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jonas quizman
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 Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 2:36 am Post subject: TCE, the lips rolled in & James Morrison, |
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For about two months I have been working on TCE. My sound has so much improved, but I still haven't come to grips with the way the lips should operate. If I try to play above high C, I am in trouble. My tongue does not recede. It stays wide and forward, but it seems to me that I can't properly roll my lips against the forward tongue. A couple of years ago I had the chance to hear and see James Morrison in concert. I was seated pretty close to the stage and could observe his embouchure mechanics. When he opened his mouth to snatch some air, I could see his forward and very wide tongue through the teeth, but I could also see that he rolled his lips in. Jerome mentions James in his book, so I infer that he must consider him a TCE player. How can I get my lips working, so that they roll in against the wide forward tongue. Should I try to do the RI exercises and the lip squeak out of Jeff Smiley's book to get a better feel for the lip roll and train the corresponding lip muscles?? Any other suggestions to exercise my lips? Or do I still misunderstand the operation of the lips in TCE?
jonas |
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razeontherock
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| Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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If you have trouble playing above a C, don't! BE excercises have been summarily dismissed here for TCE players, so I think practice below C is better. Try concentrating on the tongue more. It's the contact point btw tongue and top lip that make TCE work. Mr. Callet told me to think of it as a battery - too small a contact point, low power. The whole "efficiency" aspect of TCE, at least w/ regards to strength, is to remove that function from lips and place it on the tongue, which is the strongest muscle in the body 
Even so, if I don't stop my jaw from closing it can shove my tongue back and out of position. Could this be your range problem? |
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jonas quizman
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 2:20 am Post subject: |
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| razeontherock wrote: | If you have trouble playing above a C, don't! BE excercises have been summarily dismissed here for TCE players, so I think practice below C is better. Try concentrating on the tongue more. It's the contact point btw tongue and top lip that make TCE work. Mr. Callet told me to think of it as a battery - too small a contact point, low power. The whole "efficiency" aspect of TCE, at least w/ regards to strength, is to remove that function from lips and place it on the tongue, which is the strongest muscle in the body
Even so, if I don't stop my jaw from closing it can shove my tongue back and out of position. Could this be your range problem? |
Razeontherock, thanks for taking the time to answer my post. I don't think that BE exercises have been - as you put it - summarily dismissed on the Jerome Callet forum! The Roll-out exercises have even been lauded as possible way to train the proper operation of the lower lip. Your battery analogy did not help me to further my understanding of the matter because I unfortunately know nothing about how batteries work in cars. You said I should concentrate more on the tongue, but the tongue does not seem to be my problem, since my jaw is open (front teeth a bit more than half an inch apart)and my tongue is wide and forward, so I would guess that the lip grip of the tongue needs some fine tuning. Are the lips supposed to be firm and solid, rolled in against the forward and wide tongue when you play high?? Just shoving the tongue further forward does not seem to do the job. I came up with my James Morrison embouchure observations because he is recommended as a 'role model' in the BE book and the TCE book and he definitely makes his lips roll in against his forward tongue? So the lips seem to mattter! I simply wonder how I can better incorporate the lip grip into my TCE set up - while concentrating on the tongue?
Jonas |
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Forte
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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Hello,
In TCE, the lips do not move quite like they do in BE. It is a very different feel. In BE, the lips roll against each other and the outside of the lips press against each other and face inward twords the inside of the mouth. Now, what I think a lot of people are missing is that if one were to do this same action, but with a forward tongue as described by Jerome Callet, your results would be very limited. In TCE, the tongue ONLY squeezes/presses against the softer, inner, red part of the lips. Thus, the lips do not "roll" like they do in BE. If you force them to roll like they do in BE, you loose a lot of the contact area (which reduces friction) between the tongue and the lips. Again, the outside of the lips should never touch the tongue. In fact, it feels like the top, front, part of the tongue is pushing the lips forward into a slight pucker (only slight, don't try to pucker with your lips or everything will collapse). This is very different from BE. However, I think that the actual muscles used in gripping the tongue (in TCE) and rolling them together (as in BE) are the same. Also, when you roll the lips together like in BE, your tongue is forced to loose some of its bevel. By bevel I mean the top, front part of the tongue that presses against the inside of the upper lip. So, when you say that your tongue staying forward- it probably is. However, it looses its shape when you roll in your lips.
Now, I certainly assumed quite a bit of information about the position and movement of your lips. I make these assumptions only because I practiced out the BE book for a while before moving to TCE, and the action/problem/revelation described in the preceding paragraph has been my own.
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trptStudent
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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Great post Forte!
My thoughts exactly.  |
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razeontherock
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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Jonas, I like the way you quiz me, man! You said
"Just shoving the tongue forward isn't enough." and -
"So the lips seem to mattter! I simply wonder how I can better incorporate the lip grip into my TCE set up - while concentrating on the tongue?"
These are both true statements, and a good question. Part of the TCE predicament. It's about shape and control of the tongue, moreso than just sheer strength. But you have to develop a certain amount of strength before you have anything to control. There is indeed a certain rolling in of both lips against the tongue, but the RI term can cause confusion. Even if (if) the muscles used for this in TCE are identical to BE, the control is different. You're going in the right direction. Keep concentrating on the tongue, trying to incorporate more lip grip. This contact point, surface area, friction, grip, wedge, or however you want to think of the interaction and movement btw tongue and top lip is what makes this stuff work ...
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trumpetteacher1
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| Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 6:50 am Post subject: |
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I think that there are many assumptions on this thread which, as they say, are contrary to reality. Contrary to my reality, at least.
| Quote: | | When he opened his mouth to snatch some air, I could see his forward and very wide tongue through the teeth, but I could also see that he rolled his lips in. |
Jonas, I completely agree about Mr. Morrison's lip position. Anybody can clearly see that he is rolled in and puffed, both common to the BE experience.
But the tongue situation is much trickier to correctly evaluate. Many players - MANY players - push the tongue forward through their teeth when they breathe. There are two or three different reasons why they do it, which I won't cover here. However, when they resume playing, the tongue moves back inside the teeth.
To know for sure, you have to ask the player. Several times in the past, Jerry has predicted that a particular artist uses the tongue forward, only to have that artist later deny it.
| Quote: | | In BE, the lips roll against each other and the outside of the lips press against each other and face inward twords the inside of the mouth. |
Forte, I believe (hope) that you are confusing a BE exercise, such as lip clamp, with a playing embouchure.
"The outside of the lips press against each other and face inward towards the inside of the mouth???" Sorry, but I've never had a student who ever played with this setup. I've had students do EXERCISES where a range-of-motion similar to what you said is practiced. But, in playing, the lips always roll out to a degree.
The rolled in feel is relative to the student's individual lip architecture. For example, the student may feel like he is rolling in to an extreme, but it may look entirely different to the outside observer.
Further, RI exercises are only part of the BE range-of-motion package.
| Quote: | | However, I think that the actual muscles used in gripping the tongue (in TCE) and rolling them together (as in BE) are the same |
Hey Forte, we agree on that one!
There have been several posts on this forum where players have attempted to pigeonhole BE into something that it is not. It seems to me that everyone making these extremely specific statements are taking lessons from Jerry directly, so I have to assume that he is strongly influencing how you evaluate embouchure. The problem is, the specifics that many TCE players seem to love so much just plain don't exist in the BE world.
I think that there are many - MANY - more shades of grey regarding lip and tongue shape than players realize. There is something very seductive about thinking that you can know the EXACT positional differences which PRECISELY affect our playing. However, in my experience, this type of left-brained, logical-sounding analysis, when applied to something as specific as we are talking about here, is just as likely to be wrong as it is to be right.
I know, you (and Phil!) have your opinion, and what I say here is not likely to change it. Still, I felt compelled to post. I'm pretty left-brained myself.
Jeff |
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jonas quizman
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| Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2005 4:38 am Post subject: |
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Jeff, thanks for your interesting reply! Let me comment on a few things and then make a few general statements on BE and how it differs form TCE.
| trumpetteacher1 wrote: | Jonas, I completely agree about Mr. Morrison's lip position. Anybody can clearly see that he is rolled in and puffed, both common to the BE experience.
But the tongue situation is much trickier to correctly evaluate. Many players - MANY players - push the tongue forward through their teeth when they breathe. There are two or three different reasons why they do it, which I won't cover here. However, when they resume playing, the tongue moves back inside the teeth.
To know for sure, you have to ask the player. Several times in the past, Jerry has predicted that a particular artist uses the tongue forward, only to have that artist later deny it. |
There are quite a few excellent players out there who naturally play 'right' but have no clue as to what they actually do when they sound so beautifully. Just asking them what they do won't necessarily help, since what one does simply does not transfer into an understanding of what one does. If it were so, people like you and Jerome were superfluous. Good players might misinterpret the sensations they have when they play. Has anyone out there asked Mr. James Morrison how he uses his tongue? What did he say? The more interesting question would be in what sense his embochure would be more correct if his tongue did not recede after breathing and was kept through the teeth against the rolled in lips? By the way, I would be interested in why some players stick their tongues through the teeth when they breathe and pull it back when they resume playing as you contend.
Now let me make some general remarks on the different concepts of BE and TCE. If my memory of the BE book serves me right, BE does not prescribe a certain embouchure set up. It simply stresses the importance of lip motion and builds a very elaborate lesson plan around this insight that trains the muscles responsible for that motion. The tongue is exclusively used to facilitate and monitor the lip motion. BE is an indirect method that neither gives a description of the final embouchure set up nor gives even a rough explanation in the terms of physics. TCE, on the contrary, focuses on instructing a concrete set up of the embouchure. It does not include an elaborate lesson plan (Babh Civiletti's new book seems to catch up on this!) and it also lacks anything that could be called an explanation of the embouchure system. An explanation of the propagated embouchure system would be wise because it lays a foundation to what one instructs. Indirect methods based on a proper understanding of the embouchure system are valuable because they help to insulate problems and train the corresponding muscles to eventually arrive at the the final embouchure mechanics.
Since I do not have problems with keeping my tongue wide and forward, I wondered how I can promote the gripping action of the lips against the forward tongue through indirect means. If it is true that RI trains the same muscles as are relevant in the TCE lip grip, why shouldn't that help in improving the function of the lips in TCE? RI and the lip squeak do not train lip forces applied against each other, they simply train the ability of the lips to roll in and stay supple. The roll in affects the width of the lip surface that is made oscillating by the air. The more we roll the lips in, the less wide is that surface and the higher we play.
Jeff, I disagree with you on your confusion of neurology with the logical concept of a matter:
| trumpetteacher1 wrote: | | I think that there are many - MANY - more shades of grey regarding lip and tongue shape than players realize. There is something very seductive about thinking that you can know the EXACT positional differences which PRECISELY affect our playing. However, in my experience, this type of left-brained, logical-sounding analysis, when applied to something as specific as we are talking about here, is just as likely to be wrong as it is to be right.. |
What kind of right would it be if it rested on the contingency of doing something right that one does not know to be right? Rationally understanding a subject matter has nothing to do with the function of brain part, so that the specifics of a certain matter that we want to understand simply elude the left brain part and are more appropriate to a right-brained treatment. If one lacks the thorough understanding of a matter one may decide to leave it at that point or try to further and deepen her/his understanding at the risk of failing. The question of the function of the brain parts belongs to neurology and we should leave it there.
jonas |
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trptStudent
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| Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2005 11:38 am Post subject: |
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Ah, it's always great to have Jeff jump into a thread simple because he always has something interesting and provocative to say.
In terms of gripping the tongue, I think concentration on the shape of the tongue is what you should think of instead. If you can bevel your tongue so that it contacts your top lip, then gripping the tongue will be no problem.
Oh, and to take up Jeff's point of specific analysis and recommendations. I have to say that I see the point being made. I guess that you must think since everyone is a little different, it doesn't really make sense to be prescribing things the way we do here in the TCE forum. I have to say though, that since the mechanisms for playing for everyone will be similar, it makes a lot of sense to be dishing advice like this. I mean, Jeff, you're the one who said that we are more similar than dissimilar. So if our setups are more or less equivalent, which doesn't necessarily mean similar, it would still be worthwhile to give advice like this.
Just to illustrate, let's go to some crazy and elaborate example - I love those.
Say we have two people, one of which has a little problem with his vision in that they see colours in weird ways. Person A or Alpha, has christmas vision and only sees shades of green and red. Person B or Bravo sees things more or less correctly. Both these people can identify colours though, simply because they have learn to use what they have to identify colours. So Alpha and Bravo are put in a room and are told to find colours on a big board. Alpha asks Bravo where the red circle is on the board, because he's having trouble finding it and Bravo tells him that it's above the yellow circle and Alpha finds it immediately.
Now, these two people are very different. Alpha's definition of yellow, is clearly different than Bravo's definition of yellow. But, Bravo's instructions were interpreted by Alpha in a way that allowed him to make sense of what he saw.
As with all elaborate examples, it's easy to miss the point.
The point here is this: Alpha and Bravo had different physical make up and were both assigned to do a similar physical task. They both had to do the same thing in order to find the colours on the board, but had to go about it in slightly different ways.
The same is for our setups. Once we get all our setups more or less the same, when someone exhibits certain "symptoms" of a problem, it is easy for someone who has gone through the same situation to prescribe a "cure". We are, after all, just trying to play this piece of metal called a trumpet. Every person's embouchure is going to be different at some level, but I'd like to think that those who are successful following one methodology have setups which are more similar than dissimilar.
Anyways, this post was long-winded, but I just wanted to point out that telling someone to try rolling out slightly more in an attempt to get a better RO sound is really not that different from telling someone to try and bevelling their tongue more. As long as things are working in a very similar fashion, we're able to diagnose problems through sound, just as both BE and TCE camps have been doing for years. |
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jonas quizman
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| Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 4:09 am Post subject: |
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Phil, I do not agree with your following remark
| trptStudent wrote: | | In terms of gripping the tongue, I think concentration on the shape of the tongue is what you should think of instead. If you can bevel your tongue so that it contacts your top lip, then gripping the tongue will be no problem. |
My tongue is definitely beveled in front of my teeth. But the bevel does not guarantee the right set up of the lips because the muscles involved in the beveling of the tongue are in no way attched to the lip muscles. If it were just the bevel and the forward tongue that one has to adjust and get going, things would be really easy and you could find tons of advice on this forum. It seems to me that those that dish out the advice of concentrating on the forward beveled tongue have either solved (perhaps unconsciously) their lip problem or never had one. They then base their advice on this essential premise that simply does not hold for a lot of people. In his new book Bahb Civiletti suggests to do tongue flexibilities instead of lip flexibilities after he stated that he had done lip flexibilities for many years. Doing these lip flexibilities might have trained his lip muscles in a way that is conducive to building an embouchure that can focus on a wide, forward and beveled tongue against the top lip.
Jonas |
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trptStudent
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| Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 6:41 am Post subject: |
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It's my experience, the lip flex part of the setup is almost unconscious. As you ascend, your lip just tends to flex itself anyway and as a result, you have to apply a counterforce with your tongue against the bottom lip to maintain the forward bevel because if you don't, your tongue is pushed back into the mouth and all sorts of bad things happen.
It's also my experience that if you apply a force with the tongue against the lips, the lips will react with a counterforce and thus gripping the tongue. So if you want more grip on the tongue, the easy way would be to push against the lips which have no choice but to push back creating the contact you need. |
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razeontherock
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| Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| To add to the above post, the lips can't move forward because they run into the mpc. They can't move back significantly, because they'd move away from the mpc. If you want to close distance btw tongue and top lip, creating the vital 'wedge' of TCE, or increase the surface AREA of this wedge - you've got to move the tongue forward, not the lips back. The tricky part is the shape the tongue assumes in this so-called "forward" motion. The tongue tip doesn't move forward, but the tongue surface touching the top lip does. This has been termed "bevel." Even when you understand the idea, it's not always the easiest thing to actually do. |
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