Playing in the Red Blindfold Test

[Wilktone]

[crzytptman]

99 . . . 98 . . .97 . . .96 . . .
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Crazy Nate - Fine Yet Mellow Fellow
"so full of it I don't know where to start"
Horn: "just mismatched Kanstul spare parts"
- TH member and advertiser (name withheld)

[João]

Embouchures are like womans! They all sound and look different. If you have one, you must treat hear in a gentle way (Warm up). Some of them like flowers (Clarke), others like chocolate (long tones). They all are different and we must treat them according with what they need. If you do this, they will make you a very happy man!!

I have a very sensitive woman. I must treat her in a very gentle way during all day. If not, she will bite me! Some times she likes flowers. But her favorite present are chocolates (no too much)! She needs to see me and stay with me all days.(We have some days that we don´t see wich other because of professional reasons. But when we see each other again after one day. Its an amazing feeling!).
She is not a top model ( for example Arturo; Bergeron or Faddis embouchure). But you know what? I love her ! I tried many others in the past, but they didn´t worked very well for my needs (anathomy). This is the woman that "feets" on my heart.

In other words, I´m a red player. My embouchure is not the strongest in the world. But it works and I´m happy!

If you have time take a look on the fallow links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1hPeUWDVjM&feature=channel&list=UL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxKYm_bOQVw

Kind regards!
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2 in one: Yamaha HGS bell and Bach Stradivarius 37 lead pipe.
Mouthpiece: Shilke 13a4a, V. Bach 1C ...

[Wilktone]

Thanks for posting your links, João. If you ever get the chance to take closeup video of your embouchure I'd love to get a closer look at what it looks like. Sounds great, though! I don't notice any of the range, tone, flexibility or endurance issues that some claim comes from placing on the red.

Nate, I understand you're just trying to be entertaining, but if you have a question or a point to make I would ask that you just do so. Perhaps I'm just being confusing with my points, so I'll try rephrasing my thoughts on mouthpiece placement recommendations.

You and Mike have both suggested, quite accurately, that most players won't want to place the mouthpiece high or low enough on the lips so that the rim is in direct contact with the upper or lower lip. Where I differ is that I prefer to not recommend against any particular placement, no matter how unusual it looks, until I have enough information to judge whether or not it is causing problems. Furthermore, I don't feel that an individual's correct embouchure type and mouthpiece placement will become apparent until after other, more important technique issues are taken care of. If a student doesn't support well, has a flabby or weak embouchure formation, etc. then it's not really helpful to change a mouthpiece placement. Sometimes changing it may seem like it's correcting something, but sometimes it may be better to stay with the old embouchure and learn how to use that correctly. Until a player has made certain corrections or developed enough embouchure strength and control I'm not confident that it's possible to know when a mouthpiece placement is going to work or not.

It's really difficult to summarize my approach here because it's always dependent on the things the individual is doing and my suggestions are always different for each player. However, here is a link to an example of a tubist where I did make a suggestion regarding changing his mouthpiece placement if you're curious.

Again, thank you to everyone who has participated on my playing on the red blindfold test. If you haven't already and are curious to see how you do, please follow that link and try it out. I would like to get some more people to take it before I do a more formal writeup on the results and what sort of pedagogical and practice investigations that this can lead to. However, I will state for the curious that the preliminary results are that out of 80 people, the average score was 51.6% accuracy.

Dave
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wilktone.com

[MikeyMike]

[crzytptman]

Hey, I'm not trying - that's just the way I am.

[João]

[roynj]

Do you think that its possible that when you have an "in the red" player, who is able to make an acceptable tone, yet in so doing they may mask the fact that they have poor endurance or a strained upper register? I don't know, I am just asking the question. How could one do an experiment to test this? Another question might be whether "in the red" players suffer from more lip bruising and swelling than non-red players. This could perhaps be done in the same experiment. There's probably a good academic paper in this kind of research, possibly even a doctoral thesis (depending on how far you want to take it).

[Wilktone]

Nate, thanks for coming down to my level. It's easier to find our common ground now and I don't think we're really all that much different in our approaches.

[João]

[Wilktone]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to try out the survey. I've completed a paper that discussed the results of the blindfold test as well as review of the related literature. If you'd like to see the full paper (or have insomnia) please go here. If you're just interested in the abstract, here it is.

While placing the mouthpiece on the vermillion of the lips is commonly described by brass teachers as inherently damaging to the player’s lips or limiting to the player’s technique, the rational for these arguments lacks sufficient evidence to support this opinion. A review of the medical research found no specific evidence supporting the contention that the vermillion is incapable of withstanding the mouthpiece pressure applied by typical brass playing and found some evidence to the contrary. The music literature related to embouchure technique shows some support for the argument that rim contact on the upper lip will limit the vibrations of the top lip, however this position fails to take into account the differences between upstream and downstream brass embouchure technique.

To determine if an aural effect caused by mouthpiece placement on the vermillion could be noted a survey was conducted asking participants to listen to short sound clips of six professional trumpet players and guess whether the player placed the mouthpiece with significant rim contact on the vermillion. The 98 participants scored an average accuracy rate of 51.9%, suggesting that there is no noticeable aural difference between placing the mouthpiece on the vermillion or not.

It was noted that the lack of sufficient collaboration between the medical and musical fields has hindered research in the area of injuries and other medical issues caused by brass playing. Medical experts typically have an insufficient background in brass technique to understand how improper playing mechanics may contribute to injuries. Musical experts frequently make incorrect statements regarding the anatomy of the lips and often demonstrate limited understanding of how anatomical features affect individual player’s embouchure form and function.
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wilktone.com

[MattC]

Wilkitone-

A few bits of anecdata for you.

I played in the red for a while in Jr high and maybe early high school. Well over a year at any rate. I have very little red to begin with so this was an extreme case. Which brings up a question I would ask of people who play in the red--how did you get there? In my case I blew out my chops but didn't have a teacher or the maturity to say "take a long rest". For whatever it may be worth, I never developed a callus.

It would be nice to move away from a Caucasian centric terminology (play in the red) .