dbacon

Even a little less pressure can help your sound. Pressure against the lips can stop parts of your embouchure from vibrating. Less pressure will allow more of the lip to vibrate, you get more signal giving you more sound with less effort. You also get better endurance, tone quality, you don't beat up your chops as much so you recover better after gigs. You also don't have to blow as hard because the lips will vibrate will much less effort, taking less air, giving you longer phrases. Your flexibility will be better as well.

To achieve this you need complete development of the embouchure so it will keep the lips touching. Lips just touching will vibrate very easily, and less pressure will help the easy buzz.

Pressure gets used because of a lack of embouchure development and air speed. Pressure holds the lips in the mouthpiece.

Lips pressed tightly together are very inefficient, needing a lot of effort to get them to vibrate. A more relaxed inside will vibrate with little work effort. Lips just touching using the developed muscles of the embouchure to hold them that way, and flowing air will make playing much easier.

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Dave Bacon

Welk

I don't want to seem to turn your post down, because what you are saying is 100%. no pressure gives endurance, ease...

But as a Caruso addept, I gotta had something that you may not agree with.

Playing with no Pressure comes from using as much pressure as you want.

What I'm saying is that to developt a good embouchure, you shouldnt worry about pressure... By the time your embouchure is fuly set, the pressure wil go down. This as really worked for me. I've never worryied about pressure when doing my caruso routine for the past 6 month and I'm using just a little pressure now.... that is almost negligable compared to what I was doing like 2 or 3 years ago. But it is true that I have now more ease of playing, more endurance (still lot of room for improvement), better range.... and that I use less pressure than I did. I'm just saying that concentrating on using less pressure all the time isn't necessarly the best or the fastest way to get rid of this "problem"... I'm not saying that Caruso's method is the best... but one of the best.


As pressure being a problem for sound... Listen to Satchmo a little... NO big deal with sound and he has used lot of pressure/twisting. I saw one of his mouthpiece on a site ( can't remember where) but there was lots of stuff about Louis, and you could see that he sawed his rim in order to have more grip for some king of twisting... Must have hurted... but no one can attack Louis's playing!

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-= 709 royal canadian air cadet squadron brass instructor =-

MUSICandCHARACTER

Phyllis Stork was educated at The Juilliard School among some other fine institutions. This article is a must read on pressure buzzing:

http://www.storkcustom.com/html/pressure_buzzing.html

Stork basically suggests that pressure is greatly affected by your physical make up. If lips can handle it, lots of times you will be a pressure player. If not, you will use a lot less pressure.

Stork certainly falls on the side that pressure doesn't hurt the sound if your lips can take it. I think where the sound fall off comes is when you use pressure that is too much for your embouchure and physical make up.

I personally cannot use a lot of pressure -- but I know some wonderful players with a great sound that can!

Jim

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Dr. Jim Fox
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
Mouthpiece chart: www.ibowtie.com/tmptmpccharts.html

pops

There is a BIG difference between CAN and SHOULD.

Because someone CAN play with pressure doesn't mean it is the best way for them to play.

I CAN (according to the essay) and did for many years use lots of pressure. But things are 10,000 times better now that I don't.
I seriously doubt anyone SHOULD do it that way.


You need to understand what success means in academic circles. A doctor can remove a tumor and the patient die later that day. That can and is usually considered a success. HE didn't die while the Dr was in there. Most people wouldn't consider that a success yet a Dr would. I have seen and heard this in real life.

I see people every week who used so much pressure that their lips can't move.

They never developed the muscles because they changed notes by means of mouthpiece pressure.

I had a man here last week who is the lead on a national tour with a musical. Once I showed him HOW to make compression and made him hold the horn so he couldn't use too much pressure 3 things happened (That day).

His sound opened up and became the same from low to high, his flexibility improved and his endurance went up.


Just because one person learns to reduce pressure through some exercises doesn't mean everyone will.
You are assuming they play like YOU did, that they use the same amount of pressure (they may use way, way more), that they know how to make and use compression, that they use good breath support, that they use the tongue well.........


Some people overcome great problems on their own while others can not.

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"30 Minutes A Day to Better Playing", "Book of Embouchure Pictures". Plus my other 8 books at http://www.BbTrumpet.com & http://www.TrumpetCollege.com
Pops

It is the Smart application of hard work that gets you there.