Breathing for trumpet playing

Breathing for trumpet playing

Posted on November 8, 2017 by Clint McLauglin

I have noticed that many people pull their lips apart or out of the mouthpiece when breathing for trumpet playing.

This pulls the lower lip slightly out of the mouthpiece and for some it looks like this.

 The lower lip can not go back to its normal playing position. So it tries to continue playing by rolling the soft inside tissue into the hole that was made during the breath.

That not only looks vastly different from this normal shot but also affects tone, range, endurance.

Make sure you are NOT destroying your embouchure when breathing for trumpet playing.
Some will take their first breath and then set so they are doing greatbut then when they breathe the embouchure changes.
Here is one reason why that happens.The mouthpiece takes up about half of our overall lip length.
When we try to corner breathe through both sides we stretch the lipsinto a smile and often pull them apart.

Place your index finger gently on your lips in their normal restingposition (this is how many of us look when we play).
Now breathe throughboth mouth-corners at the same time. You will feel the lips shift andseparate plus if you use lip curl you will feel them uncurl some.

Well when you do this and the mouthpiece is there instead of the finger;the mouthpiece doesn’t let the lip go back to normal. They stay apartslightly and uncurled.

Now place the finger back on the resting lips and breathe through only 1side of your mouth. There is much less movement, no separation and nouncurling of the lips The embouchure stays put.

The easy way to fix or prevent this is to only breathe through 1 mouth-corner. That keeps you from having to stretch the lips and allows the embouchure to stay in position.

Pops