I’ve always played wet, FWIW. As may be evident from some of my other posts, I “geeked out” pretty hard a couple years ago on trumpet embouchures and read, in addition to WindWorks / Greg’s material, some material by others.
In his book “The Art of Brass Playing”, Phillip Farkas devotes an entire chapter (albeit, only a couple of pages long) on “Moist vs. Dry Lips”. Farkas estimated that approximately 75% of players preferred wet lips, as did he, but acknowledged the fact that several fine players preferred dry lips. In his book, he outlines the pros vs cons of both.
You might want to check it out.
Some of his points Against dry lips are:
1. The mouthpiece tends to stick to the first spot it’s placed on and it’s difficult to maneuver to a slightly more ideal spot based on how things feel / sound.
2. “The very act of bracing the dry lips against the mouthpiece for aid in obtaining high notes acts as a crutch in preventing the most complete development of the lips. Should the lips inadverdently become moist, they will slip out of the mouthpiece upom attempting high notes, not having the inherent strength to obtain them without that crutch–that necessity to adhere themselves to the mouthpiece rim.”
He goes on further to explain how he believes that using wet lips allows a player to fully develop his embouchure such that he’s using the correct muscles to keep the lips in place, rather than relying on dry lips to do so.
I found #2 particularly interesting. Having not played dry, it’s kind of hard for me to relate to this. However, I think I more or less “get it”.
I am wondering if the player you mention you took lessons from was Kurt Thompson (Trumpet Sizzle)? I watched a couple of his videos on YouTube and recall he mentioned that he advocates playing dry.
Hope this is helpful, FWIW.
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