Donald - As someone who went through some brutal embouchure issues over the past 2 and a half years (focal dystonia), I can tell you that using the mirror did help me. I did have many people advise the use of a mirror, but no one advised me to use it for the purposes of matching another person's embouchure. The primary reasons were to make sure: 1 - That my corners were working correctly (not too tight, not too loose, not moving all over the place) 2 - That my chin was working correctly (staying put for the most part with the obvious exceptions of significant range changes) 3 - That the overall placement was in the ball park.
I've definitely found that I can make my embouchure look identical 3 times in a row in the mirror but all 3 times it feels dramatically different (both vertical and horizontal placement, pressure, corners, etc.) The mirror doesn't solve these issues, it only gives visual feedback to make sure that you're on the right track. I will tell you one giant piece of the puzzle that helped for me. A LOT of people advised me to either place the mouthpiece as high on the top lip as possible or showed me places to put it that were simply too high. In the mouthpiece visualizer and in the mirror, it looked "correct." However, ultimately, it was way too high. I found getting the mouthpiece lower (at the advice of Marty Hackleman) made all of my problems nearly disappear! I still keep my upper lip out of the red, but now much more bottom lip is engaged. In the mouthpiece visualizer, I still get a majority of top lip. Is it 2/3-1/3? Maybe, maybe not. It's close. But a combination of extreme relaxation techniques (in my case, hypnosis and acupuncture), proper placement and extreme patience are ultimately what did the job. The mirror was just one of the tools to keep me on track. I hope this helps. Cheers- Jeremy -----Original Message----- From: Donald Huang [mailto:don....@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 5:59 PM To: horn@music.memphis.edu Subject: [Hornlist] Using a Mirror Hello all, Over the past two years, I've been plagued with some embouchure issues and I've read and heard a lot of different view points on lip placement and everything. I'm not asking for any suggestions right now, but I was wondering about one thing that somebody told me. Out of all of the suggestions I've gotten, the most unhelpful was simply to "look in the mirror and fix what's wrong" and to try to copy the embouchures of Stefan Dohr and the Berlin Phil's horns. Now I've used the mirror before just to try to keep the top of the mouthpiece out of the red of my lip and to try to center the mouthpiece, but I don't think that's what the well-wishing suggester meant. Also, I don't see how anybody can copy anything more than mouthpiece placement and possibly which muscles to use from seeing some clips on YouTube. Has anybody here actually benefited from this kind of advice? Donald Huang _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/jeremy%40sublymerecords.com _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
