 Re: High Chops
Joe,
I am going to tell you what it has worked for me, maybe a lot of people would disagree with this but your free to experiment and see what happens.
1st. Using the Louis Maggio System for Brass method. (This book encourage the use of tongue arch)
2nd. Trying to keep a firm "pucker" with the embochure muscles, try not to smile, this will give you kind of a strong cushion to apply the right amount of mouthpiece pressure. Bear in mind that firming the embochure muscles does not mean to tight the abdominal muscles also, the air must remain free and fast, if you feel the air bottled up it is not going to help you, I like to think of the air as a car of a coaster going down thanks to its own weight and not because it has external propulsion (tightening the abdominal muscles conciously). Something I found very helpfull in Hickman's trumpet pedagogy book is his advice of not letting the bottom lip to go behind the top lip, just keep it horizontaly in line.
Another interesting excercize is the famous pencil ex. I would ad that you try to breath in and out through the nose in a very relaxed way while doing the excersize, this is very difficult because the tendency is to relax the embochure while you are exhaling, I find the feeling of exhaling very fast through the nose to be very similar when I play high notes, just be carefull not to let any nasal fluid come out of your nose
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