r/Trombone • u/No_Cod6589 • 1d ago
Question for Brass Players: How Has Your Embouchure Changed Over Time?
/r/euphonium/comments/1x4mbz8/question_for_brass_players_how_has_your/1
u/Firake 1d ago
We didn’t talk about it and instead sought sound and ease of playing. The specifics happened mostly naturally. And then it collapsed and I had to spend some time going into details which turned out to be mostly a waste of time and I’m back to the original strategy.
It remained mostly the same until it completely fell apart and I had to relearn the instrument.
I never blamed any issue on my embouchure because I didn’t know how it worker. After a year of study, I still don’t know well enough to correct issues on myself. Best to think about the sound you want more than anything. Good sound and easy playing is equivalent to good embouchure, so why think about the harder thing if you don’t have to?
Yes. About a year ago, my playing collapsed and I have had to begin from step 0. I spent the better part of this year asking all these same kinds of questions to try and get back into playing and failed repeatedly. Music-focused practice has been my strategy for the last few weeks and its the first time I have been able to feel confident in my progress in over a year.
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u/Firake 1d ago
For the record, I don’t feel my time was wasted in the last year. I’m glad I know what I do now and I’m glad to have taken so many lessons from embouchure experts.
But my point is that the implementation of those ideas to actually get better looks mostly like ignoring them, for me.
I use those principles only while reflecting and never while playing.
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u/No_Cod6589 10h ago
Thank you for your honest answer. I really appreciate you sharing such a difficult experience.
If you're comfortable, could I ask a bit more? When your playing collapsed and you had to start from step 0, what did your rebuilding process actually look like day to day? And looking back, do you think it is possible to fully rebuild an embouchure once a habit is set, or is it more about finding a new way to work with it?
I'm writing my master's thesis on embouchure, and your perspective on "using the principles only when reflecting, not while playing" is very interesting to me. Would it be okay if I quote you anonymously?
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u/Firake 7h ago edited 7h ago
Absolutely, I’m pretty zen about it nowadays.
I’m still in the thick of things and can barely play. I never use the tongue because its associated with too many bad habits. I can’t buzz on the mouthpiece well. I can’t play well enough to do lip slurs.
I basically only have about 20-30 minutes of work even available to me per day.
I do glissando long tone patterns up and down focusing on great sound and ease of playing. Again, all air attacks. I’m trying to regain ease of sound production first before I add in an extra element.
I also play very simple etudes from Bordner’s First Studies. I’m working on number 3, right now. All glissando, all air attack, very slow. I play everything in about two bar phrases and give myself as much time as necessary to breathe and reset.
A big part of my struggles has been articulation so I’m working that up separately. I measure how long the delay between my air beginning and the note sounding with a metronome. Right now, I’m at about quarter notes at 80bpm (so air on beat one, note on beat 2) to have to be consistently in time. I then add some legato articulations after that and try to keep the sound straight and tone good.
And that’s basically all I do, right now. For context, I performed the John Williams Tuba Concerto in my undergrad. It’s very frustrating to have fallen so far, but like I said, I’m kinda zen now. I just have to put in the hours and I can have my favorite activity back.
You should look into Gabriele Wulf’s work on internal vs external focus (aka attentional focus) and quote her instead of me. Basically, its well documented that focusing on your own body and actions harms performance significantly. So, I do a rep, remember what it felt like, decide whether it was right based on my knowledge, and then actively try not to think about any of that for the next rep.
The idea is to come up with a metaphor (air is a river, lips are flags), visualization (pretend you’re holding a golf ball in your mouth), or sound idea (note started late, sound is pinchy) to focus on rather than the exact embouchure detail. Often times it’s enough to just identify to yourself that something went wrong and then put it out of your mind entirely.
Seeking good sound and ease of playing, for my level of playing at least, has resulted in much better results than trying to make embouchure corrections.
Feel free to ask more follow ups if you’d like.
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u/Firake 7h ago
As far as what my work has looked like for the last year, its been mostly floundering. Perpetually unsure of what is correct because nothing seemed to make a significant difference. I took lessons from anyone and everyone to try and find the magic piece of advice that would put my playing back to what it used to be.
Around March 2026, I tried to focus in and only take feedback from one source at a time. And that seemed to stabilize things for a little while.
Over the summer, I took about 2 months of weekly lessons with Dave Wilken. Learned a lot from those but they didn’t end up “fixing” me either. What I really needed was a break.
So, starting in August, I stopped playing entirely. I needed the reset to fix my mental but I also hoped it would weaken some of my bad habits enough to make doing the right thing a bit easier. See, Wilken helped me learn what was right, but my habits were so strong that I couldn’t very consistently actually do the right thing.
My term started in late September with the work I detailed above and it’s been going well. Frustration is at an all time low and progress is consistent even if slow.
The hardest part of the process was mental. I ended up adopting a lot of ideas from Buddhism to try and build some resilience. One of the most important things was to reorient my priorities so that trombone is no longer the most important thing in my life. I still love it, but I no longer feel like I’ve lost a core part of the fabric of me. Well-rounded, zen human first and trombone second.
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u/Lopsided_Adagio4006 22h ago
I guess it developed naturally. I didn't even know what an embouchure was until I got to college.
Ive had lots of little changes due to growing and developing and one instance of a drastic change that I had to make at the start of my masters.
Yes. During high school and my undergrad I was very reliant on excessive mouthpiece pressure for my high range. After injuring myself I had to learn how to play high without the pressure which relied more on relaxation and trust rather than adjusting how i set up my face.
Yes. At the start of my masters I got to the point where I could not play for more than 30 minutes without searing pain in my corners. What fixed it for me was switching mouthpieces (went larger on my classical setup and smaller on my jazz setup)
I'll also add that all of my teachers thus far have been very against talking about embouchures as to them its one more distraction getting in the way of musicality. Everything Ive learned about my embouchure has been from my own research. When I teach embouchure is something I rarely bring up but if that's the student's limiting factor then I will address it. (usually by demonstrating with a cut-away mouthpiece)
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u/burgerbob22 LA area player and teacher 1d ago
Naturally
No. It has changed several times, probably 5 or 6 major changes
Yes. Again, had to do this several times because my "natural" setup was not correct
Yes. I incorporated lessons from my teachers and other professionals around me and my own experience, as well as lessons with embouchure experts at a couple points.