Shape of the Embouchure inside the Mouthpiece

[JTeagarden]

I recently determined that I was not supporting my air sufficiently while playing, and that as a result, my embouchure was working too hard to create the needed resistance, affecting both resonance and endurance.

With better breath support while exhaling (largely by engaging my weak TVA muscle to a greater degree), I find that the shape of my embouchure within the mouthpiece is no longer changing in different ranges as much either, and other than opening and closing my jaw depending on the range being played, and "pivoting" my embouchure relative to my mouthpice in the Reinhardt sense of the word, I'm thinking maybe ideally there shouldn't be any any reshaping of my lips relative to my teeth at all .

Does this make any sense, and is this also your experience?

Described maybe another way, the tension should come from my corners (which are outside the mouthpiece) becoming more or less firm and moving up or down depending on the note being played, and via abdominal pressure, and not from any significant change of the shape of the lips inside the mouthpiece, as their job is to simply to vibrate freely.

[Wayne]

I am not 100% sure of what you want to mean by "shape". One related piece of information I've picked up is that in terms of aperture, a loud volume, high note and a quieter volume, low note have quite similar apertures. The Reinhardt and Wiley materials I've been working from do a lot of crescendos into higher notes and decrescendos into lower notes to indirectly train the aperture. There are also a lot of exercises that work on playing high, low, staccato and legato all within a few measures. ( [pp] doot, doot, doot, doot, dah, dah dah dah,[ff] doot, doot, doot, doot, dah, dah dah dah, [pp] daaaaaaaaaaah)

Again, if you are using your effective setting and movement pattern, doing this kind of work through a spider pattern locks in the workings of the embouchure to move through ranges and dynamics.

[The spider pattern starts an exercise at a center point and moves repetitions consecutively up and down from that center by semi tone until the last two repetitions are two octaves apart.]

So there is reshaping all the time, but it is gradual and not all that dramatic and in consort with all the other changes in horn angle, air speed, abdominal tension, tongue work...

I would say change as much as you have to, but as little as necessary.

[BrianJohnston]

I'm thinking maybe ideally there shouldn't be any any reshaping of my lips relative to my teeth at all .

I’ll give my thoughts to see if others agree:

We are after a “buzz” created by the aperture fueled by air. This buzz is what “resonates” the trombone. We only need the correct amount of air (not an excess amount) to create the buzz or else the tone becomes airy and we “mostly” don’t want that. Higher notes require more air “pressure” because the lips are more taught, therefore more dense. In order to ensure vibrations from the aperture, it has to be somewhat relaxed. To achieve this, the corners need to be taught/engaged to ensure the aperture is relaxed. The pitch is changed by the size of the aperture, and the higher notes need more lip taughtnessand corner engagement, where low notes can be more “relaxed” so move your lips relative to your teeth? I think so. Should you move a lot? I don’t think so. I believe Peter Steiner has a video where he works on large jumps on the horn with minimal embouchure movement.

[JTeagarden]

Thanks for the replies, a big part of the problem is being able to accurately describe just exactly what I am doing physically.

I might describe my motion inside the lips while ascending as the aperture becoming less elliptical and more circular, and the lips hanging over my teeth to a greater extent, and that the sound is a lot more focused if I make a concerted effort to limit those changes between ranges.

[Nemo]

I have heard the term "lip posture" to refer to this concept, which is the arrangement and engagement lips relative to each other. This is separate from the lip *placement* or airflow, though there's usually a correlation.

Generally there are 4 lip postures: "horse lips", "raspberry lips", "mosquito lips", and "balloon lips", ranging from low to high. I was taught to live in the raspberry lips posture for most of my playing, and to develop the horse lips embouchure as my "shifted low range" for the really walloping pedal notes. A trumpet player is more likely to spend most of their time with mosquito lips and sometimes reach up into the balloon lips posture (the name comes from the squealing of the neck of a balloon)

However, the ultimate goal is for your primary lip posture to be as flexible and controlled as possible, and to only need adjustments in the extremes. This is what Reinhardt promotes - one lip posture that stays stable as it moves relative to the teeth. If you feel your lip posture changing a lot, your sound is probably very bumpy and will have major tone instability as you move around the horn.

Flexibility and agility comes from using minimal lip posture changes. As a tuba and bass trombone player I've been encouraged to develop significant overlap between my lip postures so that I can be flexible moving in and out of the low register for lyrical playing, but still snap into the lower posture for more power and comfort if I'm down there for an extended period. But the vast majority of my playing takes place with one set posture that stays stable while my airstream, pivot, and vowel shape do the rest of the work.

[Wilktone]

Without fully understanding what you mean by the "shape" of the embouchure I'm not sure how to respond to your questions. If you've seen the Leno film, or any of the other similar video showing the embouchure inside the mouthpiece, you do notice that there are changes to how the lips are positioned inside the cup in the different registers. Essentially the lips are drawn back more firmly against the teeth and gums inside the cup as the player ascends. There are differences in how this functions between different embouchure types, but that's the gist.

...opening and closing my jaw depending on the range being played...

Reinhardt taught (and I agree) that the jaw should be more or less stable while playing. Many teachers do advise we drop the jaw to descend and bring it back up into position when we're out of that range, but I believe it is not only possible to avoid that, but also better in the long term to reduce or eliminate jaw dropping. The risk here is pulling the mouthpiece placement to a lower position on the lips with the jaw drop or otherwise ending up with a reversal in the pivot/embouchure motion (if you need to be pushing up to descend the jaw drop is pulling everything down).

escribed maybe another way, the tension should come from my corners (which are outside the mouthpiece) becoming more or less firm and moving up or down depending on the note being played, and via abdominal pressure, and not from any significant change of the shape of the lips inside the mouthpiece, as their job is to simply to vibrate freely.

The area at and just under the mouth corners is probably where the bulk of the muscular effort should be applied. I don't think I would describe that as changing to more and less firm while playing. I prefer to think of keeping them firmly locked in place over the entire range, but that's probably more of a playing sensation than actual fact. A lot of players either collapse their mouth corners when they descend and/or pull them back as if smiling to ascend and those both cause issues.

Dave

[Doug Elliott]

I like to think of it as:
Do what you need to but keep it within the confines of stability.

A small amount of jaw motion through the range probably won't hurt anything, but I'd rather keep it stable.
A small amount of firmness change probably won't hurt anything, but I'd rather keep it stable.
A small amount of aperture shape change is necessary, but I'd rather keep it minimal.
A small amount of mouthpiece pressure change probably won't hurt anything, but I'd rather keep it stable.

[JTeagarden]

Oddly, these things are very hard to describe accurately, so maybe another go: As I ascend, I had a noticeable pulling in of the lips together and inwards towards the teeth, increased tension of the lips inside the mouthpiece, and a changing of their shape (at least as I percieve it) from elliptical to more of a circle.

[BrianJohnston]

Since the aperture gets smaller, the lips surrounding need to become more taught to support the small hole and immense air pressure, as to not blow the aperture apart and lose the note.

Is that closer?

[JTeagarden]

it is, but I think in any event the basic shape of the aperture does not change through the range.

[harrisonreed]

I don't know if this contributes, but I am almost certain that the shape of the aperture changes through the different ranges.

The aperture is like the space between two tectonic crust plates that are sliding across one another as you change registers. It isn't a single point or a 2D cross-section of where your lips meet up. It's like a fault line. I think that too many players think of the whole embouchure in a 2D way, and only focus on the embouchure as seen in the top drawing, below. But this is also why I think people "chop out". We think of it as a 2D system to our detriment.

It is interesting that the topic of the thread is the shape of the embouchure inside the mouthpiece, which implies something 3D, but it looks like almost all the descriptions in this thread of how it changes shape in the are described in 2D (corners, tension or tautness of the lips, etc)

20260302_083414.jpg

The arrows indicate what moves when you play and move through registers, not necessarily the extent, which might be exaggerated by a lot. Except the range of the air coming out in front of the lips -- that is probably conservative in my drawing.

[Doug Elliott]

The apparent "aperture" that you may visualize or see through a transparent mouthpiece or rim buzzing or freebuzzing doesn't actually exist. It's not 2-D or 3-D. It's 4-D, constantly changing over the time of a soundwave. How the lips open and close during that wave is influenced by the individual lip shape and texture, where the embouchure effort is placed, size and depth of the mouthpiece, and the reflected sound wave coming back (or not, if freebuzzing or rim-buzzing). Also the range, volume, and amount of air and the air pressure all effect it.

All of those things are variable and can change as you develop, and age.

If you're having problems it's likely something needs to be adjusted. But maybe not as specifically as changing the "sperture shape."

[JTeagarden]

Way too many moving parts for me to even guess what does exactly what, but I'm finding that maintaining as constant a position of my top lip relative to my upper teeth as possible gives a kind of reliable starting point, appreciating that this position is not optimal in all ranges.

I think what I was doing was changing tactics in the high register: Generating too little change in air speed and pressure (weak abs), and having too much movement of the lips within the mouthpiece to shape a smaller aperture (pursing the lips like I was squeezing a drinking straw).

Anchoring the upper lip against the upper teeth and the pivoting this setting up while ascending (mouthpiece coming down relative to the nose) seems to be repeatable, and not a constantly moving target.

Interestingly, I have also tried to figure out when I chip notes, and there's a pattern: It is almost always while ascending, and at the end of a longer phrase (often in the third partial), increasing abdominal pressure (or maybe just being conscious of maintaining the pressure) before the jump is helping.