Andrea Giuffredi is a very fine Italian trumpet player with a series of YouTube videos with exercises and backing tracks. You can put them on, listen to Giuffredi play the exercise, then play the exercise back. Here’s an example, which conveniently is a series of exercises based on octave slurs. Octave slurs are useful for guessing a player’s embouchure type because the interval is large enough that you can usually spot the embouchure motion fairly easily. Take a look at this video and see if you can guess his embouchure type. My guess is after the break.
This one might be a little tricky, since his mustache obscures his mouthpiece placement somewhat. It looks pretty close to 50/50 at a glance, but I think if you take a look in another video you’ll be able to see that there’s more upper lip inside the mouthpiece. Check it out on this video.
Looking at his octave slurs video, his embouchure motion is a little tricky to spot, since he has a fairly minimal one. That said, he seems to be pushing his mouthpiece and lips together up to ascend and pulling them down to descend. Since there’s only one basic embouchure type that uses this embouchure motion, the Very High Placement embouchure type, that also reinforces my guess that Giuffredi has a downstream embouchure.
His embouchure does have a couple of slightly unusual features, but it’s not too strange to see them on Very High Placement embouchure type players. His jaw position is quite far forward and his horn angle is tilted higher than horizontal. Typically Very High Placement type players will have their teeth more or less aligned and have a horn angle close to straight out. The other characteristic that is a bit different is his somewhat minimal embouchure motion. The other downstream embouchure type, the Medium High Placement, seems to have less embouchure motion than the other two basic types, but exceptions exist. Giuffredi’s embouchure motion amount is more characteristic of the Medium High Placement type, but the direction it goes in is what distinguishes it as a Very High Placement type.
Did you have a different guess? If so, why? Have you spotted an interesting embouchure lately and want to play Guess the Embouchure Type? Leave your comments below.
This is a tough one! A good candidate for this challenge.
I’m not at all confident in typing this player, for all the reasons you mention. There are times where I agree with your answer, and other times where I think he might be an upstream player.
For example, look at 1:03 to 1:06 in the second view. That looks like pulling down to ascend to me.
After watching the first video I felt confident that he was a Very High Placement player. The second video would make me think he is either Low or Medium-High Placement. I’m not sure how he does that or how he sounds so consistently good while using opposite pivot types in two different videos. In some of his other videos he even appears to use both pivot types within a single video. I have seen this in a couple other players who also have very subtle embouchure motions. Luckily I have never had to type a student who perplexed me like this, but eventually I may have to.