TaKaTa Trumpets

Part 2.  Freely Vibrating Embouchure.

After working on the Trumpet Breath you are more aware of your breathing, and can perform the breathing exercises in a relaxed and smooth manner.  The second essential component of playing the trumpet is using your breath to vibrate the lips.  

The goal for the embouchure is to be able to produce a wide range of lip vibrations, producing low notes and high notes, with efficiency and a minimum of manipulation.

Unlike breathing, vibrating the lips is not a natural thing (for most people, at least) and much trouble can arise at this point.

Many of us learned, as beginning trumpeters, that if the lips weren’t responsive we could force them to vibrate by blowing harder.  This, I believe, is at the root of many trumpet playing problems.

Instead, we are going to focus on producing a clear, rich vibration that can respond instantly to tiny amounts of air.  This will provide the foundation for playing with power later, and maintain our goal of minimizing excess tension in our playing system and give us complete control over the dynamic and color of our sound.

Recall that we are striving to maintain the smooth and relaxed breathing that is natural to us, while modifying our breathing to meet the demands of playing the trumpet.  It should be clear that if the embouchure does not respond instantly to the exhalation, the breath will be interrupted – instantly creating tension and inefficiency.  Since your mind and body know that the desired result of exhaling through the trumpet is to produce a sound, it will naturally react to poor responding lips by blowing harder.  This may produce a sound – perhaps even one you think is acceptable, but you are working harder than you need to and your ultimate results will be limited.

I have found the best success by keeping my trumpet embouchure as close as possible to my natural lip and jaw formation.  I simply close my mouth, firm the muscles around the embouchure slightly, and place the mouthpiece on it.  The lips are touching, but very lightly – not clenched or rolled in to a great degree.  If I blow air through this embouchure before placing the mouthpiece, the lips buzz easily.

You may have to form your embouchure differently, but the proof that it is right for you is in the results of the leadpipe buzz.

Here is the next part of the progressive daily routine – using the breath to vibrate the lips.

Take your tuning slide out of your trumpet, so that you can play on just the mouthpiece and trumpet leadpipe.  This creates a moderate, and predictable, amount of resistance – giving more feedback than the mouthpiece alone but less than the whole trumpet.  

Even though the goal of this step is to vibrate the lips using the  “trumpet breath,” we will focus as much on the breath as on the vibration.  This is because inefficiency in your embouchure and problems with it responding to your breath can ruin the smooth airflow that we established in the breathing exercises.  Focusing awareness on this, when you begin producing notes on the leadpipe and then the trumpet each day, is the best way to prevent problems that can hurt your endurance, tone, range, and articulations later on.

Because of this, I like to establish a good breathing pattern, and then place my lips over the mouthpiece and breath so the exhale goes through the mouthpiece and leadpipe, but without producing a buzz.  Just a few breaths like this gets me familiar with exhaling against some moderate resistance, and lets me focus on the depth and smoothness of the breath.  If all systems are go at this point, the next step is to continue the breaths, but to exhale through the formed embouchure into the trumpet mouthpiece and leadpipe.  Do not use your tongue to articulate the note – just a breath attack.  The Bb trumpet leadpipe will resonate with a pitch around 1st line E or Eb – or on trumpets with a reverse leadpipe, perhaps a D.  

The goal of the leadpipe buzz is to have the note speak instantly and freely, with a distinct ‘front’ that sounds like “p” even though no tongue is used.  There are other possible outcomes however.  Pay careful attention to your results.  If they are less than perfect (and they probably will be at first), resist the temptation to “fix it” by blowing more air.  When your embouchure is right, you will be able to get a clear, resonant sound with no more effort than breathing out as you normally would.  The three general outcomes are:

1. No buzz, just air.  Your lips are too far apart.  Reset the embouchure and the mouthpiece – be aware of the lips just barely touching.
2. No buzz, air can’t get through lips, or the note has  to be forced out.  Your lips are too closed. Reset the embouchure and the mouthpiece – be aware of the lips just barely touching.
3) The note speaks easily and instantly with the exhalation.  If things are perfect, the note start will sound like it was tongued lightly.  This is the goal.

Don’t spend more than 5 minutes on this each day.  Some days the perfect response may come right away – on other days you may not get it.  But over time, as you start your day with focused attention to your breath and efficient lip buzz, your success rate will increase, and you will begin to see improvements in all aspects of your playing.