You’re welcome, Peter. Thanks for posting that video, it was great. I saw another part of that but not that section. Definitely supports Greg’s teachings.

My focus on passive air is because I believe it will ensure I’m using proper and consistent form.

Active air support could be used as a crutch to open up a collapsed aperture due to clamping down from the top-to-bottom like a clam rather than from the sides.

It’s amazing how high you can go with passive air if you have proper form and tighten the aperture from the outside corners inward.

When I do push the air lately, I’ve been doing it with my mouth rather than my abdominal muscles and I get up to E and F above high C that way.

I don’t push the mouthpiece against the lips, but ironically when you tighten the aperture from the sides you push your lips towards the mouthpiece. It’s almost as if the higher you go (the tighter the aperture), the more lip is in the mouthpiece.

I was thinking tonight while watching the above video that I think the muscles that push our lips down top to bottom (like a clam) are much stronger than the muscles at the sides/aperture corners are. I think the “strength” of the corners that is built from exercises is more of an endurance strength rather than strength. If I recall correctly, long muscle fibers are more for endurance whereas short muscle fibers are more for strength. Perhaps the muscles on the outside of the mouth are more endurance oriented / long muscle fibers. Maybe someone will know.

I also noted how Vizzuti talked about keeping the top middle lip relaxed as possible and only having as much firmness as necessary on the outside edge–like a ligature on a reed (i.e. woodwinds).

Played tonight, BTW, after work and thankfully had Great sensations and felt and sounded great, back to playing with relative ease up to the top of my range up to F above high C (with a little kick of air from the mouth). I can’t say I was focused or disciplined in my practice tonight, but I didnt’ descend into “Gladiator” mode or anything. I think it was productive and left me in a good state of mind for tomorrow.

And all the postings on the forum, etc. I think helped me focus my understanding of what I was supposed to be doing as I played. I definitely had the sensation tonight of the corners propping up the top lip from the sides, keeping it from collapsing and opening up the aperture wider and creating a more resonant sound and ability to push more air through the aperture (more volume), etc.