Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I dropped out of university music school because I was frustrated with my dysfunctional embouchure. 33 years later, I decided to come back to horn, hired a qualified private instructor and began practicing diligently. After 7 months, I'd regained all my previous playing abilities, and unfortunately, the same disabilities, severely limited range and endurance. Since the conventional approaches to embouchure development had failed me, I decided on my own to risk trying something radically different, The Balanced Embouchure (BE). BE is a unique development system for trumpet players "master minded" by the successful trumpet teacher, Jeff Smiley. Within a few weeks of starting BE, I was playing with noticeably improved range and endurance. My playing took off like a shot. My private instructor was so impressed she bought the BE book for herself.

After working BE for almost a year, I mustered the confidence to introduce it to the horn community on a popular horn list. The reactions were mixed, some were skeptical, others were interested, and to my complete surprise, a few prominent horn players were downright hostile to this new method. I never- the-less continued to promote this method that had benefited me so much. By the fall of 2008, I had a following of 17 enthusiastic horn players who were working the BE program including two prominent professional performers, Paul Sharp and Andrew Joy. Many were asking me for instructions on how I adapted BE for horn. To make things more efficient, I notated it on a software program and with Jeff Smiley’s permission began to distribute my version of BE to horn players "on BE." Eventually as our numbers grew, Jeff Smiley asked me if I would take over sales & counseling for The Balanced Embouchure to horn players. I happily agreed. Now I have a list of over 70 horn players working BE. It’s been great fun.

Before I introduced BE to the horn world in 2007, BE was generally unknown to horn players. Today, I decided to see how many references I could find to BE on the web that related to horn. I’m tickled to see it infiltrating the horn world on many levels. Here are a few of the ones I found today:

www.juliashornpage.com/Home/tabid/36/BlogID/1/Default.aspx
http://www.uiowa.edu/~somhorn/resources/resources/resources/resourceslinksbasics.html

http://hornnotes.com/blog/?cat=18 (scroll down to "what teachers say")


"The Balanced Embouchure" for French Horn
Wells123456@juno.com