Mystery to Mastery › Forums › WindWorks › Keeping the Centre of the Lips Loose › Reply To: Keeping the Centre of the Lips Loose
I have similar thoughts about tension in the lips (around the black hole / aperture corners).
1. I take a full breath and then let the ribcage do the air pressure without extra tension (air coming all the way from the “bottom” with no extra muscle tension)
2. I have the mouthpiece in the standard position with the aperture opening set for a “G” in the first staff.
1+2 = I can play a soft scale from “#F” below the first staff, all the way up to “A” and sometimes “Bb” in the second staff. Here I´m hitting the roof, when no extra tension is used.
To go further upstairs, I need to push and a give more tension from the abdominals, I also feel that the setup of the MPC change a bit, tilting a very small degree forward-down, and the bottom lip tends to go a little bit inwards ( but not under the top lip). Sometimes it feels comfortable to open the top lip in such a way that the aperture opening is the same, but a part of the under/inner side of the top lip is working/vibrating against the to the MPC hole. Ugh…. difficult to explain…
I’m on a risky track, where the facial muscles wish to “smile” a little bit, which I of course do not allow…
-Can you give some advices how to tackle this issue. The overall understanding when listening to Greg and seeing him playing is that he nearly doesn´t need any extra push or tension when climbing high up in the register. How is it possible? How can you obtain airspeed in the aperture without extra push in the high register?