Brass Embouchure Pedagogy Zoom Hang

[Wilktone]

Back when the pandemic lockdown was happening I put together a couple of Zoom hangouts to discuss brass embouchure pedagogy. If there is enough interest during the first week of April, when I'm on spring break from one of the schools I teach at, I'll put together another.

This is a free workshop where I would go over some basic brass embouchure principles and discuss the pedagogical implications of what we know about brass embouchure form and function. It would be interactive, so folks can ask questions and we can also take a look at some of the participants embouchures and discuss the characteristics we see and ways to help reinforce the musicians' strengths and make corrections.

If you're interested, please take my survey here and let me know all the days/times you'd be available to join. I'll try to find a date that fits most of the interested folks' schedules.

Dave

[MStarke]

Would be very interested and would also be happy to do some example playing.

However my schedule is always a problem plus I am in middle European time. So it potentially doesn't fit.

[Wilktone]

Would be very interested and would also be happy to do some example playing.

However my schedule is always a problem plus I am in middle European time. So it potentially doesn't fit.

Well, check the possible days and times I have posted in my poll. I often have musicians fro Europe or Asia who have questions, so depending on the day I have possible times that would put it at 4 PM or 7 PM your time, I think.

[MStarke]

I obviously didnt pay attention. Will check the options!

[AndrewMeronek]

What survey?

[Rrova]

Count me in.

[Posaunus]

What survey?

See https://wilktone.com

[Wilktone]

What survey?

It's here:

https://wilktone.com/?p=7303

In my initial post I embedded the link like this. Sorry if that was confusing.

By the way, so far there is a 4 way tie for the following days/times (times are eastern time zone):

4/3/23 6 PM
4/4/23 1 PM
4/5/23 1 PM
4/6/23 1 PM

Second place has an 8 way tie, so the eventual schedule is still up in the air.

I'm also trying to fix some issues on my web site behind the scenes and there's a chance that my web site will be down intermittently. I'll try to keep that to a minimum, if I can.

Dave

[Wilktone]

If you're trying to take the survey my web site is currently down. I'm working to get it back up as quickly as possible. If you want to just reach out to me directly via a PM or email, here are the possible days/times for the Zoom hangout. All times are Eastern.

4/1/23 10 AM
4/1/23 1 PM
4/1/23 6 PM
4/3/23 10 AM
4/3/23 1 PM
4/3/23 6 PM
4/4/23 10 AM
4/4/23 1 PM
4/4/23 6 PM
4/5/23 10 AM
4/5/23 1 PM
4/6/23 10 AM
4/6/23 1 PM
4/7/23 10 AM
4/7/23 1 PM
4/7/23 6 PM

[aasavickas]

Looking forward to it.

Did you end up setting a date?

[Wilktone]

I haven't selected a date/time yet. I want to give folks more time to respond to my poll on what works. Unfortunately I'm having issues with my web site. Supposedly it will be back online in a couple of hours. I'll probably wait for at least a couple more days before I pick a date and I'll be sure to update everyone here.

[PhilTrombone]

Your site is not reachable via Chrome or MS Edge browsers (at least on my PC). Both are saying there is an SSL error.

[Wilktone]

Yep, it's still down. When I was getting help with my hosting company's tech support this morning they told me that it should only take a couple of hours before it would start loading normally. Either I didn't get what they told me to do done correctly or they missed what is going wrong.

I'm currently sitting with tech support again to see if I can get it resolved before I have to get ready for my gig tonight. Long day for me tomorrow with an out of town show, so it might not be until Sunday before I can get everything fixed.

Sorry! I'll leave the poll up for a while after getting everything back online. My proposed dates aren't until the beginning of April, so there's plenty of time for folks to check in later.

[PaulTdot]

Nice to see this is happening again! Dave, I would gladly be a part of it again, if you'd like me to participate once more. It was a good time the last couple of times that we did it, and a nice way to connect with the community. (Dave and I have collaborated and/or shared notes on a lot of the same research and concepts when it comes to brass embouchures.)

[Wilktone]

I finally got my web site content migrated over to the new host, so the survey is back online.

https://wilktone.com/?p=7303

If you already took the survey before it went down or contacted me directly about it you don't need to take it again, I've got your preferred days/times recorded.

[Wilktone]

There were a couple of days/times that tied, so I arbitrarily picked the one I liked best. The Zoom hangout will happen on Tuesday, April 4 at 1 PM Eastern. If you want to be a part of it please go to the following site and send me a message using the contact form there. I will send you the Zoom link to that email address, probably a day earlier.

https://wilktone.com/?p=8031

If you have any specific questions you hope to address during the hangout please post them here or put them in your message in the contact form.

Dave

[Doug Elliott]

I can be there

[aasavickas]

Looking forward to it.


Most discussions about embouchures are confused at best.

Wiktone and Doug are exceptional in that they actually know what they are talking about and can explain it clearly.

Thanks guys.

[TexHipp]

Do you have plans to record it in case someone can't attend?

[Wilktone]

I can be there

Nice! I'll make sure you get the link.

Looking forward to it.

Ditto and thanks.

Do you have plans to record it in case someone can't attend?

Not a recording of the actual hangout, but I do plan to record myself going through the presentation portion. I have some changes I want to make after the last couple of times we did this. I can't promise that I will post that practice video. That will depend on whether I actually practice it and the feedback I get after presenting it.

Dave

[Wilktone]

If you've already contacted me about tomorrow's embouchure Zoom hangout I have just sent out emails with the Zoom link. If you didn't get it, please reach back out to me and I'll try sending it again. If you are interested but didn't already contact me about it you can always reach out to me and I'll send you the Zoom link by tomorrow.

https://wilktone.com/?page_id=192

Looking forward to seeing many of you tomorrow!

Dave

[EriKon]

Thanks a lot, Dave and everyone who stepped in, for doing and organizing this! That was very interesting and helpful to get a visual input on what I've read about only so far. Still getting confused with all the terms, but I know better what to look for now and how it is described. So, if Dave decides to do this again at some point, I highly recommend it to everyone!

[pickupleftoff]

Thanks for this meeting today. Sadly I had a colleague call out sick so I wasn't as engaged as I had hoped to be but as the above poster mentioned, it was nice to have some professional input on what I had only read about/seen brief videos about.

[timothy42b]

Thanks for doing that. It was well done and the videos added a lot to the explanations, as well as the contributions from several other people. I would share the presentation part of that with a couple of people who wanted to (or should have) attended. I did look at your website but didn't find a one click spot where that is all gathered.

What drifted into my head afterwards was the question of why. We know some people move up to ascend and others do the reverse. How exactly does that help? Of course we don't need to know in order to make it work correctly, but at some point there should be an explanation. We know exactly why a string goes up in pitch when tension is increased (spent a lot of time writing the governing equations for that and similar things in engineering school.) But chops motion?

[Doug Elliott]

It focuses the natural tendencies of your teeth/lips/mouthpiece interaction, to help ascend or descend. The direction simply depends on how your face responds to different directions of motion.

[SGH]

I enjoyed the hangout very much. Thanks for organizing it!