Embochure

[tbdana]

As a university Trombone student, do you have a private teacher?

[AndrewMeronek]

From my understanding, a "smile" embouchure is more of a symptom of a deeper problem rather than an issue of its own. Unfortunately, it's not always an easy fix and usually requires either a lot of uncomfortable experimentation, or input from someone smarter than me who really understands embouchure mechanics.

My recommendation: rather than trying to "fix" the smiling by itself, first develop a deeper understanding of how embouchures work in general, and how yours specifically works. But I'm also an engineer, so I'm kind of used to breaking things apart.

[Doug Elliott]

Skype?

[imsevimse]

It can be fixed. I played with a "smile" emboushure until second year on a music program. It was the fist time I got the information that I had a "smile" emboushure. It was completely news to me and also the info that this wasn't how most good players played. It confused me nobody had told me earlier. I questioned this new good teacher about it and got all the motivation I needed. I changed over night to next day. At that time I was 16. I soon realized I had to quit all bands and ensambles for half a year to only focus on the emboschure. I did that and I remember that was hard and kind of depressing but after that half year I did an audition and was accepted at the Royal Accademy of Music in Stockholm on the trombone teaching program.

I'm sure there are many ways to fix this kind of problem and I did it my way, as I have explained elsewhere in detail on this forum. There were second thoughts for a while because I could play pretty good with that smile emboushure in the medium low register but after I changed and began to devellop my puckered emboushure to play high I had a tendency to fall back into the old habit as soon as I touched a note in the medium register. It completely destroyed the new emboushure that I wanted to build. At a time it felt like I had two emboushures and none of them worked, because they mashed up eachother, and that is true because a smile emboushure workes against a puckered emboushure and vice versa. They tear eachother down so my chops were really bad. But I'm happy now I decided to do the change because when I finally had relearned my emboushure then everything got easier, especially the high register that I never had before.

You need a teacher who can guide you and support you. Remember it is also an option to work at what you've got and try to make the best out of that. My first teacher was probably more into that since he never mentioned the problem. My second teacher was more concerned, but at the same time he pointed out I had to do the descition myself.

I can not play with a smile emboushure today, it is completely gone.

/Tom

[aasavickas]

Have an online lessons with Doug Elliot above.

As a former poor person who is self taught in all the fun things in my life, regular lessons are expensive and many “teachers” are terrible.

However, one lesson with Doug can save you much wasted practice time and frustration. Doug Elliot is one of 3 or 4 professionals that can both play and has serious chops AND is an expert in Reinhardt style embouchure analysis.

Music is more fun when your equipment and face are working.

Be very careful with any advice given on embouchure or breathing. Most of what is taught is either impossible or just plan does t describe reality.

[Cmillar]

Yes...have a lesson with Doug NOW... don't wait decades and then find out that things could have been 'fixed' way back when.

You'll save thousands of dollars in 'trial and error' mouthpieces by spending money on a lesson now.

[Kostastrombone14]

Skype?

I can download sky for a lesson. Do you have email so we can contact more about price and time? Thank you.

[Doug Elliott]

demouthpieces

at

aol.
com

[imsevimse]

Skype?

I can download sky for a lesson. Do you have email so we can contact more about price and time? Thank you.

If you and your potential teacher don't mind it would be interesting to know how you progress with this. There are but a few who write at this forum but more who read and I'm sure next reader could be helpt by your experience with the kind of training you do to fix it, basically the instructions you get and what you work at. We all know everybody is different so what works for one student might not work for another student. This particular problem interest me a lot. Often you do not hear what/if anything fixed a particular problem here. In this case I have a feeling it will be a long and bumpy rode but you will at least start with something. This isn't an easy fix, but as I said it can be fixed.

It would be very interesting to know what the first step for you would be or else WE will not learn anything here. I've been a teacher for 13 years (during 17 years) and have never had a student with a smile emboushure to fix, but it's because I started all my students and could see to they didn't evolve into that. The only student I fixed was myself. To be fair I quit as a teacher/musician in 1999 and now work as a cumputer programmer but I'm still interested in these kinds of problem and how to fix them

/Tom

[tbdana]

Ditto what Tom said.

[kbryson]

As others have said its hard to offer specific advice over a forum, but I can offer a couple broad suggestions based on my experience as a teacher:

1) Smiling embouchure is often compensating for poor breathing technique. If breathing is tense or shallow it won't have enough speed. You'll work harder to breath and your embouchure will try and make up for the lack of speed. I advocate for a conversational breath. Make sure the diaphragm is completely relaxed by sticking the tongue out as your inhale (only do this in practice, not on stage!). When exhaling don't engage the diaphragm any more than you would to address a crowd or do some public speaking. Lastly, stick to only inhales and exhales; no breathing holding or other nonsense!

2) Control the horn with your ear, not your face. This concept is a bit more esoteric, but effective when you get it. I have noticed that often smiling players connect control of pitch and register to the feeling of having the corners a certain percent back. It is my opinion that trying to control anything on the horn via muscles is inefficient and likely to lead to problems. Trombone doesn't have the tactile feedback for notes the same way piano or guitar does, its more akin to the voice. Try singing something simple: notice you control the pitch by listening to it and adjusting according to your expectation/knowledge of the melody, not by gauging how tight your vocal chords are. You'll want to slowly adapt this to your trombone playing so you are effectively ignoring your embouchure completely, and controlling via the pitch you hear coming from the instrument (easier said than done!).

Both these things should help you adapt to whatever changes your new teacher introduces faster. Best of luck with the change, and as others have said please keep us posted on your progress!

[Kbiggs]

I second (third?) a lesson with Doug.

I’ve seen the smile-and-press embouchure a few times. The only thing I’ll add—other than a lesson with Doug—is what one player who had this type of embouchure and successfully changed told me: Use the corners of your mouth, not your cheeks. That was his eureka! moment to change.

I hope that helps. If it doesn’t, no worries.

[Wilktone]

Kostas, I replied to your email already. Again, if you want to schedule a lesson with me go ahead and respond to that email. And as I mentioned in my email, Doug is probably the best resource for embouchure technique - what I know I learned from him.

Smiling embouchure is often compensating for poor breathing technique.

I've not really found this to be the case. When the faulty technique is in the embouchure, it's an embouchure problem, QED.

There's nothing wrong with also working on breathing. It certainly interacts with the embouchure, but that also goes in the other direction. If you make an adjustment with one, the other will also have to adjust a bit to coordinate.

Control the horn with your ear, not your face.

Conceptually, this is a fine approach. But we use our lips, air, tongue, slide arm, etc. to control the instrument. The ear (both our "inner ear" and what we're actually physically hearing) is our guide, but doesn't directly control how to play.

I get it, the concept of using our sound conception to develop technique has a long and majestic tradition in brass pedagogy. It's good to practice this way, since this is the mind set we typically want to perform at our best. But for practice, which presumably includes making corrections to things like the position of our mouth corners, it's a very good idea to make conscious decisions to target what needs improvement. Ignoring the actual playing mechanics can work, but they can also lead to unintended habits or simply getting better at playing wrong.

Dave

[kbryson]

If you make an adjustment with one, the other will also have to adjust a bit to coordinate.

I think I maybe misunderstand this comment, but I brought up breathing specifically because I thought it might help adjust the embouchure and support a more functional approach. I was admittedly speculating that breathing might be a problem, but from my perspective if it is not working embouchure adjustment from a teacher will be harder to adapt to.

Ignoring the actual playing mechanics can work, but they can also lead to unintended habits or simply getting better at playing wrong.

I think maybe I could have been clearer with this one. Yes, when undergoing an embouchure change the OP will have to spend some time focusing on the mechanics of the new embouchure at the start, but my intention was to suggest a move into more external focus as the new embouchure got more familiar. There is a large body of research that supports a focus on external results or end goals for developing new motor skills. Once again, I was speculating that the OPs current issue may have been caused by an overabundance of internal focus, but if it wasn't, there's no harm in considering this approach (moderated with adaptation to the new embouchure, of course).

In the end my hope was to provide suggestions that were broad enough to enhance and support whatever instruction is given by the teacher OP studies with online/in person. To that end I thank you for your comments, and ultimately hope these clarifications can serve that goal.

[Wilktone]

Thanks for clarifying, Kevin. You happen to have touched on some topics that have been of personal interest of mine for some time, ever since I took my first lesson with Doug Elliott back in '97.

Regarding making embouchure corrections, if you learn the basics of embouchure form and embouchure types you can start to see source of embouchure problems (sometimes before they begin to be noticeable by sound) and make targeted corrections that conceptually easy to correct.

A smile embouchure works, to an extent, but we understand that it's ultimately limited and causes bigger problems down the line. Sometimes the solution is largely related to strengthening the mouth corners and getting used to playing with them locked in place. Sometimes there are other embouchure factors also happening that when corrected make it easier to fix the mouth corners. Sometimes adjusting the breathing helps make it easier to fix the mouth corners.

But the mouth corners always need to be corrected. I prefer that correction to be done consciously, even while fixing other things.

As far as putting one's focus on external factors, that is true, to an extent. When researchers compared a purely explicit (technique oriented) approach to a purely implicit (goal oriented) approach, the implicit instructions do better. But that's not how we learn and develop motor skills, even when all the instructions given to a student are implicit there is still explicit learning happening in the background. And that learning tends to be unconscious, which is hit or miss at best. Again, my preference is to make corrections consciously whenever possible.

Dave