'embouchure' 'set up'...

[jicetp]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for people who went this path :

I have a regular embouchure (=way of setting my lips ) with good tone, flexibilty and range up to high D/E.

Lately, I noodled around with a buzzing embouchure, and found a way of setting my embouchure and blowing some high F+ notes without any strain.
Of course, low range is inexistent ( middle G barely speaking ) , attacks are kind of percussive and sound is nor broad nor rich.

Question :

Should I stick with this discovered trick and learn to play in the cash register with this one, or is it ' risky ' ?
Has anyone gone that path too ?

Thanks

JiCe

[JayKosta]

[jkarnes0661]

JiCe,

Here's my experience, for what it's worth, of going through what I think sounds like a similar process to what you are considering. Just sharing my experience in the spirit of TH's open forum, not trying to encourage or discourage either way:

About 10 years ago my embouchure was good up to an E at which point the rolling inward of my lower lip as I ascended touched my upper teeth and cut off the sound. I had very much a down-stream embouchure as I understand embouchure mechanics. I started playing around with a different, jaw-forward chop set while buzzing on a mouthpiece and found a fairly effortless upper register. About the same time I made a commitment to try Cat Anderson's 20-minute whisper G warmup every day for 3 months and figured out a set that sort of worked with the mouthpiece in the horn. Lots of experimentation proceeded from that.

I worked on the alternate embouchure off-and-on for 6 years before feeling confident enough to use it in a performance. Results were mixed and I found that I had to practice for about a week with the alternate embouchure to lock it in before being able to use it at a performance. Then a classical gig would come up and I'd have to switch back. There were a couple years where I was switching back and forth from the new embouchure for theater and big band gigs and the old embouchure for orchestral gigs, including a couple TTSS Messiah performances that came through all right (from audience reports and listening to broadcast recordings) but my margin of error was much thinner than I was used to.

A little over a year ago I finally got fed up with that and made an effort during my usual Jan-Feb "gig desert" to switch completely over to the new embouchure. It took a lot of practicing of fundamentals, to the point where I felt like I was back in junior high, but I've now been a year without going back to my old embouchure.

Critical things for me were patience, a willingness to practice fundamentals (lots of Arbans, Clarke, Schlossberg), and humility when things didn't go well at a rehearsal or gig. I took a few isolated lessons with a couple people through the process but in retrospect I wish I had found someone to steadily take some lessons with who had done something similar, or at least knew enough about embouchures to understand what I was doing. I think that being in my late 30s and early 40s psychologically made it difficult for me to accept that lessons were still something I could benefit from, something I should have seen and gotten over more quickly.

One of the people I did take a lesson with was Nick Drozdoff and I did take a lot of good ideas and encouragement away from that lesson.

Having been on the upslope for about 9 months now, I will say I'm very glad I took the plunge and stuck through the change. It is worth noting, I play for part of my living but I have a day-job as well (I studied music and biochemistry as an undergrad) so I was not putting my entire livelihood on the line doing this. If trumpet playing was my only source of income I'm quite certain I would not have taken the risk.

Whew, that was a much longer post than I intended when I started. Hopefully that's helpful information for where you are at.
_________________
Jonathan Karnes
Grand Rapids, MI
jonathankarnes.com

[JVL]

Hello
when i was a young pro player, i had to reset the mpc around A (above the staff).
My range gone up to high B (below DHC).
I could play in classical style, at mf volume, up to high C or D without reseting, but to play powerfully, like in lead big band style, i absolutely had to reset.
You can imagine all the circus to play a lick going from the lower register to the high register...
One day, while i was playing a lick that started from a high note (i remember it was a Eb from Maynard's solo in Knarf), i suddenly was aware that i did not set the mpc like when i was practicing in the "cash register".
At the time i wanted to improve my playing, i heard and read here and there that you had to set the mpc 2/3 on the superior lip.
So did I...
And now, i just discovered that for high register, my mpc was 1/3 on the sup lip, while i could not play in the same register with a 2/3 sup lip setting.
So i smartly decided to practice with a 1/3 sup lip setting, and in couples of days, i had only one embouchure and not 2.

Try this with patience, and if you can't by yourself, contact indeed Nick Drodzoff or Walt Johnson, who are famous for their High gear low gear setting.
Or Bobby Shew if you want to solve it in an efficient way.
Good luck.
Best

[abontrumpet]