
Huh? That’s a mouthpiece cross section. There’s nothing in that image that would be vibrating.
Now that Ball has told us what the “biggest mistake” is, he advises us to follow the Maynard Ferguson Protocol. Follow that link to see the video demonstration by Lynn Nicholson of what the MF Protocol supposedly is, but here are a couple of screen shots. First, what Nicholson calls a “conventional embouchure.”
And an “unfurled embouchure.”
First, I wouldn’t describe the later image as “unfurled,” I think that it’s putting the embouchure effort more at the corners, rather than clamping the lip center. In this case I think the wording is important because it can lead to someone doing something wrong and potentially damaging. Ball misunderstands and shows us the vibrating surface of his lip here.
OK, so the inner membrane of the lips will vibrate too, but I strongly discourage you from following this advice. Ball even comments on the scar tissue he’s developed here, so that’s one strike against it. Scar tissue doesn’t vibrate well. Nor should you be developing scars from playing a brass instrument, if you’re playing correctly. The outer area of the lip vermillion tolerates pressure just fine, however the inner membrane (oral mucosa) is much more prone to damage due to pressure.
Here’s Ball’s “unfurled” embouchure formation.
Compare that to Nicholson’s demonstration of the same “unfurled” embouchure formation. While I do allow for individual variations due to a player’s anatomy, this is different from what Nicholson was describing. Watch Ball’s demonstration when he goes to set the rim on the unfurled lips and notice how much micro adjusting he has to do before he gets it into position. When he goes to demonstrate the wrong way to play the instrument at 9:53 he tells us “most people” will just be blowing air and not actually playing a tone. Again, huh? Most people when they play the trumpet actually play the trumpet, they don’t just blow air. Even beginners sound better than this. He’s just pinning his lips open with the mouthpiece rim on purpose.
Ball also gives us a math equation to help out. We need “energy in ≥ energy out by at least 5%. Write that down.” That’s it, no discussion on where he gets that number and what it means for a player, it’s just there. While I don’t know for sure that Ball figured this out for real, I suspect that it’s just an equation he made up to bolster his claims and make them seem more scientific.
At 13:39 Ball again gets so close to giving good advice. Ball demonstrates that when he moves the bell up or down the pitch will shift higher or lower. I actually use this test all the time with students, not just up and down but also left and right (in Ball’s defense, he very briefly demonstrates circling the angle around in a way that’s closer to how I use this at 16:40). The angle change that happens is a result of maintaining the stable surface of the teeth/gums underneath the lips/teeth as we push and pull the mouthpiece upward and downward to change registers. Think of it sort of like a ball and socket joint. Ball just mentions this important part of our embouchure technique in passing and doesn’t point out that in this area what works for one player can be exactly opposite for another player. It seems that on this particular topic he has come across enough knowledge to be almost correct. The embouchure motion is what causes the different surface underneath he lips/rim resulting in the correct horn angle change for the particular player. It’s a package deal and I believe they should be discussed together.
Following the too short discussion on horn angle Ball mentions excessive mouthpiece pressure, then on to Bobby Shew’s wedge breath technique. Watch Ball’s demonstration of what this looks like on the trumpet at 15:02 and notice the hesitation between his inhalation and when he starts blowing. While that’s something that I sometimes struggle with too in the upper register, it’s something to avoid and the wedge breath technique seems to encourage that moment of bottling up the air just before the exhalation. Wedge breathing may be a good thing to try out, but be careful to not bottle up the air like this.
At 18:02 Ball again comes so close to giving accurate information and then fails. He states, “Remember, you have the option of being downstream, upstream, type one, type two. You can have both lips active, singular lip active, or both.” First, he doesn’t define what he means by “type one” or “type two,” but I’m guessing he thinks of one as being downstream and the other upstream. That’s fine, I prefer to not discuss that phenomenon that way but as long as you’re communicating clearly it’s not a big deal. But to describe it as an “option” is wrong. Your anatomy dictates which embouchure type will ultimately work best for you, it’s not an option you can choose. Furthermore, both lips do vibrate regardless of air stream direction. It’s true that the lip that is more prominent inside the mouthpiece vibrates with more intensity and the other lip serves somewhat as a more stable surface to vibrate against. But to describe this as one lip vibrating or both is not a good description of what actually happens.
Ball advises us to put the bulk of the mouthpiece pressure (60-65%) on the “non-vibrating” lip. The upper lip is thinner than the lower lip and is less able to tolerate mouthpiece pressure than the lower lip. I recommend that all players, regardless of embouchure type, put a little more weight on the lower lip.
His discussion of how to hold the instrument is fine, although I think there’s plenty of room for individual variations here. For example, I might advise one student to take their right pinky out of the ring if they are using it to pull back, but in general the right hand on the trumpet shouldn’t be used to hold the instrument anyway, it’s the left hand grip that is the “guardian” of the embouchure. The trumpet player’s left hand grip can be personal and depend on the size of the player’s hands and other factors. As long as the left hand grip is consistent and allows the musician to smoothly create the embouchure motion and accompanying horn angle changes I don’t think any one left hand grip is “best.”
“People overcomplicate the trumpet,” Ball says at 20:58. Playing any musical instrument is complicated. As he points out a few times in his video here, there are a number of things that need to coordinate together for efficient playing. The solution isn’t to pretend it isn’t complicated, it’s to break down those playing factors in manageable chunks and address them one at a time. Ball breaks it down in this video to supple lips and compressed air. He again then throws a number out of nowhere, this will fix “90%” of your trumpet playing. Again, I believe he’s making up a statistic to give his video the veneer of science without having to actually go through the hard work to collect data and actually do the math.
Before he wraps up Ball encourages us to go to the link in his video description (go to YouTube to grab it, if you want) for a free masterclass. I didn’t sign up, you need to give him your email address, but I did find a PDF on one of those horrid sharing web sites that steals people’s copyrighted content (I won’t link to it). Assuming that this is his free masterclass, it looks like a corporate motivational slide show with no actual exercises or discussion on how to play trumpet, followed by some practice logs, ending with a link where you can go to get a “free strategy session” (what’s a strategy session, is it like a free lesson?), where I assume he will try to sell you books, videos, and lessons.
Ball started his video by saying that giving away his system for upper register playing is “good for business,” and I’m going to end this post by looking beyond his videos and seeing what other folks have to say after signing up for his free “masterclass.” In that Reddit thread a trumpet player commented that after sending Ball his email for the free PDF he decided to not contact him for a “strategy session.” Afterwards he got the following email from Ball:
Quick Question….. Hey [Name Redacted], A few days ago, you signed up and watched my free training on 3 Ways to Improve Your Trumpet Playing—helping you play beautifully with less effort and maximize your practice time. During the session, I introduced an exclusive program for trumpet players, where many have already achieved remarkable results, including greater range, improved ease, and consistent performance—all while being part of a supportive community. But you didn’t book a chat… I’d really love to know why you didn’t book a time to speak with us. It will help me improve my messaging in the future. Feel free to adjust any part to better match your style! If you take a moment to fill out this [survey link] on your reasons for not moving forward, it would really help me out. Everything is anonymous so you can be as honest as you like. I’m also going to throw in a free training worth $100 for your time. I have sold this exact training for $100 in the past and people have told me it was the best $100 they ever spent and I am going to give it to you for FREE!!! After you submit the answers, you will be able to access the $100 training for free anonymously. You can fill out the [survey link].
Thanks for reading my emails,
Your biggest fan, Harrisson
Another reviewer on the Reddit thread said that he didn’t even remember signing up for Ball’s PDF and got a phone call from Ball giving him a hard sell for purchasing his course. Another similarly got a call from a telemarketer. There is a video review from a younger trumpet player that is quite glowing about studying from Ball, so perhaps once you commit to his lessons he is a good teacher. However, it’s hard to find any positive reviews of his lessons that aren’t posted by Ball himself. If you’re curious, watch that video review and notice how she constantly looks over to her left as she talks, reading the prompts that she’s supposed to say. There’s nothing wrong with writing a script if you’re making a video, but her script doesn’t ring true to me. “He’s always checking up on every single one of his members,” she says. That sounds like something Ball told her to say.
I’ve watched a number of other videos Ball has posted on his YouTube channel and they are all about the same. There’s some solid advice (nothing really unique), but there’s also some advice I would advise against. Plenty of times he describes brass technique and starts off with something that sounds so good, but then he veers off and demonstrates that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about in certain areas.
Again, Harrisson Ball does appear to be an accomplished trumpet player and he seems to be working in L.A. His success as a teacher, on the other hands, seems to be more due to his marketing and abilities at cranking out social media content rather than solid pedagogy. Then again, maybe I’m wrong and I’m just the pot calling the kettle black. Let me know in the comments if you’ve studied from Ball and give us your honest review.
I’m a bit late on this, but back in May this year 60 Minutes broadcast a report and a followup on a pedagogical system for teaching piano known as the “Payam Method.” This approach is named after its creator, Payam Khastkhodaei, a piano teacher that lives in the Seattle area.
After watching the 60 Minutes piece many of the claims and style of the reporting raised a lot of red flags for me and I bookmarked it and then forgot to do a writeup on it. The other day I came across the bookmark and started organizing my thoughts, but while doing some research I quickly learned that other, more qualified people, have already taken care of this. So I’ve deleted what I had already written and commented on and will leave you with one of the best responses I came across.
I guess that the main thing that bothers me from the 60 Minutes segment is how the reporters didn’t talk to other music teachers to learn how the basic idea Khastkhodaei claims is so unique to his method has been around long before. Music teachers have been selecting music to teach based on student interest since I was a student, and probably long before. Students are encouraged to “play” on their instruments all the time and to try to explore different ways of playing the same thing. Music teachers have been incorporating improvisation and composition into their lessons too. The 60 Minutes segment seems to largely be a fluff piece that comes off as an advertisement rather than actual reporting.
This Guess the Embouchure Type is a tough one, sent to me by Steve M. a while ago to check out. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra posted an online masterclass given by trombonist Alain Trudel. One of the interesting things about watching him play throughout the masterclass is that he often uses an Ergobone, a support system that helps hold the instrument off the player’s chair. I’ve never used one before, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing Trudel down at all.
Take a look at this video and skip around for clips of Trudel demonstrating things and see if you can spot his embouchure type. Some of the best spots to watch are about 30:00, 48:00, and 1:07:08. This one is tricky, my guess after the break.
This one is difficult. Trudel’s mouthpiece placement has enough upper lip inside that it’s certainly one of the two basic downstream embouchure types, but his embouchure motion is difficult to spot. The fact that his embouchure motion is so minimal suggests to me that he might have a Medium High Placement embouchure type, since those players often have very minimal embouchure motions compared to the other types, but that’s not a definitive clue.
I *think* that I see him pulling his mouthpiece and lips together down to ascend, particularly at the 1:07:08 time that I mentioned above. But at other points I’m hard press to see that and it looks as if he might be pushing up to ascend. It’s tougher to spot the embouchure motion when the player moves around or has grainy video, which makes it more difficult to say for sure here.
So my best guess, for now, is Medium High Placement, partly because of the difficult to spot embouchure motion and partly because his placement looks a little too low to belong to the Very High Placement Type.
I looked around for some other videos of Trudel playing to see if I could find a clip of him playing that would be more obvious and I was surprised to find a couple of videos of him playing jazz trombone, which I wasn’t aware that he also did. I know him as an orchestral style performer, particularly his solo recording of trombone concerti. Here’s a video of him playing All the Things You Are.
What do you think? Is my guess that Trudel belongs to the Medium High Placement type accurate or am I missing something? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Sometime in the early 1970s (best guess, 1971-1972) trombonist Urbie Green made a promotional film for King Musical Instruments, giving a clinic to students from Willowbrook High School and filmed at Proviso West High School, in the Chicago suburbs not far from where I grew up.
The clinic covers basic trombone technique mostly, but he also covers some more advanced multiple tonguing and slide techniques. Throughout the whole video Urbie demonstrates and performs for the students, which alone would make this video worth watching.
Estella Aragon is a trumpet performer and teacher who teaches online lessons. She advertises her lessons on her YouTube channel as well as her own web site. She has a couple of different videos where she discusses playing in the “red,” but her take on this is a bit different from what I usually see from brass teachers who strongly advise not to “play in the red of the lips.” Here’s one of those videos (it might not embed here, so follow the “Watch video on YouTube” link if it doesn’t appear for you).
I’ve already spoiled what Aragon feels is the “worst” trumpet embouchure, that is playing on the red of the lips. What is different about Aragon’s opinion here is that she’s not talking about placing the mouthpiece on the vermillion, per se, but she’s talking about the inner membrane of the lips.
I agree with Aragon on this point. When conducting my own research into the topic of playing on the vermillion the only information I could find regarding the supposed sensitivity of the vermillion from a medical professional stated that “the vermillion portion of lips tolerates pressure well.” (Wilson, H.L. (2000). Lips. The Clarinet, 27(4), 38-39). The inner membrane, however, does not. A mouthpiece placement/lip position demonstrated in the photo here is not recommended.
However, I’m a bit confused about what Aragon is actually suggesting. She specifically defines “the red” as the “moist inner part that in the trumpet world we call the red of the lips.” That’s different from what most brass players and teachers call “the red,” which typically is referring to the vermillion. In fact, the vermillion of the lip is specifically named after a word that means “red.” Aragon’s definition of “playing in the red” is distinctly different from how other brass teachers use that term.
Aragon states, “So playing in the red happens when the inner rim of the mouthpiece is placed too far onto that moist inner part of the lip beyond the vermillion, the red exposed part of the lips. Ideally, the mouthpiece placement should encourage the vermillion to be vibrating surface.” What is it about the vermillion that makes it better as vibrating surface?
Let’s take a look at George Roberts playing a pedal F on bass trombone in slow motion. Notice that the entire upper lip, not just the vermillion, is contributing to the lip vibration.
Now of course in a trumpet embouchure the mouthpiece is so much smaller, so similar filming wouldn’t show quite as much lip surface vibrating, but you can still see there is no specific line around the vermillion border where the lip vibration pattern noticeably changes.
Aragon uses a cut-away embouchure visualizer to demonstrate what she means. “The image on the right shows the inner rim is well on the vermillion, encouraging the lip to roll outwards, revealing the red and making that the vibrating surface.” Again, if you look at the two videos above that show functioning embouchures in slow motion we can see that when the aperture is at its most open position the inner membrane of the lips can be seen. It’s not that the lip vermillion vibrates only and the inner membrane of the lip is static, the entire lip vibrates. So while there are elements of truth to Aragon’s suggestions to avoid placing the mouthpiece on the inner membrane, I don’t believe that placement on the vermillion itself is necessarily problematic, that depends on the individual performer’s anatomy.
According to Aragon, “Playing in the red is problematic because the skin there is sensitive…” I’ve already quoted a medical doctor’s statement that the vermillion tolerates pressure, so I don’t believe her statement here is true. Continuing on, “…it’s prone to fatigue and injury.” In my review of the literature I could not find any evidence that the vermillion is prone to injury. Furthermore, lip injuries happen outside of the vermillion on brass players, perhaps more commonly since most brass musicians have anatomy suited for a mouthpiece placement above and/or below the vermillion. “This embouchure is so limiting, in fact, that it’s extremely rare to see successful professionals with it,” Aragon states.
I do agree that brass musicians who have anatomical features that make placement on the vermillion best are rare (excepting when we’re talking about the placement along the sides of the mouthpiece rim), but not because there’s anything inherently limiting about this placement. Any placement that isn’t ideal is limiting, as are other embouchure characteristics that aren’t related to placement. But it’s not as rare as Aragon thinks. I happen to play trombone best with the rim placed right on the vermillion of my upper lip. Here’s a trumpet player with a very similar mouthpiece placement to mine.
Later in her video Aragon goes over a checklist of six playing issues that she believes are symptoms of placement on the red.
Chronic fatigue
Swelling & pain
Fuzzy, airy tone
Limited range and endurance
Undefined articulation
Chronic lack of progress
Those symptoms can certainly be caused by incorrect mouthpiece placement for the brass musician, but doesn’t necessarily even mean the player is setting the mouthpiece on the red. For example, I had many of those symptoms while playing a more common mouthpiece placement off the vermillion, which didn’t improve until I actually switched my placement to one that Aragon is discouraging. There are many other things that can cause these symptoms, including pinning the lips open with the rim, regardless of where they are placed in relation to the vermillion.
A bit later Aragon mentions “embouchure overuse syndrome” as being caused by placement on the red. I’ve written before about embouchure overuse syndrome, but briefly there is no evidence that suggests it is caused by placement on the red. In fact, you’re going to find brass musicians who have those symptoms (which are too broadly defined) more frequently who have more typical looking mouthpiece placements.
Aragon uses one of her trumpet students as an example to demonstrate what she feels are symptoms related to placement on the red here. Unfortunately, she blocked the view of his placement and initial breath with her video transition, so it’s hard for me to assess what’s going on with his embouchure. I can see his lips coming together as he makes his initial attack, so I suspect that at least part of his issues weren’t being caused by a faulty mouthpiece placement, but by pinning his lips into a too open position as he tried to get his embouchure into buzzing firmness at the same time as starting to blow.
Her student does the same thing in the example Aragon posted demonstrating his embouchure change six weeks later. He clearly has made some improvements, but I’m not really convinced that the mouthpiece placement change is fully responsible for that. Without getting the opportunity to work with the same student or know his background with other trumpet lessons prior, I can’t guess what I would have advised that student to try. But even a student with a faulty mouthpiece placement can make similar improvements in six weeks, so I don’t think Aragon’s example here is definitive.
I do commend Aragon for mentioning more than once that every embouchure is different and therefore everyone will need individualized instruction on how to play at their best. However, I wish that she would have been more clear about what she means about placement on the red and allow for that placement when it is correct for the individual.
All that said, Aragon has an impressive background as a teacher and performer and maybe you want to explore her ideas further. If so, visit her web site and from there you can reach out directly to her and schedule lessons.
Trombonist Rich Hanks studied from a long term former student of Donald Reinhardt’s, Dave Sheetz. He recently has launched a new web site to archive Reinhardt’s exercises, instructions, photos, audio recordings, and more. Here’s what Rich says about it.
I’m thrilled to announce the Reinhardt Archive (reinhardtarchive.com)— the largest digital collection of Donald S. Reinhardt’s materials ever assembled in one place.
For decades, Doc Reinhardt’s extraordinary body of work — his books, private teaching notes, unpublished lesson handouts, audio recordings of lessons and masterclasses, and the scholarly research his pedagogy inspired — has been scattered across personal collections, university libraries, and fading memories. Until now.
We’ve built a free, searchable, living archive to preserve this legacy and make it accessible to brass players, teachers, and researchers everywhere.
What’s inside:
Books, private study notes, and unpublished lesson handouts — digitized, OCR-processed, and fully searchable.
Audio recordings of actual lessons and masterclasses — with transcripts and timestamped segment navigation so you can find exactly the moment Doc explains a concept.
Doc’s written words come to life with “In Doc’s Words”, a series of avatar videos using Doc’s original wording to explain the key points of the pivot system.
A growing photo gallery from Doc’s life and teaching career, updated and enhanced with cutting edge technology.
Academic dissertations and second-order research from students and scholars But this isn’t just a file cabinet. It’s a research platform.
AI-powered chat — Ask questions in plain English and get answers synthesized across the entire archive, with citations linking back to the exact source passages. Ask “How does Reinhardt’s pivot system work?” and get a grounded answer drawing from multiple documents.
Knowledge graph — Explore a visual, interactive map of concepts, techniques, people, and their relationships across the entire body of work. See how the Pivot System connects to airstream direction, embouchure types, and pedagogical lineage.
Concept index — Browse a structured index of every concept, person, and technique mentioned across the archive, with linked evidence from source materials.
AI-generated articles — Curated deep-dives that surface interesting observations and connections from the archive, with linked citations to original sources.
Personal collections — Save documents, audio, video, and concepts to your own research lists for later reference.
Community forum — Discuss the materials with fellow brass players, students, and researchers. Full citation tools — Every source includes copy-to-clipboard citations and BibTeX export for academic work.
Who is this for?
Whether you’re a professional brass player who studied with Reinhardt himself, or with one of Reinhardt’s students, a college student encountering the Pivot System for the first time, a teacher looking for pedagogical insights, or a researcher writing about brass embouchure pedagogy — this archive was built for you. Even if you’re simply curious about one of the most systematic and original thinkers in brass playing history, there’s something here.
We need your help, too. We are actively seeking materials from the community — lesson notes, recordings, scans, and scholarly work — to grow this collection. If you have something to contribute, we’d love to hear from you.
The homepage is open to browse without an account. Create a free account to access the full archive, chat, and community features.
Hope to see you there!
There’s quite a bit already uploaded and Rich says he’s working to add more as he goes. Go check it out.
It’s been a while since I’ve played “Guess the Embouchure Type” here. This time I found a video that I wanted to share, regardless. Euphonium player Daniel Thomas discusses the pivot (embouchure motion) in this video, which should make it easy for those of you in the know to guess his embouchure type. Take a look at his embouchure in his video here (you may need to click on the link, I’m getting an embed configuration error at this time). My guess after.
If you’ve been reading my blog long enough you already know that I’m interested in the science of music and pedagogy. I feel that since so much of our art form is very subjective, whenever we can take an empirical look at bass playing and teaching it can offer objective insights into how we practice and teach. So I was very interested when I discovered an article, reprinted from the Utah Music Educators Journal, titled “Practical Brass Physics to Improve Your Teaching and Playing.” Unfortunately, I’m not very certain that the physics are practical, or even necessarily true.
The article is written by either Steve Oare or Shannon Roberts, it’s not clear. The byline states Oare, but then there is a photograph of Roberts prominently displayed at the top of the article and other photographs in the article show Roberts. Regardless, the author wrote that after witnessing a master class by Allen Vizutti that his teaching and playing were transformed by what he heard. He decided to investigate the ideas further to see what physics had to say about the concepts Vizutti discussed regarding “smooth air” and “no buzz techniques.”
But even with these successes, I still harbored the following burning questions. How does this technique actually work? What are the physical mechanisms that make this work for brass players at any level? How can I teach this to students and colleagues and support it with evidence? These questions subsequently led me to investigate tube physics, air jets, oscillators and any topics that could provide answers and evidence for the smooth air and no buzztechniques. What follows is a summation of this scientific information and some practical applications to teaching and performing.
The first issue to discuss here is the author’s research methodology. He had some questions and tried to find answers that supported his preconceived notions. Right from the beginning, his research is biased. While one could argue that his “research” was informal, when you look for evidence that supports your hypothesis you’re going to miss evidence that contradicts it. This is why the null hypothesis exists. If the author wanted to learn more about the hypothesis that “smooth air and no buzz techniques” works because of physics, he should have looked for evidence that falsifies the research question. If none exists, then he’s on to something. Any evidence that he presents now is tainted by researcher bias.
But that doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that the evidence isn’t correct, just that we need to really take a much closer and skeptical look at it. He lists three basic topics of misconception in brass playing, embouchure mechanics, mouthpiece function, and tube mechanics.
1) Embouchure Mechanics:
Buzzing is the technique that produces the best sound on a brass instrument. False
Buzzing the lips to match pitches translates into pitch accuracy in the instrument. False
Buzzing is the only way that one can make musical tones on a brass instrument. False
All three of these “misconceptions” rely on the belief that the lips don’t actually buzz inside the mouthpiece when playing. This is explicitly stated later in the article.
The formation of the lips creates a natural opening (aperture), similar to vocal folds that act as frequency oscillators.
As air is forced through the lips, the lips never touch each other. Instead, they oscillate because of the shifts in air pressure, turbulent eddies in the mouthpiece and elasticity of the skin.
The first bullet point is more nuanced than the author acknowledged and the second is wrong. The lips do in fact touch each other, otherwise there would be no sound. At this point anyone who states the lips don’t actually open and close while playing isn’t paying attention, there is just too much evidence (both theoretical and observational).
There are many more you can find, but the idea that the lips do not buzz while playing is false, therefore the “no buzz technique” the author is advocating for is highly questionable. We can discuss whether the playing sensation of not buzzing the lips to play is helpful or not, but the reality is that no buzz=no sound. Buzzing is the only technique that will produce a sound on brass, not just the best sound. Whether or not the lips actually vibrate at the frequency of the pitch is irrelevant to his hypothesis, but again, it’s much more nuanced than the author presents.
In general, I think it’s fair to state that the lips do vibrate at the frequency of the pitch being played, with a caveat. The research I’m familiar with on this topic often show that the lips vibrate at a frequency that’s typically just a touch above of the pitch frequency.
The players normally played at frequencies about 1.1% above that of the impedance peak of the bore, but could play below as well as above this frequency and bend from above to below without discontinuity.
Trombonists normally play at a frequency slightly above a bore resonance. However, they can “lip up and down” to frequencies further above the resonance (more compliant load) and below (inertive load).
All measurements revealed a strong mechanical resonance with “outward striking” behavior; the played note always sounded above this frequency. Several measurements also showed a weaker second resonance, above the played frequency, with “inward striking” behavior. The Q values of the dominant resonances in human lips were lower than those typical of artificial lips.
The results show that with extreme efforts the players can generated playing frequencies both lower and higher than the corresponding air column resonance, but that the playing frequency under normal playing conditions (the “most comfortable note”) is almost always higher than the corresponding air column resonance. This supports the view that human lips function as “striking outward” reeds.
From a practical standpoint, I feel it’s fair to say the lips do vibrate at the frequency being played, or near enough. Certainly it’s not something that we can feel or hear while we’re playing, it’s something that can only be checked with special equipment. What this information doesn’t support is a “no buzz technique.”
Some of the author’s argument conflates feeling with reality.
For example, one’s lips feel like they are buzzing when they play. It is intuitive, then, to conclude that the buzzing is the cause of the tones being produced. But it will be shown that the lip buzz sensation is not a cause but an effect of several factors: air jets, pressure changes in the mouth cavity, strong turbulent eddies in the mouthpiece, a frequency feedback loop to and from the lips, and mouthpiece cavity resonance.
In order for a tone to be produced on a brass instrument the lips must oscillate (opening and closing) before the standing wave reflects back and helps to support the lip vibration. Again, one can discuss the benefits of feeling like the standing wave sets the lips to vibrating, but without the lips oscillating to start with, no tone can be produced. Certainly if we want to attack a pitch cleanly the lips (and air, tongue, fingerings/slide position, etc.) need to be set correctly for that pitch. If the author’s hypothesis were correct, how does the instrument know the musician wants to play a low C or a high C?
Another example is the technique of placing and sealing lips into the mouthpiece. It naturally seems that the cup “captures” a pitch created by buzzing lips. It will be illustrated that this is false. Instead, smooth (laminar) air flows between the lips & into the mouthpiece, which produces Aeolian tones and maximal resonance of the mouthpiece cavity. These actions excite the harmonics of the standing airwave in the instrument to sympathetically resonate. In effect, the air column resonates in a similar fashion to a string on a piano.
Getting into the weeds of the acoustics is not in my wheel house, so I’m a little unsure about the above. Best as I can tell, the flow of air into the mouthpiece is not a “smooth (laminar)” flow, the air is pulsed into the mouthpiece cup as the lips open and close. After the air passes the lips it swirls inside the cup before it gets blown into the shank. An Aeolian tone is created when air passes a solid object and generates an oscillation of the air stream, such as a flute tone or whistling. Brass playing are sustained lip-reed oscillations, not Aeolian vortex tones.
Now it is true that the brass tone is the air column inside the instrument oscillating, which strings do as well. Where the piano string analogy breaks down for brass is that we only rarely play the fundamental of the air column, we are almost always playing on the harmonics of the vibrating column of air inside the instrument. On a piano the string length determines the pitch. On brass, the frequency of the lip vibrating influences the column of air to develop nodes and oscillate on the harmonic series.
When the author “puts it together” he included a graphic representation. Take a look at it.
Now take a look at the graphic I created way back in 2010 when I needed an image to spice up a blog post.
It’s a pretty poor job of graphics, to be honest. I just wanted an image that depicted a brass musician playing with the tongue tip touching the bottom of the lip (as something to avoid, by the way). I don’t know why the author took this crappy image for his graphical representation, since it really doesn’t add anything. I might have even granted permission to use it, if I had been asked.
In short, buzzing has no positive effect on tone production. It is merely a sensation felt on the lips due to air pressure changes. An effective experiment one can try is to simply blow air into a mouthpiece while inserting it in a brass instrument. The result is the Aeolian tone Mouthpiece Effect. No buzzing is ever needed. One can also try the opposite. Buzz into a mouthpiece while inserting it. Do not alter the buzzing in any way. The resultant sound is kazoo-like and uncontrolled. A comparison of the muscular positions and tensions of the buzz and smooth-air techniques yields some interesting results. The photo and spectrographs, which follow, illustrate those results.
Yeah, not really. If one were to conduct the above experiments utilizing artificial lips I suspect that the results might be different. Trying to do this with a human being will result on the musician making micro-adjustments, perhaps even without realizing it. Blowing air into the mouthpiece while inserting it into the instrument does, in fact, alter the conditions and the resulting back pressure can indeed make it feel as if the lips begin oscillating on their own, but that’s just the player making enough adjustment to get the tone started. Try doing this with a high C, instead of the low pitch that you end up with this experiment.
Likewise buzzing the mouthpiece and then slotting it into the instrument requires some adjustments. The lip position and blowing activity is different between mouthpiece buzzing and playing the instrument. The author pointed out that the mouthpiece itself has a natural (very high pitch) resonance. Buzzing on the mouthpiece alone requires the player to lip the oscillation to the desired pitch and this is quite easy to do on the mouthpiece. Adding the instrument then adds the resonance of the air column inside of the instrument and influences (not creates) the frequency of the lip vibration. So by mouthpiece buzzing and slotting the instrument you’re going to need to make an adjustment or else you will get an uncontrolled and kazoo-like sound.
The author does eventually get down to brass tacks (no pun intended) with some practical suggestions.
Always incorporate breathing exercises into every practice session. This promotes more lung capacity and the ability to produce steady laminar air.
Straw Blowing to achieve laminar (smooth) air. This is one of the most beneficial exercises a brass player can perform. Place the straw between the lips. The straw should make no contact with the teeth. Simply practice blowing long phrases/tones into the palm of the hand. Concentrate on steady smooth air. Follow this immediately by blowing into the instrument. The results are remarkable. One can see and hear immediate improvement. This is very beneficial for students who are currently having difficulty with tone production.
Make an “M” for embouchure formation. The “M” position of the mouth, as in the word “mom”, is the most natural brass embouchure. It places the lips in a very relaxed and supple position for smooth air production.
More closed M for higher notes, open for low notes. This is a productive method for register change. Tighten the “M” as if one is squeezing a straw between the lips. This can be practiced with the straw ahead of time. Emphasize steady air when shifting to the next overtone.
Breathing exercises are fine, and probably to be encouraged. The idea that one can increase lung capacity is a myth on its own, but not worth going into right now. Laminar air flow doesn’t really apply to brass playing, which has the pulsating and varying jets of air.
Straw blowing might make for a way to lead a player towards a particular playing sensation, but doesn’t recreate the way the lips actually vibrate. It might also lead to the student going too far in that direction. Use that exercise with caution.
Setting the embouchure formation with an “M” syllable is fine, I use that analogy all the time. However, I prefer not to describe ascending as “squeezing a straw between the lips.” My concern here is that the squeezing action results in bringing the mouth corners in from their position as ascending, rather than keeping them lock in the same place for the entire range. Sure, if a student has difficulties with pulling them back with a “smile embouchure” the sensation of bringing them in like you’re squeezing a straw between your lips might help. But some brass musicians have the opposite problem, their mouth corners get pulled in towards the mouthpiece rim, which can choke off the sound and make it difficult to ascend from the upper register without resetting the mouthpiece (I speak from personal experience here).
Conclusion
If something in the article speaks to you and helps you with your playing and teacher, that’s just fine. Don’t mistake the playing analogies and playing sensations the author is claiming to be actual fact. I find his claims that the lip vibration is merely a playing sensation ironic. The physics he covers have just enough truth to them to sound legit, but not enough to be objectively helpful. Is the article inspirational? Maybe, but I was just disappointed.
I recently came across an older “guest blog” post from 2019 in the International Journal of Music. Written by trumpet teacher Clint McLaughlin, the post is titled, “The Effects of Using the Cheek Muscles vs. the Chin Muscles When Playing the Trumpet.” His post discusses his study of what muscles trumpet players activate and compares players who use a “smile embouchure” versus a “frown embouchure.” Using a thermal infrared camera, decibel meter, and spectrum analyzer, McLaughlin found that the players who used cheek muscles (specifically the Zygomaticus Major, Buccinator, and Risorius muscles) had weaker range and resonance compared to players who relied more on muscles around the mouth corners (specifically the Depressor Labii Inferioris and Depressor Anguli Oris muscles).
The results aren’t very surprising, I think. While at one time it may have been common for brass teachers to instruct students to ascend by drawing their mouth corners back (often referred to as a “smile embouchure”), this notion is very much in the minority today. In fact, I would be hard pressed to find qualified brass teachers who actually teach a smile embouchure now. It’s not too hard to find brass musicians who do have a smile embouchure, however it’s pretty universally acknowledged that this causes range and endurance issues.
McLaughlin’s takeaway advice is for trumpet players to utilize what he refers to as a “frown embouchure,” I guess to distinguish it differently from the smile embouchure.
Notably, the findings indicated that players employing the frown embouchure exhibited superior range and resonance compared to their smile embouchure counterparts. The thermal images and corresponding analyses revealed that the muscle activity within 1.5 cm of the lips and around the chin was crucial for optimal trumpet performance. The frown players consistently demonstrated a more robust harmonic presence, with some exhibiting up to 13 strong upper harmonics, underscoring the effectiveness of this embouchure in achieving a resonant and powerful sound.
During the warm up of trumpet players, face muscle contractions with increased blood flow result in a higher temperature of the overlying skin. This effect can be visualized and quantified by infraredthermography. The analysis demonstrates that the main facial muscle activity during warm up is restricted to only a few muscle groups (M.orbicularis oris, M.depressor anguli oris). The “trumpeter’s muscle” (M.buccinator) proved to be of minor importance. Less trained players expressed a more inhomogenous thermographic pattern compared to well-trained musicians. Infrared thermography could become a useful tool for documentation of musicians playing technique.
Since McLaughlin’s study essentially replicates Bertsch’s paper I feel that the muscle activity in the trumpet embouchure is pretty well established to be better focused on the area around the mouth corners and not in the cheeks. Where I deviate from McLaughlin isn’t so much in the findings, but in the specific term he uses for his recommendations, “frown embouchure.”
That might be more of a minor quibble. I prefer to describe the best position of the mouth corners when playing brass to be more or less where they are when they are at rest. We certainly don’t want to pull them back as if smiling, but I don’t believe that pulling them down into a frown position is best either. While it may help players prevent their mouth corners from being drawn back to think about frowning instead, I don’t really find pulling the mouth corners down to be correct. The muscles at the mouth corners do need to be engaged, but I don’t want my students to pull them down out of their position.
Taken together, both McLaughlin’s blog post and Bertsch’s paper also show the potential for using infrared photography as a valuable tool for studying muscular effort while performing musical tasks. Bertsch has even taken this idea further, looking at the entire bodies of a violinist, saxophonist, and trombonist to see what muscles were activate to perform.
In addition to the description of effective embouchure technique as a “frown embouchure” I do have some other criticisms about McLaughlin’s writeup of his research, however I don’t think that these invalidate the data he presents. These arguments are simply standard points that anyone who has engaged in serious academic or scientific research would probably also raise. That’s not to say that McLaughlin’s research isn’t interesting or useful. Some of my disappointment may be more related to the policies and publishing practices of the International Journal of Music.
I’ll start with that point. It’s difficult to find more information about the International Journal of Music’s publishing policies. Their editorial board seems solid, but I can’t find any information about their peer reviewers. Their editorial policy does mention “rigorous peer review for research-oriented content” but doesn’t note who their reviewers are (just their editors), whether the reviews are blinded, or how they label peer reviewed content compared to non-reviewed content. I think the $360 publication fee for an open-access article there is a bit much for an online journal that specifically seems to cater to a general audience. An average to purchase your own domain name and host a web site of your own for a year is about $150 if you’re just interested in getting your ideas out there, so you’re just paying extra to be associated with the IJM. Peer reviewers are volunteers, not paid staff, so while I don’t think the IJM is a predatory journal, I’m not sure how seriously they should be taken by scholars.
I suspect that the vast majority of articles published in the International Journal of Music are not peer reviewed and McLaughlin’s post (more on this below) probably would not be accepted for publication as peer-reviewed, such as in the (not to be confused with) International Journal of Music Education. In my opinion, naming their journal so close to the more serious scholarly resource was a bit sneaky. Maybe they didn’t really consider the confusion that could result with such similar names to be an issue, but the International Journal of Music Education is one of the gold standard publications of music research. The International Journal of Music, however, is much less so.
As best as I can tell, authors who publish in the International Journal of Music are qualified musicians, but a large portion of the articles (at least the ones accessible without a subscription) are “fluff” pieces, like interviews, obituaries, or other non-academic works written for a general audience. McLaughlin’s writeup there is described specifically as a “guest blog,” not really an article. Brevard College doesn’t have a subscription to the IJM, so I can’t go deeper without paying a subscription fee personally, and I don’t really think that it would be worth it for my purposes, so take my criticism here with a grain of salt. The articles behind the paywall may be very well researched and written. They do have ads on their site and also have links for marketing opportunities, which aren’t really a red flag for non-peer reviewed journals (they have to offset their costs somehow), but peer reviewed journals typically do not include ads unless they are for professional conferences or organizations, not products.
More specifically to McLaughlin’s post, I think he wrote up what he wanted to and what the editorial staff asked him for, but nothing more. A publication in a peer reviewed journal would have required a literature review and much more information about McLaughlin’s methodology. Since McLaughlin is essentially replicating earlier research a scholar would want to know this before citing or drawing conclusions. A thorough literature review also shows that McLaughlin is aware of the current consensus among experts in this topic, isn’t reinventing the wheel, and is addressing criticisms and concerns that often come up when different researchers look at similar topics in different ways. A detailed report on the methodology also helps scholars to bring appropriate weight to the findings. For example, McLaughlin’s writeup includes data from 5 test subjects, but we don’t know for sure if those are the only subjects or if they are a small subset. 5 test subjects is not enough to come to any statistical significance, even if the results are consistent with consensus. More data should also be presented in the writeup so that the reader understands how typical the examples are. It’s not necessary to include all the raw data from every test subject in an academic paper, but enough should be presented so that a scholar understands how typical the presented examples actually are. For all we know, those examples may have been cherry picked to demonstrate McLaughlin’s preconceived ideas. When conducting studies like this the researcher should be testing the null-hypothesis, gathering up enough evidence to prove that a real effect is actually present. In other words, you try to find evidence against what you expect to find and if you can’t, you’re on to something.
My last criticism about McLaughlin’s writeup has to do with the photographs he uses in his post. While he does helpfully label the specific areas of the face in the infrared photos, the view does not provide good context to see exactly where the muscles were activated or show other areas around the face that might also be related. Compare an example of McLaughlin’s photographs…
… to photos published in Bertsch’s paper.
Bertsch’s photos provide much better context. There may be a good reason why McLaughlin needed to photograph his subjects so close to the face (and they were playing trumpet at the time, I believe, so that is one difference), but if you’re comparing the muscles around the mouth corners to the muscles around the cheeks a better view would include the area around the mouth corners, rather than cropping them out. Bertsch’s data shows whether or not the muscles at the chin are activated as well and while the performers are not actually playing. Taken as a whole photos of the entire embouchure area both while playing and while at rest might provide evidence for or against whether the player is actually “frowning.”
If dwelling on the negative above seems like I’m against the IJM or McLaughlin’s research I want to again state that I think the blog post is very good. It offers further evidence for what the general consensus already states and is presented in a way that makes this information more accessible to non-academics. Heck, all my criticisms here apply to pretty much everything I post here! I guess I mainly am bothered by the veneer of a scholarly article in an academic journal that is really more focused on a general audience.
Update: After I made this post this morning I had a thought to poke around on Clint McLaughlin’s web site and sure enough, he has a more detailed writeup of his experiment over there. His discussion over there addresses some of my quibbles that I made above and has even more examples, including video, that you can look at. If this is a topic that interests you, I highly recommend you go to McLaughlin’s web page, Thermal Imaging And Spectrum Analysis Study Of Trumpet Players.
Straw Blowing to achieve laminar (smooth) air. This is one of the most beneficial exercises a brass player can perform. Place the straw between the lips. The straw should make no contact with the teeth. Simply practice blowing long phrases/tones into the palm of the hand. Concentrate on steady smooth air. Follow this immediately by blowing into the instrument. The results are remarkable. One can see and hear immediate improvement. This is very beneficial for students who are currently having difficulty with tone production.
