Face Based vs Air Based Playing

When we play we get most of our feedback from our chops.  We hear players say ‘my chops are messed up today’ or ‘my lips feel thick’ or tired or dry or whatever. We rarely say ‘I think my tongue is not quite in the right position’ or my breathing isn’t being controlled from the right place today.’ And that’s a pity.

We get most of our feedback from playing from our faces. If our chops are tired we feel defeated. If our chops feel good it feels miraculous. Unfortunately this also means that we focus our attention on our embouchure instead of our breathing.

The main focus of Left Coast Horn Playing is to train your mind and your body to focus on the air, not the embouchure

It takes a combination of a strong and correctly formed embouchure,  proper breathing both in and out and the correct shape and texture in the mouth and throat to play well. Most players concentrate on the chops both while they practice and when they play in an ensemble, ignoring their breathing. Many teachers are guilty of having their students work on drills, etudes and solos and excerpts and never mentioning how to breath other than an occasional truly confusing comment about diaphragmatic breathing.

How you take the air in and blow it out is more important than having a good embouchure.  One can play well with a misshapen or ignored embouchure but without breathing correctly one cannot play well.

To divert our brains’ attention from our chops we need to concentrate on breathing. There seems to be an equilibrium between how much work the air does and how much the chops do. If our faces work really hard then the air can’t be doing it’s job. If the air does its job the face can relax an amazing amount.

We want the shape of our mouth when we play to funnel the air to the point where the sound is being made - the center of our upper lip. This target is the flap of lip that actually moves and creates the sound.  Focusing the air anywhere else or not focusing the air is inefficient and produces an unstable, airy sound.

Getting the focal width of your air the same as your aperture will, if aimed at the aperture, be the most efficient way to play.

The most important factor in breathing correctly is which muscles in the body are used to draw the air in and to blow it out.

It’s easy to demonstrate how important this is. I say, ‘I am going to play like a beginner’ and then play like a 7th grader. Then I play like a high school freshman, then a senior, then a good college student then a professional. The only thing I change is which muscles I use to take the air in:

7th grader: I take a quick snort through my nose
Senior: I take a slightly longer breath into my throat and a little into my chest
College student: Controlled by the muscles at the bottom of the rib cage
Professional: I use the ab muscles right below my belly button.

It is the length of the air in the body that determines not only the tone quality and color but that enables us to focus on the air and all but forget about embouchure.

Some great horn players will say to breath naturally. Those same players tend to be large men who take huge breaths when they play. I think what they really mean is to have relaxed muscles pulling the air in.

You’ll note in some of the Left Coast exercises there are notes marked sffz. These notes should be hammered! Play them as loud as possible with sudden contractions of your abdominal muscles, as if someone had punched you in the stomach and you harden the muscles to protect yourself. This is an exercise to learn control and gain some strength in your abdomen, so hit them hard and don’t be tasteful.

These are Annoy Your Neighbor drills. Blast those notes! Don’t worry about tone color or if it goes to the wrong pitch. That’s ok but playing them quietly or weakly is not!

Chop Management

Wouldn’t it be great if most of the time you never thought about your embouchure? This is what happens when you concentrate on your breathing and shaping the air. Eventually the embouchure learns to take care of itself. It will still get tired and some days will be better than others but playing will be more about making music than just worrying if your chops will last long enough.

If you have not read the section on breathing do that before you read this. None of this is worthwhile if you are not working on your breathing.

Great breath control can make a player with a mediocre embouchure a fine player. If your air control is not developed then the world’s greatest embouchure won’t make you a good player.

Understand what your chops do

Like a violin string the part of your lip inside the mouthpiece should be held in place firmly at the ends and flexible in the middle.

Just as a violinist has to drag the bow at the correct place on the string we need to focus our airstream at the correct place on the lips. This place is called the target.

The target is at the lowest point of your upper lip. To find it open your mouth without making an embouchure and put something thin like a pencil or the shank of your mouthpiece in your mouth horizontally and close your mouth. The place where the object is touching your upper lip is the target.

The flesh at the target should be relaxed and flexible. It can be stretched by the muscles at the corners of the mouth pulling away from each other but the lip inside the mouthpiece should not be tense. 

Strengthening the Right Muscles

The right muscles to strengthen are at the corners of the mouth. If you make the biggest frown that you can, the muscles that pull your lips down at the corners are the muscles we are talking about.  These muscles act like the pegs and tuners on a violin, holding it tight at the ends and increasing the tension when needed.

These muscles can be strengthened the same way any other muscles can but we have to remember that they were not designed to play a brass instrument. Our chop muscles are small and weak to begin with. It’s important to take it slow and easy when building the muscles up.

Your lips muscles burn fuel from your blood and create waste products including water and lactic acid.  When you use a muscle a lot the acid builds up faster than the blood can get it out of there so it burns the muscle. When this starts to happen your brain gets a signal saying ‘help!’ and the brain stops using the muscle. This is the feeling we get when our lips are so tired we can’t go on.

But there is good news. When you sleep your body fills in the holes the acid left in your muscles with - more muscle! This is what makes weightlifters’ muscles so huge. They routinely burn the muscles and let them build. We can do the same thing.

You can use a pencil or a mouthpiece or anything and hold it in your lips (no teeth!) as long as you can. When you can’t hold it up anymore rest for a few minutes and do it again. Do this daily and you’ll feel your chops get stronger and stronger.

Long tones are great for strengthening the chops. Make sure you are warmed up. Start in your mid range and hold a note as long as possible. Decrescendo through the whole note but keep a good tone.

At first do four or five notes at the end of your practice day. Hold them as long and as quietly as you can with a good tone.

As you get stronger go up by by thirds.

When you feel quite strong, instead of one note play an arpeggio and slur up a half step from the top note and hold that note as long as possible.