Hi Paul,

It sounds like you and I are facing similar challenges. I keep checking back to the horizontal squeezing of two fingers and it does result in a bigger, more relaxed sound. Throughout the Moderato stage I understood well enough what my embouchure and corners were doing. In Allegro, the horizontal movement has to be more pronounced to move to the higher harmonics, and unless my set up is exactly right it all goes pear-shaped. Now that I’ve realised that, I too am taking a step back to revisit the earlier exercises.

I think purely from a practical perspective your comments on strength also make sense. I’m certainly using muscles in a very different way to my old embouchure, and as I’m trying to play a lot more, those muscles are struggling to keep up. I suppose the caveat is that having stronger chops is pointless if you still don’t develop an efficient technique.