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Re: Technique

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2015-10-01 19:38

Ok so I feel a need to address the "air thing" since that is THE place where you create your sound. It has been said by many (and me) that you need to "push from your gut," "engage your abdominal muscles." But I want to try a new way to address this.

But first, back to the embouchure

It should be pretty clear that you have two extremes of sound you can promote with the amount of energy you use surrounding the mouthpiece. You can squeeze the mouthpiece/reed and get a whiney, thin, buzzy sound; OR you can over relax and achieve a flabby, uncentered, fuzzy sound (as you hear from "jazz" players).

What you need to do is stay in the middle of those extremes to expose the core sound at any dynamic. I add the dynamic part because you are always tempering the energy of the embouchure with the amount of air (based on whether you are loud or soft or in between). The louder you play, the more you need to dial in more embouchure control (and vice versa). Only your ears will ultimately tell you exactly how much that is.

The other part of "Air," is that you DO need to feel the abdominals working all the time. It is necessary to have the isometric engagement of the diaphragm while actively pushing the air out on SOFT passages. This is the only way to ensure a steady flow rate which is so necessary for a solid, big sound at low dynamic levels. The trick here is that you don't feel your diaphragm working against, you only feel how hard you are working you abdominals. So it must feel as though you are really pushing ALL THE TIME (which you are).

................Paul Aviles

Post Edited (2015-10-01 20:51)

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Technique new

sarawashere

2015-09-30 18:20