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Re: Issues of Pedagogy, and on the lower lip...

Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2010-11-05 19:27

suavkue -

With your "old" embouchure, did you have your entire lower lip outside your teeth? That's not good. The usual embouchure is to put half the red part of your lip over your teeth (and your lower teeth just below the point where the reed departs from the lay of the mouthpiece). This gives you a good combination of clarity, warmth and resonance.

If you then pull your lip out, so that 1/4 of the red part is over the teeth, you get more overtones, and your tone becomes brighter and carries better in an orchestra. If you roll 3/4 of the red part over your teeth, you get a less overtones and a less penetrating sound, when you're playing an accompanying part beneath another player's solo line.

However, if you have thin or thick lips, you adjust the position to discover what work for you.

Almost all players point the tip of the chin down and stretch the area between the lip and the point of the chin tight. This works for almost everyone, though Stanley Drucker bunches up his chin.

Also, if you don't play double lip, tuck your upper lip in tight against your upper teeth and support as much of the instrument as possible with it.

Finally, work on voicing the tone. Put the back of your tongue high and the front low and find the position that gives you the tone you like. It may help to think of making an "aardvark face" with everything pushed forward -- just how much is a matter for experiment.

No two people do it the same, because everyone has a separate anatomy.

At your next lesson, you might ask your teacher to alternate with you on long tones, while you find a way to match his/her sound.

Ken Shaw

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