Was thinking of this thread this morning as I was warming up.

I’ve been facing a bit of a backslide into clamping down top to bottom rather than tightening from the aperture corners / sides and overblowing.

I think I’ve been focused more on results than process as I had been having great results and progressing towards a strong loud double G, when suddenly I began feeling less and less sure of High C, E, F and experiencing a thinner sound and less secure feeling.

This morning was interesting. I started off by focusing on placing my mouthpiece doing the tissue concept and putting the mouthpiece on my lips, follwed by the horn.

I did some low C’s and G’s on the staff and checked that I wasn’t actively buzzing; all good.

Warmed up a bit with a little stamp scales, then went into some harmonic slurs–focusing on passive air (not blowing) and engaging the aperture corners and had GREAT sensations, easily ascended up to High C and beyond almost effortlessly.

THEN, on my next harmonic slur upward, I ran into issues before High C. I think I sort of got excited that I got back to where I was then focused on blowing harder and clamped down in the middle again–I shifted from focusing on process to results.

I realized that I need to change my mentality from feeling good when I hit a note at the top of the harmonic slur–just because I hit a note doesn’t mean I’m playing correctly.

I started focusing my mind instead on focusing on the sensation and how freely, not on what notes I was hitting directly–I would reflect on that afterwards. I also stopped ending the slur at the top–just slurring up to see how high I could go; I wasn’t really trying to do a range exercise, but that’s effectively what my actions were which brings me to another point–I need to be more structured with my practice!

Harmonic slurs are great and important and when done right can reinforce the right things, but if our minds are focused on the wrong things they become something different altogether. I wasn’t quite in a Gladiator Trumpet mode, but effectively I was just seeing how high I could go and that was messing with my head.

This morning and the past week or 2 battling through this last sort of setback has actually been good, I think, as it’s forced me to really focus and reflect on what I’m doing. I thought I had it down but while I was playing consistently, I was just sort of playing by feel and that can apparently come and go–unfortunately. I suppose I’ll never cross over a line which I’ll never have another problem playing ever again–I’m always going to have to be diligent in understanding what it is I’m doing and why. Some players may just naturally “get it” and never have issues. But I know even some “natural” greats have battled issues from time to time.

This experience has also made me really respect the WindWorks approach even more, as it’s really made me realize WHY it starts with the mouth and blowing the tissue, then the airstream, then corners engaging as we play the leadpipe.

And it made me realize how the Harmonic Slur challenge is so key–harmonic slurs can tell us if we’re playing efficiently or not. If our corners aren’t feeling the burn after playing a lot, we’re not using the right muscles–we’re probably clamping down top-to-bottom (middle) and bashing our face against the mouthpiece and overblowing—like I was.

As I did my hour commute this morning, I was doing a thing with my lips–clamping down top-to-bottom, then engaging the corners and tightening from the sides.

It amazed me how subtle the difference was. If we think about it, that’s obvious / makes sense. Our lips are small (some of ours more than others…). The difference between engaging our lips in the middle and clamping down top-to-bottom and not engaging the corners, versus engaging the corners and tightening from the sides and letting the middle stay relaxed is tiny! It seems so minimal and insignificant of a difference.

And while we’re focusing on the air, what notes we’re playing, moving the valves up and down, articulating, it’s even more imperceptible–impossible to perceive!

Yet, it is THE difference. It makes all the difference.

I started doing a thing as I was driving in (safely…I was still looking at the road…). My commute is, for a stretch, through a construction zone and is a 10-15mph stop and go thing.

I put my fingers up to my mouth, took a breath and let the air out passively and focused closely on clamping down top to bottom from the middle as I arched my tongue (aaaahhhh, eeeeeeeee), then a 2nd time while thinking “Ooooohhhhhh” and engaging the corners from the sides and tightening the lips towards the center of the aperture.

While very imperceptible when doing the movement with my lips closed/together, each of these felt much different–engaging the aperture corners resulted in my lips pushing against my fingers and was a firmer/more secure feeling and the air didn’t cut off as soon as with clamping down top to bottom.

Part of the air cutting off could probably be cured from starting with the lips farther apart; but the 2nd felt better.

And, what was interesting is that even the 2nd one (engaging the corners), the air cut off at the “top” (the tightest setting) as my lips kind of touched–this sensation seemed familiar to me like when I’ve “bottomed out” on a shallow mouthpiece and made me think/realize that even when engaging the corners, we can still tighten the aperture to a point in which the lips cut the air off. Even when engaging the aperture corners, we must balance the embouchre to tighten enough to compress the air as much as possible to go as high as possible without cutting the air off completely–seems obvious as I type that, but seems like with everything going on while trying to play it’s a point of clarification, at least for me.

Anyway hope that stream of consciousness is helpful to some other human being(s) out there. If not, I apologize. And, if I said anything that was technically wrong, please correct me as I am obviously on this journey as well and am still in the process of finding my way.