Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

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Rusty
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Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by Rusty »

What are your go to exercises when your chops are feeling out of sorts? Any single exercises you use to re-balance or reset things?

Personally I’ve found the basic Caruso exercises to be helpful, along with a few others, usually done very softly.
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BGuttman
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by BGuttman »

I like basic Caruso as well as the Remington exercises.
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EriKon
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by EriKon »

I like Bart van Lier's 10 one-note exercises to get things sorted again. Stamp's warm-up exercises (played with fake notes in the lower register) also feel good for this purpose.
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by imsevimse »

Rusty wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 6:32 am What are your go to exercises when your chops are feeling out of sorts? Any single exercises you use to re-balance or reset things?

Personally I’ve found the basic Caruso exercises to be helpful, along with a few others, usually done very softly.
First I play factitious notes to get the emboushure warmed up then I just play Swedish folk songs There are plenty of those. They are often in minor in a melancholy style. I play them in every key and by heart. Music is what connects everything when I need to get in shape. Some say "play long tones", well this is long tones but with music.

Caruso is good too, but that is about other things. I think Caruso is hard work. It has to do with timing, breathing and finding the optimal emboushure with all those air attacks. It is not so much music, that's why I don't start there. That can come later in a session.
Last edited by imsevimse on Thu Jul 07, 2022 11:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Burgerbob
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by Burgerbob »

I like to play some Cimera 55 etudes. If the center is supple and focused, I can connect notes and legato tongue easily. If not... they are hard work. It gives me a direction to work in.
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hyperbolica
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by hyperbolica »

I play chromatic interval exercises starting slow, and building higher and wider intervals. If the tone isn't good I might back up and do some long tones and then lip slurs and then back to intervals.
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by Kbiggs »

Sometimes not playing for a day or so can be helpful.
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by musicofnote »

Just took 6 days off and was in great shape when I left. Got back and it felt and sounded like crap. But from my trumpet days, I did the Chichowitz trumpet warm-ups, really just relaxing into each "new" note and extending it first downwards into the pedal register, making sure to come back to the starting f - and only then extending upwards to about treble 2nd line g, ie not pushing it. All slurring without tonguing, just like on the trumpet. It took me about 20 minutes of slow playing and concentrating on an enjoyable sound, which did eventually come. Then when the sound was there, I did about 10 minutes of Slokar bass t-bone exercises, again listening for the sound and not worrying so much about the tongue. Today was the 2nd day back and all was back to where I could do mostly Bordogni Tuba lyrical "studies".

But ... that's for me, your mileage will vary.
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GabrielRice
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by GabrielRice »

Great suggestions so far. I also will play Cimera, as well as Kopprasch and Arban's.

In fact, I have a specific routine I do with Arban's for exactly this purpose (and sometimes others). I detailed it here: http://gabelangfur.blogspot.com/2011/09 ... sharp.html
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

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Wilktone
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by Wilktone »

Usually when my chops are feeling not so good it's either because I've been taking too much time off the horn or because I was playing in a counterproductive way the day before. If I'm just feeling rusty I generally don't need to practice something specific, I just need to spend more time with the metal on the mouth. If I'm struggling because my playing mechanics are off, there are some exercises that I do to help me, but it's not as much what I'm playing but how I'm playing that makes them work for me.

For example, I have been regularly practicing Donald Reinhardt's Elasticity Routine for a bit over a year now, I think, after Doug Elliott recommended it to help me keep from over-puckering. While I practice it I find it helpful to concentrate some on keeping my mouth corners locked in their correct playing position or even try to make it feel like they are pulling back (the goal in this sensation of pulling the corners back is to keep them from actually coming in, not to actually use a smile embouchure).

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ds21
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by ds21 »

Big mistake I have made in the past: concentrate single-mindedly on a particular warm-up or set of exercises to the exclusion of everything else. Guess what the result was? I was really good at that warm-up or set of exercises, and lousy at everything else!
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by Lastbone »

If I take a two week vacation, a couple things happen that are worth noting. (sorry for the pun...) One is that the horn feels completely foreign at first. This is actually good, since it lets me remember exactly how it sounds and responds cold -- you never get that when you play every day. Second, my embouchure is usually a bit crusty, and I fix that by playing an F in the staff for about an hour. It sounds boring, but I'm a patient guy and it works every time. Most warmups are too technical, and this is only about sound production and breathing.
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VJOFan
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by VJOFan »

Charles Colin Lip Flexibilities (or Complete Method for Trombone etc…)
baileyman
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Re: Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

Post by baileyman »

After events forced a few days off, I am finding that glissing 1-6 and 6-1 alternating partials in time through the playing range helpful. Seems first to remind the chops where they play, and second to help flush out what feels like an accumulation of fluid.
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