Embouchure and Aperture

Some thoughts on a recent post.

A recent post – Embouchure and Airstream – features YouTube slow-motion videos of trombone embouchures in action. These videos have jogged old memories from lessons past and they have called into question my thinking about embouchure aperture.

In the Art of French Horn Playing, author Philip Farkas writes about aperture – the opening between the lips where the airstream flows. He illustrates the opening as resembling an oboe reed – a shape resembling this:

Implicit in his writing – and in many other brass pedagogical writings – is that this opening can be consciously controlled. These slow-motion videos indicate otherwise.

Flashback

Years ago when I was a young student, a very prominent teacher once asked me “what keeps the aperture open?”

“The corner and chin muscles,” I answered.

“Wrong,” he flatly stated. “It is the air. You cannot control the aperture.”

He illustrated this by asking me to show him my aperture.

“Now try to buzz your lips,” he asked. I did and he pointed out this — right before I began lip buzzing that I actually closed my jaw a little to bring the lips back together.

“It is the air that creates the aperture. There is very little you can do to control that opening and there is little point in worrying about it. You must play by sound, not by feel,” he advised.

At the time, I did not pay too much attention to this information; this particular teacher would occasionally resort to hyperbole to make dramatic points and so sometimes I took his advice with a grain of salt.

After looking at these new Youtube slow-motion videos several times now, I must now agree with him. While it is possible to observe and control other aspects of the facial musculature, the embouchure aperture is not among these.

Aperture is a by-product of the airstream passing through closed lips (but open teeth). In this regard, I tend to agree with Julia Rose’s comment on Farkas:

I feel that while Farkas paid great detail to embouchure, he didn’t pay enough attention to breathing, and Jacobs’ philosophy doesn’t stress embouchure mechanics enough for a horn player. I now think that the perfect way to approach horn playing would be to take the Farkas approach (with its excellent embouchure discussion) and combine it with a Jacobs approach (with excellent breathing/musicality discussion).

Indeed, this seems like the most logical and practical approach.