This one is a sort of a repost. I had done this same “Guess the Embouchure Type” of Tine Helseth from this video earlier, but a server hiccup (and not remembering to put on automatic backups) caused about 2 weeks worth of posts and comments to be deleted.
At any rate, Helseth is a very fine Norwegian trumpet player. She’s really known for her classical trumpet soloing, but the below video shows some excellent closeups of her embouchure while playing (or at least during a video shoot, the production value of this video is such that they may not be playing exactly what we’re hearing). Take a look and guess which embouchure type you think she plays as.
My best guess is “medium high placement” type. While her placement is very close to half and half, it looks like there’s just a bit too much upper lip inside for it to be an upstream embouchure. Her horn angle is a little higher than most players of the same embouchure type, but it just doesn’t look quite like a “low placement” type to me from the outside. In order to say definitively I’d need to watch her play on a transparent mouthpiece.
I think I can spot some of her embouchure motion as well. For example, watch closely as she plays the ascending scale passage starting around 1:14 into the video and it looks as if she is pulling down to ascend. Both the “medium high placement” and “low placement” embouchure types use the same embouchure motion, though.
What do you think? Did you have a different guess?
I think Tine didn’t waste time obsessing about her so-called “embouchure type.”
You’re right, she probably didn’t think about it. Most players don’t. This doesn’t mean that looking closely at brass embouchures is a “waste.”
Well if you look at the end of this video of her playing Libertango live with an orchestra, you can see that she definitely pulls down to ascend:
http://youtu.be/h8cNnxLsvdk?t=3m46s
The best shot for the embouchure motion is around 3:55.
As for IIIB or type IV/a I really can’t tell. It’s tempting to say that she must be a IIIB because she has such a great sound and upstream players are normally a lot brighter but she doesn’t use her upper register much in any of her playing and has obviously spent a lot of time working on her tone, so it’s not a valid reason.
I did a google around and had a look at some photos of her playing and sometimes she looks like her placement is 60Top/40bottom… Other times though, it looks like she playing 40/60:
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/FwOrZgxdRQs/hqdefault.jpg
My best guess is that she’s a IVa maybe but who knows…
I think she is upstream. There is another video of her playing this song live and you can notice from her lower lip position that her playing is more than likely upstream. Tons of folks can play upstream and have a good tone, they just need to know the mechanics of anchoring and optimize their gear choices accordingly.