Here is a 13 minute video I put together to discuss a couple of basic brass embouchure characteristics that I think are important for all players and teachers to understand. If you’ve poked around here on my blog or watch some of my YouTube channel before you already know about this stuff.
I made this one pretty quickly compared to the time I’ve spent on other videos I’ve posted on this topic. This video was specifically made to quickly address some things I was trying to discuss on a closed internet group that is nominally devoted to brass embouchure advice. I say “nominally” because the main purpose of this group seems to be the administrator pushing his wares, lessons, and Patreon page and there’s very little actual discussion about brass embouchure technique or advice.
The little discussion about brass embouchure technique that has been posted there has a lot of misinformation. For example, there are people who believe that lining up the teeth and getting the horn angle close to straight out makes the player blow the air stream straight down the shank of the mouthpiece (not true). Others seem to believe that tilting the horn angle up makes the player upstream and tilting it down makes the player downstream (also not true). Everyone seems to be well intentioned, they are just misinformed.
My big gripe over the direction the discussion on that group takes is that so much of the conversation revolves around information that’s just wrong. We can honestly discuss the details of things like mouthpiece pressure and jaw position (two things the administrator of that group is very focused on), but it bothers me when recommendations are based on erroneous details. It’s much better to base our pedagogy on reality, not confirmation bias. Particularly if the suggestions involve spending around $300 to purchase a device that is of dubious use, in my opinion.
Excellent video! Reality is the only way, David.