I’m no expert and learning this myself but for what its worth this is how I buzz the leadpipe. I don’t play with lips forward. I think this is more of an exercise to get a feeling of engaged corners with the centre of the lips relaxed and open. If I am wrong I am sure Greg will correct me. This is how I do it. First I put my lips together in there normal relaxed position with my teeth aligned and slightly apart. No tension. No smile. No pinching. Then I let the centre of the lips open slightly and engage the corners. This feels like the lips are in a position to cool soup. This engaging of aperture corners feels like an inward movement. Now place the mouthpiece on these relaxed lips. Take a relaxed breath and just release air through the lead pipe. Don’t try to make a buzz. It should feel like your doing nothing. Do this again but this time slowly engage the aperture corners more and an effortless buzz should just happen. At first forget about the tongue. Just do breath attacks. The centre of the lips remain apart in the mouthpiece no touching. I hope I haven’t confused you and this description of my setup helps.

I’m glad you posted an update, I’ve been thinking about you / wondering how you’re doing–which is odd, because I don’t know you but I care and relate to what you’re going through. While I may in some ways be farther along on my discovery than you, I’m just an amateur / comeback player and I have limited time to devote to practicing.

And I’m frustrated too–it comes and goes, but I’ve been in and of a funk this past week or two. I’m fighting some frustration and doubt myself, but I do feel better / more confident this time. Last December/January, I dropped to a new low and almost gave up for good and throught about throwing my 30+ year old Bach Strad across the room. I’m sure my wife and daughter wouldn’t have mind my giving it up in some ways.

Thankfully, I stuck it out and found my way again.

I’m actually encountering a lesser version of that setback–the engagement of the aperture corners is a very subtle thing. I’ve realized that I sometimes slightly revert back towards clamping down top-to-bottom rather than squeezing the aperture corners from the sides and leaving the middle free to oscillate.

What’s helping me get out of it is:

1) I’ve gone back and am watching “Greg’s greatest hits” (i.e. Largo, etc)

2) Patience – If I am not approaching my practice session in a good state of mind with ZERO expectations, I stop and put the horn down and walk away. Had to do that this morning, actually. Caught myself in a bad mindset and kept my session short. Will try playing some music tonight, just mellow/lyrical stuff, no high notes.

3) Relaxation – I ran across an exercise online that I kind of made my own and it’s done some interesting things for me. I start on a low C, then relax my aperture slowly and “land” on whatever pedal I land on. That exercise, along with my first ever read of Claude Gordon’s Brass Playing is No Harder Than Deep Breathing” has helped me realize I wasn’t playing pedals right before, I was manipulating my lips a ton to get them in tune. For this exercise, I just land and let my air sigh out till I’m done. Then I take a good relaxed breath (BCH), start back on the pedal for a couple beats then slowly begin tightening the aperture corners inward and ascending up through my range. This has resulted in my playing with a more open / resonant sound and apparently a more open aperture–it’s made me realize that I was clamping even though I didn’t think I was anymore.

4) Playing music–stuff that’s more lyrical, no high notes. Malice Toward None and stuff like that. Just going for purity of tone, resonance. That helps me think about how what I’m doing is either helping or hurting the sound and helping me refine from there. The 1% rule–the guiding principle on all we do should, for the most part, be purity of sound. Obviously fast harmonic slurs sound like shit, but that’s ok because the ends justify the means. I’m talking about the setup we use and basic aperture engagement/movement, tongue level, etc.

5) Really focusing on the whole Less Is More thing–at the end of the day, I have a tendency to overthink playing and we’re just putting our lips together and blowing and there are people out there who are doing it much easier than I am. It’s just a matter of figuring out the puzzle and putting my lips into roughly the same formation as they are; I don’t believe it’s about talent or strength, I believe it’s a coordination thing and I believe I can do it–I no longer doubt that I can. It’s just a puzzle that I’m working on, but I am much farther along than I was in March 2018 when I started and couldn’t even play a high C, or even an A above the staff.

My progress hasn’t been linear and I still get “surprised” myself with little or big setbacks. I enjoyed a long time before my last one, so I was due and now I’m in a bit of one. But I’m learning from this setback and I’ll probably wind up better for it.

I know it sucks, but hang in there you’re not alone and the deeper the valley, the better you’ll feel on the summitt. You’ll get there.

I’m sure Greg will respond to your questions and I think the video is a great idea.

I do think 20-30 minutes is too little, in my humble opinion. I would try to devote an hour to it–but the key is a patient hour and I would try to structure that as much as possible to make it productive, although I think you need to really open your mind and own YOUR experimentation yourself and just try little tweaks to hone in on the most efficient setting possible. Lately, one thing that’s helped me is to think of the fact that I want the notes I play / my sound to be “round” (Oooohhhh) not just to help me engage the aperture corners but the shape of my aperture into kind of a round shape to open the aperture and avoid clamping the middle. That’s helped me a bit, FWIW.

As far as sound goes, I struggled a bit with my sound too at first getting an airy sound; I think I was overdoing the pucker a bit here or there and that’s where paying attention to the sound / resonance is key. My personal goal is not to screech out high notes, I want to be able to play high with ease/flexibilty and good tone/quality. I like classical music and enjoy playing that, as well as jazz/other stuff, etc. I’m just doing this for fun and to play stuff I like.

This isn’t going to take years to get your coffee moment. I believe you’re on the verge, but it always takes longer than we want it to. But once you have that experience, you will be well on your way.

Hope that helps–hang in there, I think you’re close. What really started me was doing octave intervals with minimal movement–I didn’t move my head back or my lips at all, I just tightened and I played an A on the staff to an A above the staff, which was above my effective range at that time. I played around with that and found WindWorks and realized what the heck I did and took off from there. Eventually, I got to where I could do that on high C, D, E.

I recommend during your experimentation time with engaging your aperture corners, you try that focusing on less air the higher we play and all the other WW guidelines and be willing to crash and burn, miss the note or have no sound come out. Observe the result, then try again and again… For a bit.

My $.02–Sincerely hope that helps. Can’t wait for your inevitable post that you’ve figured it out!

Great post, Peter!–that is the same sensation I have when I am doing well.

Bill, you might be over doing the pucker a bit. The key really (I think… correct me if I’m wrong…) is open lips and engaging the corners, it’s not really a pucker–its more important that (I think…) you have the psychology/sensation of a bit of a pucker from engaging the corners and keeping the top middle lip relaxed and free…

I think Peter’s recommendation is great.

If you can get the easy feeling buzz on the lead pipe then transfer this same relaxed open feeling embouchure to your instrument. The chances are you will get a note lower than low C. This shows that you indeed have that relaxed embouchure. All you have to do to get the low C sounding great is engage the aperture corners a little more and probably raise the tongue a little. I’m guessing this will feel completely opposite to what you are used too. I’m lucky because I’m a relative beginner so don’t have engrained habits.

The funny thing about all of this is I wasted about 6 months trying to play with my lips touching and forcing the air. Just could not do it. As hard as tried my top space E was a squeak and bloody hard work. Now having discovered that pitch change is all about shape I can play from low F sharp to third space C with no effort. Third space C to G on top of the staff is coming along nicely and I have actually managed to ascend chromatically up to high C. OK at the moment the notes above the staff are not playable but they are starting to speak. For me I think I need to get better control of the aperture corners and tongue arch.

The other thing I have noticed is that the singing C exercises do wear out the muscles that control the aperture corners. I don’t feel at all tired but all of a sudden my brain sends the command to tighten the corners but nothing happens. At this point I rest or practise my appalling tonguing.

Was thinking of this thread this morning as I was warming up.

I’ve been facing a bit of a backslide into clamping down top to bottom rather than tightening from the aperture corners / sides and overblowing.

I think I’ve been focused more on results than process as I had been having great results and progressing towards a strong loud double G, when suddenly I began feeling less and less sure of High C, E, F and experiencing a thinner sound and less secure feeling.

This morning was interesting. I started off by focusing on placing my mouthpiece doing the tissue concept and putting the mouthpiece on my lips, follwed by the horn.

I did some low C’s and G’s on the staff and checked that I wasn’t actively buzzing; all good.

Warmed up a bit with a little stamp scales, then went into some harmonic slurs–focusing on passive air (not blowing) and engaging the aperture corners and had GREAT sensations, easily ascended up to High C and beyond almost effortlessly.

THEN, on my next harmonic slur upward, I ran into issues before High C. I think I sort of got excited that I got back to where I was then focused on blowing harder and clamped down in the middle again–I shifted from focusing on process to results.

I realized that I need to change my mentality from feeling good when I hit a note at the top of the harmonic slur–just because I hit a note doesn’t mean I’m playing correctly.

I started focusing my mind instead on focusing on the sensation and how freely, not on what notes I was hitting directly–I would reflect on that afterwards. I also stopped ending the slur at the top–just slurring up to see how high I could go; I wasn’t really trying to do a range exercise, but that’s effectively what my actions were which brings me to another point–I need to be more structured with my practice!

Harmonic slurs are great and important and when done right can reinforce the right things, but if our minds are focused on the wrong things they become something different altogether. I wasn’t quite in a Gladiator Trumpet mode, but effectively I was just seeing how high I could go and that was messing with my head.

This morning and the past week or 2 battling through this last sort of setback has actually been good, I think, as it’s forced me to really focus and reflect on what I’m doing. I thought I had it down but while I was playing consistently, I was just sort of playing by feel and that can apparently come and go–unfortunately. I suppose I’ll never cross over a line which I’ll never have another problem playing ever again–I’m always going to have to be diligent in understanding what it is I’m doing and why. Some players may just naturally “get it” and never have issues. But I know even some “natural” greats have battled issues from time to time.

This experience has also made me really respect the WindWorks approach even more, as it’s really made me realize WHY it starts with the mouth and blowing the tissue, then the airstream, then corners engaging as we play the leadpipe.

And it made me realize how the Harmonic Slur challenge is so key–harmonic slurs can tell us if we’re playing efficiently or not. If our corners aren’t feeling the burn after playing a lot, we’re not using the right muscles–we’re probably clamping down top-to-bottom (middle) and bashing our face against the mouthpiece and overblowing—like I was.

As I did my hour commute this morning, I was doing a thing with my lips–clamping down top-to-bottom, then engaging the corners and tightening from the sides.

It amazed me how subtle the difference was. If we think about it, that’s obvious / makes sense. Our lips are small (some of ours more than others…). The difference between engaging our lips in the middle and clamping down top-to-bottom and not engaging the corners, versus engaging the corners and tightening from the sides and letting the middle stay relaxed is tiny! It seems so minimal and insignificant of a difference.

And while we’re focusing on the air, what notes we’re playing, moving the valves up and down, articulating, it’s even more imperceptible–impossible to perceive!

Yet, it is THE difference. It makes all the difference.

I started doing a thing as I was driving in (safely…I was still looking at the road…). My commute is, for a stretch, through a construction zone and is a 10-15mph stop and go thing.

I put my fingers up to my mouth, took a breath and let the air out passively and focused closely on clamping down top to bottom from the middle as I arched my tongue (aaaahhhh, eeeeeeeee), then a 2nd time while thinking “Ooooohhhhhh” and engaging the corners from the sides and tightening the lips towards the center of the aperture.

While very imperceptible when doing the movement with my lips closed/together, each of these felt much different–engaging the aperture corners resulted in my lips pushing against my fingers and was a firmer/more secure feeling and the air didn’t cut off as soon as with clamping down top to bottom.

Part of the air cutting off could probably be cured from starting with the lips farther apart; but the 2nd felt better.

And, what was interesting is that even the 2nd one (engaging the corners), the air cut off at the “top” (the tightest setting) as my lips kind of touched–this sensation seemed familiar to me like when I’ve “bottomed out” on a shallow mouthpiece and made me think/realize that even when engaging the corners, we can still tighten the aperture to a point in which the lips cut the air off. Even when engaging the aperture corners, we must balance the embouchre to tighten enough to compress the air as much as possible to go as high as possible without cutting the air off completely–seems obvious as I type that, but seems like with everything going on while trying to play it’s a point of clarification, at least for me.

Anyway hope that stream of consciousness is helpful to some other human being(s) out there. If not, I apologize. And, if I said anything that was technically wrong, please correct me as I am obviously on this journey as well and am still in the process of finding my way.

Hi. Great video. I’m not really in a position to comment as you are a far more experienced player than me. However I think your only problem is you pucker far too much.

IMHO if you just back off the pucker I think the buzz will come easily. How do I know because initially I did what you are doing. I pushed the lips too far forward into a pucker and I could not play. All I had to do was to backed off the pucker then placed the mouthpiece on the lips and bingo. Not sure where the round opening comes from. For me as I ascend the firming of the aperture corners just makes my oblong hole between the lips smaller in width and height. I also feel the tension of the centre of the lips increase slightly. I think of this as a guitar string tension increases so pitch increases. Combine this with tongue arch and you have the whole shape concept. These are just things I feel and you may well feel something completely different so take my comments with a pinch of salt. The pucker though I think is far too much. Hope this helps.

It seems like what you are doing is good and seems to reflect what Greg is sharing in his videos, perhaps the endurance needs more time? I’m working on the moderato lessons, and one thing I do for the leadpipe is to hold my mouthpiece in one hand (fingers) and the leadpipe in the other and start the BCH breath into the mouthpiece (no buzz) and bring the mouthpiece and leadpipe together. I frequently get the buzz/pitch like that can can do the scales and arpeggios (one octave) that way. I can then do the same breath into the mouthpiece and bring the trumpet and mouthpiece together and typically get low c. After doing that a few times I work on harmonic slurs, tonguing, etc. trying to maintain throat openess, relaxation, no tension. (though my abdominals are firm, but not kicking) After some time spent on windworks I play my other exercises (like Clarke) and orchestra music trying to keep the same (or similar) feelings as the windworks.

Great video, Bill and thanks for posting and sharing your experience. Some of the audio kind of cut in and out, but it was helpful. It was hard to hear you clearly when you played, but I could tell you are a great player, as Greg mentioned.

It seems to me that you’re probably not too far away from where you need to be; it’s probably more of a subtle adjustment than what you’re attempting.

Take my $.02 with a grain of salt as I am not qualified to instruct you and my intent is not to contradict anything on WW or what Greg has said. I’m just an amateur / comeback player doing this for fun, with limited time to practice. And lately I’ve been struggling again–hoping for good sensations this weekend. I do think I’m learning from the struggle though, so I’m grateful for that–I think I’ll come out of it more solid.

I agree with Peter, it appears to me that you’re too puckered. Again, I don’t want to contradict anything but when I have had success I was not that puckered to begin with.

I could be wrong, but you might be taking the MmmmwwwwaaaaOooohhh setup thing too literally. My take on it was that was to get us setup to put the mouthpiece on our lips and have the sensation of an open throat, easy air and engaged corners.

I don’t usually have that much red on the mouthpiece rim, my setup is more like your “normal” setup than what you’re trying with WindWorks, FWIW.

I suspect that your normal setup isn’t that far off from ideal, you’re probably just clamping a bit top-to-bottom as you play.

I suspect that there is a spectrum that players are on–one one end, there are players like I was that weren’t engaging the aperture corners much at all and were doing other things to tighten the aperture to ascend (rolling my bottom lip under, tilting my head back, etc.). On the other end, there are players like Greg who primarily engage the corners as they ascend and tighten the aperture around the air column optimally and are able to play very high. You’re probably somewhere near the left of middle, which is great; but that probably makes it even harder to perceive of the “point of difference” than if you were someone more like me who was drastically at the other end.

You may not need to approach this quite so drastically; it might be as simple as having your lips a bit less puckered as you place the mouthpiece on your lips but still with a gap then really think about that Oooohhhh and feel those corners and play with that as you ascend–I can see now from the video why you weren’t able to do that and what you mentioned in one of your posts about your bottom lip. It does look to me like your bottom lip is a bit too open/low/red on the rim; I typically have mine kind of tucked into the bottom rim of the mouthpiece in what I guess is a more typical setting, just naturally flat against the mouthpiece.

I was tied up at work today. If I get a chance this weekend / have good sensations and come up with a video that has a chance of adding something meaningful, I’ll share it.

My $.02 is to slightly tone down your approach–which for the most part was all very good and thorough as far as I could tell. But it did look like you were a bit too far forward when you place your lips on the MP. My understanding, FWIW, is that the forward pucker happens as we tighten the aperture by tightening from the corners/sides inward and keeping the top lip relaxed–lately that’s seemed like a knife’s edge for me, I’ve been walking a tightrope fluctuating from one to the other.

Good luck–I’m glad you’re getting some good support from a number of folks. I’m sure you’re close to a big development with your playing.

John wrote
I could be wrong, but you might be taking the MmmmwwwwaaaaOooohhh setup thing too literally. My take on it was that was to get us setup to put the mouthpiece on our lips and have the sensation of an open throat, easy air and engaged corners.

My thoughts entirely. Maybe Greg can chime in here but having look at the videos again my take is that the MmmmmaaaOoooohhhh exercise is just getting a player who plays lips clamped into feeling a new sensation. A sensation that will feel very odd because the centre of the lips are relaxed and open. However I don’t think Gregg says anywhere that you play with such a forward pucker. Certainly I cannot. However if I put my lips together touching ever so lightly and then let the centre of the lips open a little, where I can feel the lips still together are the aperture corners. If I then engage these corners by pressing the corners ever so slightly together and moving them inwards, I have my playing setup. Engaged corners, centre of the lips apart and relaxed but no pucker.

I would like to see a video. You are committed to this and I would like to understand where you are. I feel like I have always played with the WindWorks approach…….almost. My issues came when reaching for the upper register before being ready to do so. Of course, I could be fooling myself too.

Post a video. I will do the same. We can probably all help each other.

I am very confident that Greg has exposed the truth about playing this instrument as frustrating as it may be.

I have made a short Quicktime video but can someone tell me how to post it. Cheers.

Today was different again and when I read this theme I felt this might help a little.
Some years ago I was advised to play the trombone to feel more clearly the vibration of the lips. Having bought an old instrument off a friend I used it for a while but then let it go when I started doing MtM. Now WindWorks has come out I have started to use it to warm up the chops in the morning and sometimes warm down at night. You really understand the CHB playing a pedal C on trombone. I then had the idea of doing WindWorks on trombone rather than just playing a few notes. This morning I worked on Largo step 4. I found a real focus for the aperture. A different instrument has a different expectation. Rather than going on to do the pitch bend warm up I transferred this feeling to the trumpet. The effect was staggering and I realised I had previously still not gained purity of process. I was then able to maintain this feeling to the F# with utmost concentration and stopping along the way whenever I was not on the target.
The bottom lip under was the prescribed method of Farcas. I can remember in my 20,s (I am 72) using a mirror to get the Farcas position. If only. Just like Bill my range was great but fairly soon there was a feeling of losing power and the doubts set in and the brain cuts out. So much of playing is about confidence. I managed when I was younger but after a 25 year break I could not get that confidence back. The more I practised the worse I felt I was playing. I now play mostly jazz rather than classical and find the fresh challenge stimulating. Through WindWorks my confidence is returning and sometimes I play things I only dreamt of years ago but consistency is not there yet. I still feel anything above the stave is an issue once I get to band but when improvising I can use the good days to advantage and the poor days to be creative. The point of difference at the top of the stave is traumatic and frustrating but having moved to another level of process this morning I feel more confident I will overcome this. Thank you Greg.
Final point for Bill. Once you find the vibration don’t be impatient. Like many others, I have had to keep going back to Largo. It pays off every time.

Here is my leadpipe buzzing video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udaF1LHD2fI

That would be an interesting video to see. I’m sure you are not far from success.

GOING LIVE in 50 minutes 10am AEST 11th Sept (10th in USA) to explain this. Tune in