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Embouchure Question

Author: halfshellhero
Date: 2013-08-18 05:18

A while back I posted on here asking about lower lip irritation - I think this was in part due to the wood fibers irritating my lip (synthetic reeds do help) and part to do with biting. After analyzing my embouchure and reading about embouchure and trying to decide what do do about my embouchure, I have some questions/confusion.

When I first began playing the clarinet, I had very little formal training and most of my learning was through trial and error, internet resources, and what little knowledge my trumpet playing band director had of the subject (which is something else entirely - I've had two band directors who have been trumpet players, and when they tried to give the reed players advice it was consistently bad/counterproductive, which is why I think beginning band should have more instrument specific instruction, but that's off topic).

So, when I was first beginning I played with what I consider probably my "better" embouchure. Mostly support coming from lip muscles, not teeth, tight corners, although my chin was a bit flabby. My band director (the trumpeteer) told me to "flatten my chin". No further instruction was given, just constantly "flatten your chin". So I did what my interpretation of "flatten your chin" was, which was to pull my bottom lip further into my mouth to get rid of the chin's "angle" I guess? You know that part of the chin where the gums and lip meet? I was trying to reduce the angle there because I thought that was what was meant by "flat". But anyway, I adjusted so when I played my bottom teeth were resting about where the red part of the lip meets the lower part of the lip.

Then my band director told me to smile while playing (again to "flatten" the chin). This caused air to easily escape my corners, and made hitting the high notes harder, which encouraged me to bite to get that extra pressure on the reed, as there wasn't much muscle coming from my corners or from my pulled in lip (I think the red part of the lip is the easiest to get muscle from).

I eventually learned to work around my defective embouchure and got really good at high notes/intonation/general technique, although I still got some comments about how my tone could improve. Mostly that I needed to concentrate on producing a more "centered" tone, and I was at a loss as to how to achieve that as nobody ever told me exactly what "centered" meant or how to achieve it. As you can tell, I get kind of frustrated at the fact that music instructors don't bother to define their terms, especially when talking to beginners as it just causes confusion. Especially when talking about something as abstract and hard to quantify as tone quality.

So I've experimented trying to fix my embouchure, and from what I can tell, the embouchure that seems to give me the best results is more or less the one I began with before all the teachers screwed up my idea of a correct clarinet embouchure. That is, bottom teeth in the center of the red part of the lip, lip exerting 99% of the pressure on the reed, top teeth resting on top of mouthpiece, bottom lip positioned just below where the reed meets the mouthpiece, chin pointed (I prefer to call it pointing or tightening the chin; the term flattening seems confusing and doesn't describe what I'm doing really, or what my chin looks like, although I assume this is what my beginning band teacher was talking about when she told me to "flatten" my chin).

The one area I'm still not really clear on is how the corners are. I get a better seal, more muscle, and better tone when I tighten my corners around the mouthpiece (kind of like making an "O" with my mouth), but I've heard two schools of thought on the subject. One that you should smile (or not necessarily smile, but pull the corners away from the mouthpiece). As mentioned above, this causes air leakage for me and encourages biting. But maybe I'm interpreting the term "smiling" wrong. The other school of thought ( I think this is the minority, though) is that you SHOULD form an "O" around the mouthpiece. I'm inclined to go with my own personal experience as that has been what's worked for me in the past rather than trying to please a well meaning but confusing and/or wrong band director. But am I okay using the "O" corners?

Also, since I've been trying to make changes to my embouchure (maybe a month or so is when I finally diagnosed the problem and tried to address it), the muscles in my mouth are WAY below the strength/stamina they should have for my playing experience. I can sustain the embouchure for a while, but eventually fall back into biting because I just don't have enough muscle to keep pushing up with my lip. I've been doing 10-15 minutes of long tones a day to try and develop my embouchure (especially in the clarion and altissimo). Should I switch to a softer reed for the time being to ease the transition?

Sorry that was such a long post; I feel like it's hard to describe embouchure in words and it's easier if it can be seen.

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