Best exercises to re-balance your embouchure

[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.

[BGuttman]

I like basic Caruso as well as the Remington exercises.

[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.

[imsevimse]

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.

[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.

[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.

[Kbiggs]

Sometimes not playing for a day or so can be helpful.

[musicofnote]

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[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

[harrisonreed]

Brad Edwards

[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).

Dave

[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!

[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.

[VJOFan]

Charles Colin Lip Flexibilities (or Complete Method for Trombone etc…)

[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.