I do not have any medical credentials. I am going to suggest that it would be highly unlikely that your larynx is moving up while slurring as in swallowing. What you may be experiencing are movements associated with the hyoid bone. Movement of the jaw and tongue can move the hyoid bone upward and relaxing the muscles associated will allow the hyoid to be pulled back into a relaxed position.

Swallowing does involve the hyoid bone and more. When swallowing, the larynx is pulled upward and the epiglottis, a flap of cartilage, bends backward to close over the larynx’s opening that leads to the trachea and down into the lungs.

I have read that singers practice lifting the larynx by starting to swallow and not going through with it. If there are any singers out there, maybe they could explain this.

Now for an experiment. Place your fingertips on your adam’s apple and swallow. Does this feel like what you experience while doing the lip slurs? Hopefully, you do not. Now place your fingers above your adam’s apple. Simulate lip slurs without your horn and with your horn. Do you feel the contractions of your muscles or perhaps the motion of your hyoid bone? Because the hyoid bone is connected with your larynx you may feel some motion there as well, but it is not like swallowing. Check this by placing your fingertips on the larynx. These are the natural motions associated with changes in the tongue and jaw.

Now the question we need to ask Greg is how much jaw and tongue motion is involved in doing these slurs? Should we try to focus more on changes in lip contraction and minimize other motions?

I decided to revisit Greg’s video on the “Largo C# Harmonic Slur.” Up to this point, you have been working on getting a nice resonant sound and using your magnifying glass to recognize any negative tension. Tension is not a bad thing in the right places. Excessive tension and unnecessary tensions are the problems that keep many of us from playing freely over the range of the horn. The other is not knowing the shape of the note we are playing.

As I stated before, there is going to be some movement of your larynx because it is connected to the hyoid bone which is connected to the tongue. You should have a relaxed throat, relaxed shoulders, and relaxed abdominal muscles. Slurring the beginning intervals, such as C# to F# requires a small shape change in the lips, tongue, and jaw. The key is to have no air kick from the C# to the F#. The only change is the shape required to play those notes. You have practiced playing these notes with the correct shape without any clamping your lips’ center. You will feel the change in your aperture corners. The aperture corners tension are dependent on your shape change. Look at Greg’s lips while he’s playing the slurs.

I hope this helps.

Philsby – I’ve had this feeling too, I think it’s got a bit better since I started, keep going with it but try not to obsess like I did!