{"id":2190,"date":"2011-06-29T06:01:56","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T10:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilktone.com\/?p=2190"},"modified":"2023-03-27T11:05:30","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T15:05:30","slug":"finding-the-best-mouthpiece-placement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=2190","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Best Mouthpiece Placement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trumpet player and teacher Pete Kartu has posted a neat video response to one of my embouchure videos on YouTube. \u00a0In his video, Pete demonstrates an interesting idea on finding the best mouthpiece placement for the individual. \u00a0Take a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=F29N2Z1l1Ow\">look<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"656\" height=\"369\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F29N2Z1l1Ow?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">I tried it out myself on both my trombone mouthpiece and a trumpet mouthpiece. \u00a0On both mouthpieces I found two spots that seemed to work. \u00a0One was my normal mouthpiece placement (could be my own confirmation bias, though) and the other was a completely different <a href=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=7337\">embouchure type<\/a> that works very poorly for me on the instrument. \u00a0It could be that Pete&#8217;s exercise can give us a little insight into the student&#8217;s embouchure that just needs to then be worked with the instrument to really know. \u00a0What works great for mouthpiece buzzing isn&#8217;t always what works well on the instrument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve heard about some similar ideas. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Donald Reinhardt sometimes would have the student apply a A&amp;D Ointment on the lips to intentionally make them slippery. &nbsp;The idea is to force the student to find a mouthpiece placement and horn angle that provides the best foundation (teeth and gums) behind the lips. &nbsp;I&#8217;ve also had some success simply having students try out different placements in a systematic way to try to zero in where it works best, but sometimes that doesn&#8217;t always work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reinhardt also used cheek puffing as a way to help students find the best mouthpiece placement. &nbsp;Puffing out the cheeks while holding a pitch pulls the mouth corners away and it won&#8217;t allow you to focus the muscular effort on the mouth corners. &nbsp;This is supposed to help you find the placement that will work best when you go back to playing normally, with firm mouth corners. &nbsp;Personally, I&#8217;ve never found any of the cheek puffing exercises to work for me, but some of my students have responded pretty well to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pete&#8217;s exercise looks like another tool we can add to our toolbox, although I think that limiting it to the mouthpiece may be deceiving if we&#8217;re not careful. &nbsp;I would also add that before worrying about mouthpiece placement it can be best to work on helping a student with basic embouchure form first. &nbsp;If a student has loose mouth corners or other mechanical faults in holding the embouchure firm it might be best to fix those before working out the student&#8217;s mouthpiece placement, as the placement can change as the student develops embouchure strength and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks for posting your video, Pete!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trumpet player and teacher Pete Kartu has posted a neat video response to one of my embouchure videos on YouTube. \u00a0In his video, Pete demonstrates an interesting idea on finding the best mouthpiece placement for the individual. \u00a0Take a look. I tried it out myself on both my trombone mouthpiece and a trumpet mouthpiece. \u00a0On &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=2190\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Finding the Best Mouthpiece Placement<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15350306,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1362,1369,1383,1385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brass","category-embouchure","category-pedagogy","category-practice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peFHCc-zk","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15350306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7967,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions\/7967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}