More on the Balanced Embouchure

Last week James Boldin posted his opinion of the Balanced Embouchure method by Jeff Smiley.  James wrote that he did not own the book, but was open to any possible new ideas that might be presented there that may help himself and his students become more efficient.  I thought it might be useful to follow up to his post with one of my own, as I have experimented with the Balanced Embouchure this summer.

There has been much controversy about the Balanced Embouchure (or BE) all over the internet from both trumpet and horn players.  When I first heard about BE, I was intrigued because of Jeff Smiley’s claim that it worked for every trumpet player, and I posted briefly about what I thought here.   But since that post I have heard even more positive things about it from members of the horn-playing community, including more and more professional horn players coming out of the woodwork endorsing it, plus a presentation at the last International Horn Society workshop, and I really wanted to find out more.  Before I form an official opinion about something, I like to find out as much as I can about it, so I bit the bullet and paid $50 for the book plus the horn exercise addendum from Valerie Wells.

I don’t feel like I’m in desperate shape chopwise, but like James Boldin, I was curious about what it may offer that I didn’t already know, so that I could help myself and possibly my students improve.  I have my chops together, but I have had students who have struggled with range.  So over the past month or so, I’ve read the book thoroughly and done the exercises.

I am taking my time going through the book, as that is what Mr. Smiley recommends.  It is meant to be a self-help method (with CD included) that allows the student to discover his/her own best individualized approach to brass embouchure, amd it has made for a perfect summer project.  The student only needs to spend 5-15 minutes daily on the exercises, so it is not distruptive whatsoever to a normal practice routine.  In a month or so of about 10 minutes of BE practice per day, I have gotten to the point where I can play all the rolling-in (RI) and rolling-out (RO) exercises pretty well, but have not yet started on the Advanced Lip Slur (ALS) exercises.  I did find that I was able to do most of the RO exercises immediately.  This is probably because my embouchure naturally leans toward einsetzen, and a big component of the RO exercises is pedal tones, which I have never had much difficulty with.  I have more difficulty with the RI exercises, not in playing the high notes with that embouchure but in using that rolled-in embouchure in the middle register.

Valerie Wells has stated in her blog that BE employs concepts that many fine players are using already, either consciously or unconsciously.  I agree with this, as I have noticed some positive improvements in my playing, but nothing earth-shattering.  I have seen improvement in large intervallic leaps in the middle register.  I think this is because I am actually practicing them while using the exercises (go figure!), and I am also practicing pedal tones systematically, which I have never done before.   I think that part of the success of this book is that it requires the student to practice extremes which they would normally not be practicing.  Not only extremes in range, but extremes in tonguing and embouchure movement that are not necessarily meant to be used in regular playing.

I have also noticed that my range above high C has become more secure.  Whereas some of the licks up to high E in the Schumann Konzertstuck and Strauss Domestic Symphony have been hit-and-miss for me in the past, I can hit them dependably now.  A dependable high E is a nice thing to have!

One of the most appealing things about this method to me is that 5-15 minutes of practice a day isn’t enough to mess up your current setup.  As your lips learn to do new things, the things that work better are gradually and unconsciously incorporated into your current embouchure.  It is an individualized approach guided by the student’s ear, and not guided by a teacher dogmatically telling the student what to do, or guided by what one thinks they see in a mirror.  The student uses his ear as a guide, and if it sounds right, it is right.  No one horn player’s physical makeup is like anyone else’s, and I believe that depending on one’s ear when playing music (and not how it looks or how it feels) is the best way to operate.  As that type of approach to brass playing and pedagogy appeals to me in general, I really like this book.

I plan to keep on practicing the BE exercises until I master them, and then I plan on keeping them in my personal practice arsenal.  I can see how this book could really help a struggling student find his/her own best embouchure.  If this book had been around when I was in college, I think it would have saved me an enormous amount of practice time.  I think BE could be a terrific tool to help students, and I plan on using it with my own students as needed.  BE is currently quite controversial, but I see it becoming more and more popular as more people give it a chance, because it makes sense and it works!