Masses, Percentages, Embouchures

Brass players share a variety of concerns about students and players that are encouraged (directed? coerced?) onto instruments they don't want to play. One, often-heard, is that potential players may have lips that will suit a particular instrument better than another.

To be honest, there is probably some truth to that. It's all in the lips. Brass players can refer to quite a few textbooks which describe lip thickness as a factor in choosing an instrument. If memory serves me right, the Farkas and Kleinhammer texts both suggest using a visualizer to check it out. This being a rule of thumb, however, there are easily thousands of exceptions to the rule - thin lips can work for trumpet or tuba, and thick lips can do the same. It's just not a simple topic.

Russ Callahan has asked himself about switching - whether he should have been advised to change to a different brass instrument earlier in the game. Maybe it would have saved time, maybe he would turned out as Brian Bowman. As great as that sounds, though, I wouldn't want the FB fan club.

When it comes to making good embouchure decisions, "what is best for the life of the player" comes pretty low on the totem poll of priorities. Brass players, teachers, and families are just faced with all sorts of pressure. I think it's likely that students (and perfectly normal people) will make their embouchure and instrument decisions on factors like (in order):

1. social impacts / popularity - friends, family, or self believe the best move isn't cool
2. perceived resistance - this is easy, that means it's always going to be easy and fun!
3. poor advice due to external pressure - teacher/colleague gives advice based on a desire for product, not because of a desire to serve the student
4. poor advice due to lack of training - teacher/colleague doesn't really have enough experience or training to give the best advice
5. long-term potential - both physical, and within a reasonable, geographic community

The royal we (performers, teachers, merchants, family, and friends of brass players) need to get our priorities together. Myself included. What is good in the immediate social, financial, or ensemble future is often not good for the long-term outcome of the human being. If first things came first, and if we were all equally interested in the long-term potential of brass players, we'd probably make different decisions about instrument choice, embouchure setup, embouchure habit-building, and embouchure changes.

No, that doesn't mean we'd all play saxophone, violin, and piano - the community will restrict the number of professionals, regardless of whether or not everyone can become technically proficient. Instead, it may mean that people like Russ would have taken up euphonium a little earlier. Me, I would have been advised to play in half as many ensembles and fix up my embouchure a couple decades earlier (on day one).

Real priorities, real potential ... put them together. Not news.