Thanks so much for your response. I greatly appreciate it.

At first I thought I could make some significant improvements by not changing my embouchure and just focusing on air, shape, and relaxation. That’s great to a point, but after one year, it helped me notice my tension problems and play slightly more efficiently with a tiny improvement in endurance since I’m aware of adding the extra tension.

Changing my lip position is where I’m struggling right now. My current set is good, but inefficient, probably like 90% of trumpet players in the world.

I can’t seem to get my lips to make the ooh position to raise the pitch. I thought it helped to have my left hand make the “closing” position as I did the largo exercises, then using a mirror and taping myself. But that only confirmed that my bottom lip is curling in to raise the pitch.

So, I did the exercises anyway and didn’t think about results, just the process. I did them in the car on long drives to gigs, while watching TV, in the shower, while running, hiking, waiting in line etc. and I got really good at doing the exercises without the horn.

But while placing the mouthpiece over the airstream to actually play, the mouthpiece has to sit on the inside of my bottom lip. Again, no thoughts about results even though it feels weird and sounds horrible. Process process process.

After a year? I got somewhat decent at playing low C and maybe doing efficient lip slurs from second line G to third space C with a bad bad sound. But the main problem is even with the new setting, I see that my bottom lip is still trying to curl in but it can’t since the mouthpiece is holding it down. I can’t seem to break that habit to raise the pitch, not even from low C to C#.