Smiling :)

[XtremeEuph]

Yes, when I first learned euph, (grade 6 and up) I remember my director always told the brass players to smile..........if i needed to blow more air or something she might look at me and say smile more.

[Rick F]

Yes, when I first learned euph, (grade 6 and up) I remember my director always told the brass players to smile.

I think this advice of 'smiling' to get high notes was told to trumpter players. At least when I played trumpet (almost 50 years ago) that was the advice I was given.

Faster air makes more sense because it will get the lips to vibrate or buzz faster AND with more air, the tone will be richer or fuller for those high notes.

[XtremeEuph]

no , the smiling had nothing to do with high notes, she was just making me do it for ....i dunno what she thought was "proper technique" or something.....maybe tone?

[LoyalTubist]

I started playing with a smile when I began playing the tuba some 37 years ago. It gave me sort of a Spike Jones trombone sound.

When I began studying with Gene Pokorny, he broke me of that awful embouchure. You should always have a hole (aperture) when you play, even for the high notes. Buzzing the lips may be a good thing for trumpet players, but I developed my chops by keeping my embouchure open all the way up high.

[Rick F]

It gave me sort of a Spike Jones trombone sound.

Yikes! Everytime I hear the name 'Spike Jones' I picture that gawd-awful plaid jacket or suit he always wore. I'm sure glad this was before color TV.

[XtremeEuph]

Ok ive been sitting in front of a mirror (AKA looking at my reflection in the bell) and i dont understand how you CANT make a smile while playing higher......how are you supposed to tighten your lips if you can move your cheek muscles back one bit? Are you suppposed to pucker your lips?

[LoyalTubist]

It gave me sort of a Spike Jones trombone sound.

Yikes! Everytime I hear the name 'Spike Jones' I picture that gawd-awful plaid jacket or suit he always wore. I'm sure glad this was before color TV.

I have every hit record he made. I wrote a biography about Country Washburn, who was Spike's first tuba player. Country was actually too mellow to be a City Slicker. He finished his career as a daytime music conductor at Columbia Square in Hollywood (CBS West Coast Headquarters until Television City opened.) He was born about the same time as Min Leibrook whose hard living killed him. (Maybe he would have made a good City Slicker, except that he died about the time Spike was setting up that group.)

And your signature comment about the desert... I will be moving to the area around Joshua Tree National Park this summer. I like the area.

[iiipopes]

Ok ive been sitting in front of a mirror (AKA looking at my reflection in the bell) and i dont understand how you CANT make a smile while playing higher......how are you supposed to tighten your lips if you can move your cheek muscles back one bit? Are you suppposed to pucker your lips?

Go check out the Dwerden website. His analogy is to make your embouchure like a "fish mouth," kind of like the way a catfish looks. Remember, muscles get their strength from compression or contraction, not from stretching. If you smile, all you do is stretch your lip embouchure muscles, which actually takes away muscle tone, while if you firm up the corners, you help focus the embouchure so that it has the ability to vibrate faster. It's physics: frequency is inversely proportional to compliance. It's the same reason when you hit a bar of metal it has a higher pitch than when you hit a same sized block of wood.

[Roger Lewis]

Here.

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