Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-01 23:07
I have a response: the fact that I watched them has caused what I think is a bit of a breakthrough in my own playing:-)
It's nothing to do with 'double lip', though. (And actually, the videos aren't much to do with double lip either, though they say they are.)
The crucial point about embouchure is that the lower lip be not simply a piece of inert meat covering the lower teeth. It has to be a flexible muscle -- "not just a SHIM", as Tom Ridenour puts it in the video. That's because it has to be able to exert a variable (in real time) pressure over an area of the reed that is variable (in real time) both in position and extent.
How much the lip muscle is supported or not by the lower teeth is essentially immaterial -- if it is truly flexible. Double lip embouchure may help to ensure that flexibility; but as has been rehearsed here many times, and as Tom Ridenour says himself, it is not ESSENTIAL.
But, what I've always done just before an attack is to choose the POSITION OF THE LOWER LIP first, and then vary the jaw aperture to be appropriate to the musical circumstance.
Whereas, Tom Ridenour advocates choosing the APERTURE first, and then moving the mouthpiece in until it is 'snug'.
It would seem that how you get to the same 'address' should have no effect on the end result.
But experimenting, I found that it does; for the following reason.
Mostly, I 'support' when I begin a note or a phrase. That means that I am already blowing, and resisting the blowing with the diaphragm, as I approach the beginning of the note. Then the note begins when I relax the diaphragm -- and, as I've explained many times, that is not a conscious experience: the note just begins when I imagine it to begin.
I have also explained that sometimes that is a strange experience for me; and I do better to breathe in against abdominal resistance -- like yawning -- and then have the note start 'at the top of the yawn'. It gives a real experience connected with the beginning of the note.
But now I have a better solution, that Tom Ridenour's technique provides. That is: to set the jaw aperture and the lip flexion that corresponds to the musical effect I want, and then have the beginning of the note coincide with the 'snug' moment as I very slightly move the mouthpiece in.
I THINK I find (I only tried it today, practising two pieces, one on a period instrument and one on my modern one) that that is a better way of calibrating the variables. It furnishes a GESTURE to begin the note; and a gesture that has a more natural point of arrival than the 'yawn' technique.
Now, some people may want to say that there is only one jaw aperture that is appropriate. But they should notice that Tom Ridenour carefully says that that aperture is determined by 'the desired sound'.
If you think that there is ONLY ONE DESIRABLE SOUND, then for you there is no 'calibration of jaw aperture' -- you just learn the one 'for you', and 'your' sound.
Others of us think differently.
Tony
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