Mouthpiece Placement, My Embouchure, and Yours
by Jeff Scott, IHS 55 Featured Artist
In my playing and teaching career, I’ve thought a lot about embouchures. It’s a fancy word for a simple thing: you put the mouthpiece on your lips, and you play. How could such a simple thing be so complicated?
I went through college and graduate school questioning my mouthpiece placement and mouthpiece size. I am African American, with fleshy lips, particularly my lower lip. I tried to position my mouthpiece the way my teachers suggested, but it never felt good. It just seemed impossible to get enough of my lower lip inside the rim of the mouthpiece. I have this distinct memory of my mouthpiece sliding down my upper lip as I tried to play and reposition to two-thirds upper, one-third lower.
Finally in my doctoral study, a saint entered my life: the late Jerome Ashby, Associate Principal Horn of the New York Philharmonic from 1979-2007. Mr. Ashby did two things for me that changed my life as a horn player.
First, he found a mouthpiece that worked for me. Mr. Ashby gave me a mouthpiece with a much larger interior dimension which allowed for more of my lower lip to fit. Most importantly, this extra space allowed the “sweet spot” of the embouchure, the aperture, to resonate (buzz) freely. I played a note, and it was like the heavens opened and revealed themselves to me! The right mouthpiece and rim made an enormous—and immediate—improvement in my horn playing.
Mr. Ashby also validated my technique. My setup is unconventional. To that point, in all the books on horn playing I’d read, I saw nothing on this topic. Mr. Ashby was the missing chapter that gave me confidence in my horn playing; he encouraged me to play like me.
My cardinal rule of embouchure now is this: be comfortable. Of course, some students come to me with a setup that is destined to cause problems. A typical scenario: a student has the mouthpiece too high (almost entirely on the upper lip) or too low (almost entirely on the lower lip). Such a student will typically have a discernably stronger and weaker range, combined with limited flexibility. A very slight adjustment to bring the mouthpiece higher or lower can work wonders in this situation. But it must be slight. Big changes create discomfort, and discomfort is the enemy of good horn playing.
I used to look at Philip Farkas’ book A Photographic Study of 40 Virtuoso Horn Players’ Embouchures and think, “None of these embouchures looks like mine.” But we all have different sized lips, different mouth shapes, different teeth settings. So, I have some advice for young horn players: find comfort. You may not set up the same way as your teacher (I certainly tell my students not to try to look like me when they play), and that is ok. If the comfortable spot for your embouchure is somewhat off center, that’s probably all right; some of the best brass players I know play a little off center. Also, what you see in the mirror when you play, and what your teacher observes when you play, does not tell the whole story. Things may look very different inside the mouthpiece than they look on the outside.
If you have a huge struggle to play low or high, you may need to make a change, but it should probably be a small change. Don’t be radical since that will take you away from comfort. If you do need to move the mouthpiece to a new position, you may have a temporary setback in accuracy, range, or endurance, or maybe all three. Work slowly to build back your comfort.
Talk with your teacher about mouthpieces. There are very few mouthpieces out there that feel comfortable to me, and you may have the same experience. I’m working with a mouthpiece maker right now, developing a prototype of a mouthpiece that feels perfect for me. But we’re all different. One thing is for sure, though: a mouthpiece that doesn’t fit your mouth will give you constant grief.
If you feel bad when you play the horn, you probably won’t sound very good. Work with your teacher to find comfort. Your lips should fit against the mouthpiece in a way that makes the instrument feel like it is a part of you, the way your head feels when it hits the pillow!
Once you have that all set, get practicing!
