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.
Clint McLaughlin – The Effects of Using the Cheek Muscles vs. the Chin Muscles When Playing the Trumpet.
Similar research has been done before. One of the best ones I’ve seen is Matthias Bertsch’s 2001 paper, “Visualization of Trumpet Players’ Warm Up By Infrared Thermography.”
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.
Matthias Bertsch – Visualization of Trumpet Players’ Warm Up By Infrared Thermography.
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.
