I have not been following this whole thread ... Regardless of how your
embouchure "looks" there is a balace to be struck between air out into
the horn and amount of contact with the MPC to the lips. Think of this
as a seesaw with the correct balance you will be centered with a
gorgeous sound at any dynamic.
Debbie Schmidt Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 24, 2008, at 1:47 PM, Steven Mumford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Hmmm, well you could easily turn the statement around and say
that you could have a perfect embouchure, but if your air isn't
working, you'll still sound bad. Except that, as Jonathan
mentioned, if your air is bad, it's going to mess up your perfect
embouchure.
How to put good air in words? That's for braver people than
me. A great player and excellent teacher could SHOW you in about 5
minutes and that would teach more than all the bandwidth on earth.
Here's my simplistified take on embouchure and air.
-Embouchure: If it looks really weird, it's probably not ideal.
That includes the way your embouchure looks when you play really low
notes.
-Air: If it feels difficult or unnatural, you're probably doing
things you don't need to do.
Here's a cool lesson I got from a long time Jacobs student
recently. You know the tube thingy with the ping pong ball in it?
He said, don't suck the ball upward, just breathe in easily and
naturally. Just get the ball to flutter a little. After awhile,
the ball rises to the top with no effort. The air starts to move in
and out with volume but with no effort. Ahhhh.
- Steve Mumford
Larry wrote:
Milton's comment, "But you could have really good breath control and
you
could play out your nose", is amusing hyperbole. If there are others
out
there who believe proper embouchure muscle functioning (and to some
extent,
embouchure position) is an insignificant aspect of playing well,
please
post
and explain why you think so.
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