>I don't have any advice as to the mouthpiece, but BE SURE that the placement of the mouthpiece on the lips is for the horn embouchure and not the trumpet. 2/3 upper lip....1/3 lower lip. Trumpet is usually the opposite... Or at least it used to be. See the Farkas book if one is available.<
Milton's comment reminds me of the golden age of Philip Farkas. (What a fabulous horn player he was!) When I was still a teen, I auditioned before the brass faculty for the university music school. I'll never forget trumpet professor's reaction. "Nice tone," he said, "but you look like you've been playing trumpet." So... the horn professor and I set to work to transform my embouchure into a classic Farkas embouchure (whatever that is!). It wasn't successful for me. After two years, I hadn't added a single note to my upper register and I struggled constantly with poor endurance. Does that mean the "Farkas" embouchure was wrong? No! So what was wrong? Me trying to look like Farkas! To me, this means that no student should be told to "look" like someone else when he/she plays. I believe that there's very little to be gained from telling any student to play w/ a certain percentage of upper or lower, placement of the rim here or there, etc. This doesn't mean that students shouldn't be encouraged to experiment with both conventional and unconventional mouthpiece placements for the purpose of discovery, but no student should be *required* to look a certain way when they play. The SOUND should guide the horn player's embouchure decisions rather than the LOOK. BTW, I'm very happy with my chops now, thanks to BE. I'm not sure whether or not my embouchure "looks" dramatically different than before, but it certainly functions a lot better. Valerie Wells http://bebabe.wordpress.com/ http://www.beforhorn.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
