{"id":3905,"date":"2013-01-07T07:42:56","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T12:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilktone.com\/?p=3905"},"modified":"2023-03-30T10:37:18","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T14:37:18","slug":"stratos-embouchure-trainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=3905","title":{"rendered":"Stratos Embouchure Trainer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s something interesting I recently came across. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brasslessons4u.com\/page5.html\">Stratos<\/a> embouchure trainer. It purports to to help you, <em>&#8220;adapt your embouchure to get the best from your newly-adjusted jaw position.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/em>Here&#8217;s the inventor, trombonist Marcus Reynolds, explaining it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 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\/D2cIIMUYiZA?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 have to admit going into the video that I was a little skeptical of the claims right off. Early on he makes a statement that the Stratos will eliminate a &#8220;red ring,&#8221; but a red ring in and of itself is a meaningless indicator of how much or little pressure a player is using. There&#8217;s too much individual variation here, but for some reason this myth is prevalent. He also discusses <a href=\"http:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=12\">air stream direction<\/a> as a matter of jaw alignment, which probably does have some influence, albeit a minor one. Air stream direction is dependent on the lip ratio inside the mouthpiece and you can have downstream players with a jaw position forward, like Reynolds is advocating, or upstream players with a receded jaw position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">My next point of contention is Reynolds apparent endorsement that getting the jaw forward and the horn angle up is best for everyone. It&#8217;s true that this is common, but not universal. Personally, trying to raise my horn angle and get my jaw position forwards has had very poor results, I simply play better with a receded jaw and a lowered horn angle. Not having tried out the Stratos, I can&#8217;t say that my results trying this would be the same or different, but I&#8217;ve taught too many other students and seen other players who also play best with a lowered horn angle to think that a Stratos would be helpful for these players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">However, there are a lot of players who would do better with the jaw position and horn angle that the Stratos apparently encourages. For these players, this device might be a very helpful practice aid. Since it&#8217;s adjustable, it might even be possible to alter the angle of it and use it for correctional procedures with players who don&#8217;t want their jaw position aligned. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s the panacea that Reynold&#8217;s seems to think it is, but it&#8217;s an interesting idea and it&#8217;s worth a closer look later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s something interesting I recently came across. The Stratos embouchure trainer. It purports to to help you, &#8220;adapt your embouchure to get the best from your newly-adjusted jaw position.&#8221;&nbsp;Here&#8217;s the inventor, trombonist Marcus Reynolds, explaining it. I have to admit going into the video that I was a little skeptical of the claims right off. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=3905\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Stratos Embouchure Trainer<\/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_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":true,"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":[1362,1369,1386],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brass","category-embouchure","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peFHCc-10Z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3905","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=3905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8275,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3905\/revisions\/8275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}