I've been playing oboe for three years now, however I have recently come up with a problem in my embouchure. When I tongue, I notice that my bottom lip is moving when I tongue. My teacher says it may be because I try to hard to emulate the embouchures of other oboists. Can anybody give me advise in forming my embouchure, or what might be the cause of my problem? I have a rather large lower lip that might be the problem. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Or any other advice on how to correct or strengthen my embouchure would be very much appreciated!

My teacher has told me that I don´t have my upper lip in a correct position, but she don´t mind and during the last year we have concentrate on breathing and my improvements are amazing, so now I don´t focus on embouchure any longer. I do believe that embouchure problem is only relevant if you become tired in your lips after just playing a couple of minutes.

While Trombi is right that perfect embouchure isn't quite as important on oboe as it is on some other woodwind instruments (there are many ways to produce a nice sound), the movement of your bottom lip could be a problem when tonguing fast passages. Until I have more information, the best advice I can give you is to practice your legato tongues and "soft" tongues. Try to lightly bounce your tongue on the airstream rather than tonguing heavily, which could have produced your bottom lip movement.

However, I'm not totally sure that I understand your problem. What problems does this movement create?

Hope this helps.

Thank you for your replies! I suppose there is no real PROBLEM with my tone, however, everybody I know tells me it is incorrect. I was just trying to find a way of means on correcting this. This is really frustrating because I don't remember my embouchure ever doing this before! Does anybody know any way I can strengthen my embouchure itself?

Another thing I should mention is that my mouth does get tired after only fifteen or so minutes. I'm sure this is definitely a problem.

Any suggestions will be very much appreciated!

The best thing to do is, well just to play! By playing, you will be strengthening your embouchure, and soon your problems should just disappear.

For now, though, you might try some softer reeds.

I was once taught by an oboe teacher at the Guildhall School who said that she'd been told by Jonathan Kelly to take a staple or an old reed, turn it round so that the cork facing your mouth, then loosely grip it between your bottom and top lips, closing it in using your "fang" muscles at the side of your mouth. You should hold this in your mouth using these side mouth muscles until you can feel the pull. Don't let it get painful but it'll build up those muscles which'll help with the stamina and pain when playing if you do it regularly enough. Hope this helps!