| In the book “The Balanced Embouchure” by Jeff Smiley, Jeff talks about a time where he took a small mouthpiece (I think it was a Schilke 6A4a) and played on nothing else for like 6 weeks. At first, he couldn’t play it at all, but after working on trying to be able to use it week after week, an extraordinary thing happened: he was able to use it like a regular, deeper, bigger mouthpiece and when he switched back to the bigger mouthpiece, he lost no range or endurance. He had employed the use of a small mouthpiece to gain tighter focus in his embouchure.
Not that this will work for everyone of course, but there was once a time where I couldn’t play on a small mouthpiece at all. When I started playing in a Latin band, SOMETHING had to change because I was working my tail off trying to get it to happen on my normal, bigger mouthpiece, which was a Marcinkiewicz #2 at the time. Taking the advice of the lead player and in spite of the fact that I sounded pretty bad for several gigs, I forced myself to play on a Schilke 14A4a. It took about 3 weeks before I was interchangeable between the two, and I’m still that way.
It is a different way to look at a mouthpiece, but it seems that your instructor knows what he’s talking about. |