This post has been inspired by an ongoing discussion over at James Boldin’s Horn World Blog. If you’re joining the conversation now, you can catch up by reading James’s post here, my response, and then his followup. Briefly, we’ve been musing about why there are fewer horn player’s who place the mouthpiece with more lower lip inside compared to other brass. Because the lower lip predominates with this embouchure, the air stream is blown upward into the cup and is sometimes called an “upstream” embouchure.
It’s also important for brass teachers and players to understand that a player’s embouchure type isn’t a choice to be made by emulating another player, they are related to each player’s unique anatomy. When a brass player works against their physical characteristics by adopting an embouchure type that doesn’t suit their face, embouchure difficulties result.
Of the three basic embouchure types, the two downstream embouchure types (placing the mouthpiece with more upper lip inside) are more common. Players who have the anatomy suited to play best with an upstream embouchure (more lower lip inside the mouthpiece) are more rare. It’s not clear how much less common upstream players are, but my best guess is maybe around 15%.
That said, if you compare horn players’ embouchures with other brass instrument players you’ll probably find even fewer upstream players. Many horn players speculate that there is something about the instruments itself that makes this so, however there really doesn’t appear to be any difference in basic brass embouchure form and function between any of the instruments. Assuming this is the case, there must be something else going on.
Continue reading “More Thoughts on Horn and the Upstream Embouchure”