Re: Off center aperture/embouchure?


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Posted by Brian Frederiksen on July 08, 2002 at 16:31:34:

In Reply to: Off center aperture/embouchure? posted by Bill on July 08, 2002 at 09:51:39:

As someone who monitors all brass lists, it is amazing how this subject gets bounced around on all lists. The Horn list would generate a few chapters from someone writing the encyclopedia of the embouchure. The trumpet list would get a batch of replys about using this or that embouchure, all with their own names. Then there are those who are on the "embouchure is everything" kick.

We all know about how sensitive embouchures are with some of our trumpet and horn friends. Just to stir things up (and piss them off) I pop this quote from Mr Jacobs:

“The most common problems I have seen over the last sixty-odd years I have been teaching are with the tongue and the diaphragm. Surprisingly enough, I rarely find problems with the embouchure. That might sound strange because people come to see me because of problems with their embouchure, but frequently it is the embouchure reacting to a bad set of circumstances and failing—it is simply cause and effect. If we change the cause of the factor, it is easy to clear up the embouchure. The embouchure is not breaking down, it is trying to work under impossible conditions. When you are starving the embouchure for air volume, giving it all sorts of air pressure but not quantity, it cannot work. Very quickly you will be struggling to produce your tone. Just increase your volume of air not by blowing hard, but by blowing a much thicker quality of air. Very frequently the air column is just too thin.”




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