Pucker embuchoure?

[vivace]

Greetings,

I was reading in this old copy of the colin's advanced lip flexibilities, that the pucker embuchoure was the best way to achieve a high range, and etc. What is the pucker setup, and is it a good thing?
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"All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing no song." - Louis Armstrong

[tom turner]

Hi,

I used a pucker for 40 years, with a mediocre high range that plateaued at a high G. Once switching to Superchops with Lee Adams last April my range quickly went up a full octave, with lots of other benefits.

Superchops required me to retrain my facial muscles, RELAX the corners, relax the arm pressure (luckily I never used much), and use progressive center-to-center lip vs. lip compression . . . weird at first but well worth the transistion.

High Gs? No problem. Double Cs? Reliably!
Double E's? Screamin'! Double G's? Yep! Triple C's . . . naw, they don't sound good yet but they're comin' . . . and I CAN hit them now.

In addition to retraining my chops, I had to learn to play solos in that extra octave area I'd never had before. STRANGE! I'd be on a double C but my mind told me it was the G below it, based on ease, etc.

The last pucker I used was kissin' it goodbye!

Sincerely,

Tom Turner

[tptguy]

The pucker embouchure has a decided advantage over the smile embouchure in that it pushes the lips well forward so they better support mouthpiece pressure without cutting and pinching against the teeth. Many players with irregular teeth, receded lower jaws, etc. have found improvement with the pucker embouchure.

However, the pucker has a decided disadvantage too. Lip compression breaks down when the lips no longer have the strength to hold together. They collapse into the mouthpiece cup and stop vibrating. The pucker embouchure, by starting with the lips well forward, increases the speed at which lips collapse into the mouthpiece.

Superchops is an embouchure that tries to take the best of a pucker, convert it to a lip bunch, and still retard collapse. Like Tom, I've found that SC works very well. Best regards,