Inconsistent Embouchure

[trombinstharry]

Hello all, something weird is going on with my lips when I play. Say, I'm doing an exercise of just octave slurs between a low Bb and tuning Bb. I can slur up from low to tuning no problem with just about no embouchure change whatsoever, but when I slur back down, my embouchure changes? How can I help this?

[AndrewMeronek]

Your embouchure should change - it has to otherwise your buzzing frequency will not change. I'd recommend to not try to eliminate your change, but to try to make your change going upward mirror the change going downward.

I like to have students (even if they can't at first) try to deliberately lip-gliss into false tones during slow lip slurs between each partial. Done correctly, the horn will 'grab' the note automatically and some bad habits can be avoided.

Oh, and as a general rule: avoiding sliding the mouthpiece around on the lips is good. Using the mouthpiece as a grip to slide your lips around on your teeth is OK, though.

[baileyman]

I had this can't-get-back problem. My interpretation was that I was dragging a low setting high with tension and air pressure, then the chops would adjust at the higher note, and suddenly I had no movement path to get back down to where I started.

I changed my practice to start every exercise high, go down, come back up, keeping piece contact, avoiding chop squiggles. This required me to deal with the difficulty every day. Eventually lower notes began to happen.

What was happening? I think I was learning to stretch high sets lower. After a while I realized the can't-get-back problem was gone. Well, there are always some difficulties, like 3rd partial and below on small horns, where accommodation must be made it seems. But generally, high now connects with low and back.

[Bassbonechandler]

I currently have an issue where if I begin on tuning b flat and go down to the low b flat, it takes a second to get "in tune". Even then it's not very in tune and is shaky. Any suggestions? This has been incredibly frustrating.

[ArbanRubank]

Sometimes we are doing everything right but it is the tissues that just won't vibrate correctly. They will, in time - if we continue to dog it correctly. They want to.

Once-upon-a-time, It took me more than three months to retrain my chop tissues to vibrate correctly from middle E down to C, without double-buzzing. I just had to softly gliss it down until I hit the double-buzz and then back off. Slowly, note-by-note, I got it stabilized in that range, built up some power and now I have a pretty nice, open lower-middle range. It just takes time. Maybe the chop tissues have to actually re-grow!

[VJOFan]

Hello all, something weird is going on with my lips when I play. Say, I'm doing an exercise of just octave slurs between a low Bb and tuning Bb. I can slur up from low to tuning no problem with just about no embouchure change whatsoever, but when I slur back down, my embouchure changes? How can I help this?

It is unclear from your post if there is any actual sound or efficiency problem caused by what you are describing.

If you sound fine, is there a really big problem?

Every note has some difference in what the lips (air,tongue...) are doing so unless what you are doing is causing you to not be able to cut the music you have to play there is not much to worry about.

I also wonder how you diagnosed the effect you describe. Do you really do nothing to get up?