Great videos, gents. Peter, that’s a great video. Definitely hard to explain or demonstrate, but that’s the gist.

I think people (not just you, Frances; others are and I did too) are getting caught up in following the setup a bit too literally. If you listen to what Greg says in the videos, he explains that it’s more about the sensation of how we approach the instrument.

He doesn’t mean we should say Ooooohhhh and put our lips against the mouthpiece in a puckered formation like many of us are doing initially.

The Oooohhhh is more about the sensation of the aperture corners, it helps us feel those muscles so we can engage them sort of like putting our finger on a trigger so that when we start releasing air and want to change the pitch, we can pull the trigger to tighten the aperture and release, etc.

Greg says we want to let the lips interact with the air like the vocal chords. They can interact best if they’re facing the air, not pushed up against the mouthpiece–we want the red fleshy part of the lips (for the most part) interacting with the air, not pressed up against the mouthpiece in a pucker.

And all of this should be and feel as natural as possible for each of us. We all have different thickness of our lips, teeth formations, etc.

It needs to be and feel as natural for each of us independently.

WindWorks, I think, isn’t meant to be followed literally every step of the way. It’s a brilliant set of guideposts for each of us to follow but we must interpret it for ourselves and understand what each bit represents.

MmmmmwwwwwAAAAAaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhOoooohhhhhh was covered in the other thread, but it’s more about sensations than anything.

I think both of you gents are very close to honing in on your “coffee moment” and optimal setting and catching up to me a bit, at least on the range.

What I do, what seems to work for me, is I place my lips on the mouthpiece relatively “normal” way but I am thinking MmmmmWWwwwwaaaahhhhhOooohhhh (to open up my throat, relax and engage the aperture corners). Then I release the air passively and as consistently as possible.

I’m at work now so don’t have the ability to do a video, but here’s one that I did the other day that may help show how I do it, for what it’s worth. It’s not my best work and it’s not a great example of WindWorks fundamentals or anything, but it may be helpful to you seeing an example of what I’m doing, what works for me, etc.

My understanding is that pulling the mouthpiece out of the horn helps us determine whether or not our aperture is open enough to avoid unecessary oscillation of the top lip too early in our range, wasting energy, endurance, etc. I do that to check my form.

I don’t know if it comes across in this video, but the sensation of harmonically slurring up to high C or even beyond is to me relatively effortless and smooth. I’m not using passive air to get above high C, I am compressing the air with my mouth, actually; I’m not using abdominal support.

I’m not posting this video as an instructional video, I’m not an instructor; don’t follow exactly what I’m doing, I was just screwing around, etc. But hopefully this will help show you a little insight into what works for me so you can understand WindWorks better, as I am trying to do myself.

https://youtu.be/lZQb7iOZfIE