Hey Colin & fellow trumpeters

Nice to see so much positive advice! I recognise the issue with the corners inwards, I myself did not get the results I expected so I still was missing something… When I raised in the staff, my tone became crunchy and unstable. I decided to take a little break from Windworks to search on the internet for other approaches.

A couple of weeks ago I (re)watched a video by Charlie Porter on how to form an embouchure. I had seen it years ago and had tried out his 4-step set-up for an embouchure, but at the time I didn’t stick with it.

Now I have and in about 3 weeks it really changed the way I approache the trumpet (and embouchure set-up). I forced myself to repeat these 4 steps again and again (took me some time to really incorporate it) just on the visualiser and realised it brought me to a set-up that must be similar to Greg’s aaa – oooo based set-up. So you could say: nothing new till this point, but a little bit further there came a passage in the video (around 34:20) that really hit me. It gave me more details on HOW to move the muscles (shape) to get into the high register. Not only should the corners move towards the center of the lips, but the upper lip also needs to make a movement UP simultanuously and I realised I didn’t do that at all. So the movement up makes sure the aperture stays open and when I concentrate on that movement the tone clear while ascending.

I really don’t want to confuse anybody with an additional approach, but I post this because I believe it could provide an extra angle to those who need it. Just as Greg Spence, Charlie Porter is a very open and respected trumpet player who is able to explain things in a clair way.

Now I apply the 4-steps approach every time I lift the horn, and concentrating on te movement UP from the upper lip (beside the inward movement) I get to experiment with a complete new feeling. I’ll give this a couple of weeks extra (it’s really fun to experiment doing larger lip slurs) before getting back on the Windworks-horse.

Anyway, this could be helpful for some! For me it feels like a game-changer 😉
Please let me know if any of you watched this or another Charlie Porter-video and how you experienced it.

Have fun!
Tom

Video Charlie Porter