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Back to archived articles indexQUESTION: From: Keith Willingham
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 9:57 AM
Subject: Embouchure Technique
Good morning. I have very thick lips and I play a Vacchiano 1.5. I love it! The question is because I have thick lips that have a large "red" area, especially the top lip, does the lip to lip compression generally work or should I use another concept? I currently am trying the "lip buzzing embouchure" approach which requires me to roll and tuck in the lips, and it's ok....for a while. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks
ANSWER : Dr. Mouthpiece
Hey Keith,
You should have just called to talk to me!! Never hesitate to do this. You know the toll free number here is 1 888 AT STORK. It's always a pleasure to hear from you.
But all right, you have chosen email, so here we go.
The problem with the roll and tuck thing, especially players who do not do it as naturally as others, is that you wind up "running very hard just to stay in place." I don't know if I've ever gone over this concept with you before, but I often use this as an illustration of this point. I actually got this from a chiropractor. He asked me to hold my arm out, extended in front of me and to clench my fist as hard as I could. The question after doing this was, "How long do you think you can keep this up for?" The answer was, "Not very long." Next he asked me to extend my arm in the same manner, but this time to open and close my hand in a relaxed manner. "How long do you think you can keep this up for?" The answer is, "A whole lot longer." The point being that you can flex your muscles for just so long before they go into fatigue. If you're working your musculature merely to maintain a position, you are going to tire prematurely, just as you have experienced.
For players with thick or fleshy lips, it should not be very hard to
just relax your lips into a position where they are
together. However, just like everyone else who plays a brass
instrument, when you start to use your air to velocity, either when
playing loud or in the upper register, you will need to keep your
lips from blowing apart uncontrollably. One of the best images I
have been exposed to is to think of your lips as the sails on a
clipper ship. The sail billows with the wind, but the fact that they
are tied to the yard arm keeps them from blowing away. Your
musculature (the obicularis oris to be precise) acts as the yard arm.
Keeping your lips tight all the time is not logical. Lips that are too tight will not respond as quickly and with as much suppleness as they should. The sound can become harsh, lacking a creamy smoothness. Instead, the lips should respond only as much as needed, only when needed. A muscle that is flexed has no where to go. A muscle that is in a more relaxed state can explode into action as needed. The flexed muscle is firing constantly. This means that while it is working, it is also creating the toxins and lactic acid that lead to fatigue.
Many players are drawn into thinking that trumpet playing is all about working the embouchure. Conceptually, this can lead them to "doing something" with their lips all the time. I am of the school of thought that sees the action of the lips as being very much secondary to the internal workings of the oral cavity.
When I was a student at the Juilliard School, I also worked at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center to help support myself. The Hall played host to The New York Philharmonic. They appeared four times a week. In between, many other major orchestras appeared as well. I would be privy to hearing over 350 concerts each year. Being an avid student, I would spend many nights sitting in the front boxes trying to figure out what these people were doing. How were they able to get such enormous sounds without appearing to be struggling the way I felt I so often did. I was determined to figure out the secret. To learn what it was they did. It had to be something very special, no doubt.
The revelation came for me when I finally understood that the answer was less about “doing” something, and all about doing nothing....or at least as little as possible. The "less is best" thing absolutely applies here. I had been pointed in this direction by a fellow trumpet player and good friend at the time whom I had met at a NY Brass Conference Scholarship Symposium. This trumpet player actually became better known as a composer later in life. (Among his many works is the music for the Batman II movie) Anyhow, I was introduced to a trombone player who used to teach down in his basement in Rockaway, Queens. It would take me about 2 hours to travel out to these lessons, whereupon he would try to tell me to do nothing! "Just close your mouth and blow." For me at the time, this was an impossibility. I was so accustomed to having so much stress and tension in my embouchure that, in retrospect, I can see that I had actually been spending all my energy in pulling my lips apart, in strangely deluded attempts to "form an embouchure" when all I really should have been doing was letting them fall together naturally.
The best embouchures are the ones that are the most functional. The greater the difference that appears between the player when they are told to "blow a raging fire out that is one foot in front of you" and the look of their actual embouchure, the greater the problems that will exist. Blowing is natural. It looks natural and has the appearance of being extremely powerful. Even players who have the weakest of embouchures will form a powerful “text book” style embouchure when they are truly attempting to actually blow!
Of course, players with thinner lips will need to do more to keep their lips from blowing apart when they move a great deal of air. The "upside" for these players is that their lips vibrate quite readily. Vacchiano used to use the expression that thin lipped players were blessed with a “natural reed” in the overall propensity of the lip to respond quickly. These players should also be using all the compensations that a properly balanced mouthpiece affords, so that they can play in the most relaxed manner possible. This is the true meaning of efficiency. Players with thicker lips mostly need to use an inner diameter large enough to allow their lips the room and freedom they need to facilitate vibration.
If you are very proficient in how you use your internal mechanisms to excite the air, playing should be all about "Just closing your lips and blowing." If it's not right now, we're going to need to talk in greater depth. So call me sometime!!!!
With all best wishes,
Doctor Mouthpiece
