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Does placement on the lips really matter. My mouthpiece is placed a little bit to the left and I have heard from different people that placement doesn't matter. I have also heard that the mouth piece must be placed in the center or your going to run into problems.

Is there any truth in these statements? Does it really matter? Has anyone had success playing with an off center mouthpiece?

Any informantion regarding this helps.

Thanks for reading

as long as the mouthpiece is somewhere near your head, you'll be ok.

I think it depends on how extreme it is. You say "a little bit", so maybe you are playing to the true center of your orbicularis oris. I would not address it, unless you are not playing into the center of that musculature.

I played with an extremely off center placement for 12 years. It was to the left. Everyone told me that it wasn't an issue. I was a top chair player at a decent music institution, was an all-stater, had performed in several touring groups, etc. I am/was not the greatest tuba player in the world, but was an above average collegiate tubist. I was told by numerous teachers and peers to work on exercises that did this and did that, etc. By 2006, my range had diminished to only 2 octaves and I had a horrible quiver in my lips. I had pushed myself so hard with the incorrect mechanics I had an embouchure meltdown. Honestly, those people were completely wrong and misguided me.

In 2007 a teacher finally sat me down and told me I HAD to change if I was going to be even moderately successful on my instrument and if I wanted to continue within music performance. It was a tough decision. I dug in, discovered Reinhardt's writings and Pops McLaughlin, and focused on getting it right. It took over 2 years to even be at 50% of what I was before. Even at the Tucson ITEC, I had so much trouble playing, I didn't even really test play any instruments. During that period of time I only gave one performance that wasn't in a larger ensemble (a duet with my very understanding friend Matt Gray).

My advice is, that if it is noticeably off center, move it to the center. Your orbicularis oris is a sphincter, so it does matter, and it does have a center. Playing off of the center of that sphincter leads to a whole body of mechanical issues. Eventually you will hit a brick wall, or your entire embouchure will crash and burn. Playing into the center of that muscle, doesn't necessarily mean you will be playing centered as appears on the outside. Muscle and body symmetry isn't common, so you will have to closely examine what you are doing to see.

I think up/down placement is more of a thing directed by your nose and over/under bite, as well as some other anatomical things. So I speak of "centered" terms meaning left to right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc4jS2-tF8s" target="_blank

Tubaryan12 wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc4jS2-tF8s" target="_blank

Relates more to up down than left right, but good stuff. The Reinhardt/Elliot/DaveW stuff is awesome, I probably wouldn't even be a musician today without it!

Wes, I'm glad it worked out for you but I disagree with some of your logic.

The "center" of the orbicularis oris, or the teeth, or the nose, or anything else is not really important at all. What's important is the center of where it works best. I have seen players who play to the side who would do better to move toward the center some... and I've also seen plenty of players who need to go farther to the side. I'm one of them... I used to play in the middle but I play far better and more consistently placing far to my left.

Doug Elliott wrote:Wes, I'm glad it worked out for you but I disagree with some of your logic.

The "center" of the orbicularis oris, or the teeth, or the nose, or anything else is not really important at all. What's important is the center of where it works best. I have seen players who play to the side who would do better to move toward the center some... and I've also seen plenty of players who need to go farther to the side. I'm one of them... I used to play in the middle but I play far better and more consistently placing far to my left.

No worries! Discussion and discourse is the best part. I can easily listen to differing viewpoints on the subject, especially in comparison to many of the things we hear on tubenet and in the tuba world. "Just play music and it all fixes itself" type stuff is rampant, but a lot of times it DOESN'T fix itself.

I would venture to guess that "where it works" best is the center point of that ring of muscles. I say this, because that is the strongest most focused point of any sphincter group of muscles. A low emittance x-ray (technically a roentgenoscope if I remember correctly) clearly showed that my focal point of that muscular ring was almost dead center. Of the 9 other people that were there, even those that played slightly left or right, their focal point matched their mouthpiece placement almost exactly. So centered in my terms is the middle of that muscle group not the middle of the face (necessarily). This observation and personal experience has left me feeling that playing in the center of that muscle group is important. Even when I played all the way out of the left side, that focal point on the x-ray was right smack dab in the middle. We goofed off quite a bit with the x-ray machine, doing some freebuzzing (your style, Doug), kelly mouthpiece stuff, puckering, etc and it all pretty much showed that same defined focal point in the same spot. The anomalie being, to me, that those even who did not appear to have a centered placement, had a centered placement where it mattered.

Playing out of the extreme left side of my mouth meant that playing with a downstream embouchure in the low range was almost impossible because the muscles were so tight (because the actual focus/aperture was far right of that point). So I did this twisting flip in my low range. It sat in the most common area of playing for our instrument, the gravy range if you will. I think that flip and switching air streams mid range was my ultimate downfall and lead to the self destruct sequence. I am naturally a IIIA type and that awkward flip definitely didn't help things.

I'd also love to recreate that setting into a true experiment, but I doubt that you could find a way to do it where you were being responsible and were using the x-ray machine under correct guidelines and health precautions. Definitely not our brightest moment.

Also, what is the use of the pucker and pucker exercises for a IIIA, if not to empower the terminus of that sphincter muscle? When you make a pucker, it naturally moves to the strong point of the muscle group.

ShoelessWes wrote:Also, what is the use of the pucker and pucker exercises for a IIIA, if not to empower the terminus of that sphincter muscle? When you make a pucker, it naturally moves to the strong point of the muscle group.

Interesting, but I doubt it would hold true for a larger sample including all brass players. For smaller mouthpieces, trumpet and trombone, I think the dermining factors in ideal placement would largely include a solid foundation on the teeth, which does not necessarily correlate with the center of the sphincter as you described it. It's about more than just strength.