I`ve been playing the trumpet since the 6th grade (I`m a sophomore in High School now) and its just come to my attention that my embochure is a little...weird. Its kinda hard to describe the formation my mouth makes, but its kinda like when you`re trying to kiss someone...

Due to this, my lips` endurance is minimal and fatigue lasts long. In addition, extra jaw movement occurs. Any ideas how to fix my problem?

-Cavalier_Bound

Thanks in Advance.

If it`s only just come to your attention, it can`t be such a big deal. Has someone recently drawn attention to your embouchure? Although not a conventional style, I`ve seen and heard some fine players who play with a pucker, as you seem to be indicating, and I believe that the book "Double High C in 37 weeks" advocates switching to kiss-like chops. However, I`ve seen far too many people ruin their playing altogether by attempting to alter their embouchure, and I truly believe that once you have a method of forming your lips that has become second nature, you`re best to leave it and make the most of what you have. In any case, whatever your embouchure, endurance problems will diminish as you increase practise.

Thanks very much! I think your right, it can`t be too big of a deal since it`s just came to me. Hopefully my chops won`t be too destroyed(again) after marching season.

-Cavalier_Bound

hey, my teacher just told me a month ago to do the puckering position. I`m confused, is the puckering wrong?

I hope this helps but really the job of the lips is just to close your mouth. The embochure should be sort of like a "mmm" sound. I used to be one of the worst players in my band but after i had a trumpet teacher who taught me this embochure i improved to be one of the best among my level. Just make sure u ahve lots of air support from your diaphgrm

have you seen this



The following outlines the first steps to attaining a good mouth shape for trumpet playing.
· Keep your teeth slighly apart. Your lips should be only lightly touching. Hold the lips as if about to say the `M` in `mother`.
· Blow to make your lips buzz.
· Now put the trumpet mouthpiece on your lips and make the same buzz into the center of the mouthpiece.
· To make a clear start to the sound you use your tongue. Start the next buzz with a `T`. Do not put your tongue outside your lips - it stays inside your mouth.
· Now try putting the mouthpiece into the instrument and try the same thing- you should be able to produce a note.

Things to watch out for:
· Do not stick your lips out as if blowing a kiss!
· Do not puff your cheeks out when blowing
· Do try to breathe from your stomach - when you take a deep breath don`t raise your shoulders.
· Do practise blowing long notes into your instrument and holding them. Learning to control your breath is crucial to good trumpet playing.
Once you`ve practised the lip-buzzing we discussed in Lesson 1, we`ll see here how it`s possible to make higher and lower sounds by adjusting your lips.
· To make higher sounds, your lips must be tighter together when you blow the air through them. You will have to blow harder to make this happen.
· To make lower sounds, relax the lips and blow more softly.

Start by trying to make higher and lower sounds into the mouthpiece by itself. When you think you`ve got the hang of it, try it on the trumpet itself.

Up and down exercise

Now we`ll try playing a pattern of higher and lower notes.

- for a note below the line, play a low note

- for a note above the line, play a high note



Exercise 1



Exercise 2



For now it doesn`t matter what note you play - you could try the above exercises using no valves, or try various combinations of valves and see if you can still make the sound higher or lower as required

Learning how to control your breath is crucial to good trumpet playing. Here we`ll take you through some of the basic dos and donts.

Breathing in

When you breath in, the air should fill the lower reaches of the lungs first. You should be able to feel your abdomin swelling up as you breath in. Most importantly - do not let your shoulders rise as you breath.

Breathing out

The main thing to learn about breathing out is being able to control the speed at which the air is exhaled.

To play a long note at a consistent volume, you need to exhale at a consistent level. All loudness and softness on the trumpet is controlled by the speed of the air.

Exercise playing long notes
· Play long notes with full breaths. Do not strain at the end, but remain relaxed.
· When the note has finished, inhale fully and play the same note again.
· Once you have practised this a few times repeat the exercise starting very soft and increasing in volume to the end of the note. Try to time the increase so that you don`t arrive too soon at the loud note.
The trumpet has three valves. These alter the length of tube inside the trumpet and so alter the pitch played.



The following scale shows the 8 notes of the scale of C major, together with the correct valves. A `0` indicates no valves at all (`open`).



All music has a regular beat which can be played at any speed.
Different types of notes last for different numbers of beats.
A quarter-note` or `crotchet` lasts for 1 beat and looks like this:

so five quarter-notes in a row will look like this :


A `half-note` or `minim` lasts for 2 beats and looks like this:

so four half-notes will look like this :

Click on the play button to hear the half-notes played on the trumpet, together with a background tick for the beats (there are 4 beats introduction before the trumpet starts).

Finally, a whole-note, or semibreve lasts for 4 beats and looks like this:

so four whole-notes in a row will look like this :

Click on the play button to hear the 4 whole-notes played once again on the trumpet, together with a background tick for the beats (again, there are 4 beats introduction before the trumpet starts).

Bars
Bars lines divide the music into groups of equal beats. The music written between one bar-line and the next is known as a bar of music.

The first type of bar we will see is 4/4, written :

which means there are 4 quarter-note beats in each bar. Below is an example of two bars written in 4/4 time. The first bar contains 4 quarter-notes, each lasting for one beat. The second bar contains a whole-notes which lasts for 4 beats, and so, occupies the entire bar.

A double bar-line signifies the end of a piece.

This is interesting. Embochure changes can be scary! When my teacher told me that I had to make a change I was scared to death. For a while I was even scared to play my trumpet. I heard from other trumpet players horror stories of how my teacher had made some pretty bad mistakes and messed up their embochures. So I went to another professor in a different city and he helped a lot :D. Now I`m doing fine. It can help to see other professors!