Watched the whole thing as well, thought it was great. Wow, that book is amazing.

I’ve been having a little difficulty again the past few days. I’ve been busy at work and have been just sort of rushing through a warm up, harmonic slurs and some scales each day.

Not sure if I’m losing muscle/endurance or going too fast through my practice sessions and not resting. I was still trying to touch the high points of my range, etc.

Was hoping for better sensations today, but didn’t happen.

Felt a little down, like I was “losing it” / my way again, but was patient and thought again about the basics, the fundamentals. I sensed I was kind of tending to move a bit towards clamping top-to-bottom again, slightly.

I focused on my aperture corners and did a thing where I started on Low C, then gradually relaxed my lips/corners and let the note “fall” to a pedal note, whatever it landed on without my manipulating, just completely relaxed lips and held that note out as long as the air lasted. Then I took a breath, started on the pedal then started gradually tightening my aperture corners (Ooooohhhh) and I ascended quite rapidly up to high C. I couldn’t resist compressing the air a bit with my lips and squeezing out an E, F and even a G. It felt a little different than normal, but good in a way. What was really interesting was that the aperture felt HUGE like there was a big hole like never before. I don’t know if I was playing with a bigger aperture, but it felt like it. It may have just been that the pedal relaxed my lips. But the sound did sound better and felt bigger/better.

I guess what my point is, that WindWorks works for me–focusing on the aperture corners especially is important for me. That always guides me back and gets me back on track.

I had been solidly progressing towards a good double G up until this week. Not sure what happened, maybe just didn’t play enough and was tied up at work, etc.

I’m sure I’ll get back to where I was if I’m patient and re-focus on the fundamentals.

Thanks Greg for all you’ve done for players like me. Couldn’t have done it without you.