Overblowing – A Deadly Practice, reducing endurance and damaging lips.

Playing a smaller diameter cup or a shallower cup can be an important asset for lead players, or players seeking more endurance and range. However there are trade offs:

1.    Tonguing  may be impeded
2.    Mid range volume may be decreased
3.    Flexibility may suffer
4.    Tone quality may be brighter

With that stated, I believe that most players seeking consistent upper register facility (High C to Double C and above), or extreme endurance will find a smaller diameter and shallower cup advantageous.

How do you decide the diameter and depth?

I struggled making this decision, and finally arrived at the perfect solution:

I adapted my embouchure to the one-size fits all approach. I was originally a trombonist and for many years on the road I played trumpet, flugel, alto sax, and trombone in our shows. This experience taught me that a proper mental focus or picture of the embouchure of each instrument could be imprinted in my “kinetic” sense.

I played a Schilke #24 on trumpet and flugel, a Schilke #47, and a level air sax with a #5 reed.

My tonal concept was to play as big a sound with a symphonic texture as possible on the trumpet. Then the support instruments were played with the most comfortable mouthpiece, and whatever sound I got I strived to make “pure”.

This was a practical approach for playing a show in which my sound was not dictated by others. I determined to be the first high note player with a nice big fat warm symphonic sound, and I succeeded. I was able to play 5 shows a day 6 days a week from early until late in the day and maintain a consistent Double D range, while being able to play the support instruments well, with nice sound.

Now here is where the practical applications begin:

Leaving the shelter of the road show and moving in to a sideman’s life was a shocker. My sound was great, but did not blend with anyone in the commercial world. When I played with the ASO I was chastised for being too loud. A predicament I had not expected.

Titrating down to a Schilke 18 took several months, but still left me with a dark tone and still did not blend or sound like a commercial lead player.

Having gone through a muscle separation my lips were swelling quite a bit. I turned to Roy Stevens for help.
At that time I was playing the Circus and was using a Bach 1 ½ C with a 1X rim on a Benge 3x+. Roy switched me to his #2 mouthpiece which was miniscule compared to the Bach. The mouthpiece came in the mail and was in my case so during the 15 minute intermission at the circus I made the switch.

Please understand that I had spent several months with Roy’s system and had 30 or 40 lessons over the phone with him. I was well into statics and then climbs and scales up into the triple C region on the Bach and the Schilke 18.

With the background lain; the second half of the circus was a breeze. The small diameter and shallow cup made little if any difference. Roy’s system is the same embouchure, with the same distance between open teeth, for any instrument.

But I had not changed my mental picture of the sound in the middle range…. When the circus was over, I found myself (and this lasted many years) still wanting to produce that big symphonic sound in the mid range. In the process I would wear-out when I played the 2nd or 3rd parts and no doubt frustrated the lead players when I often over blew them.

In fact I will go on to say that I believe 95% of my endurance problem was directly due to simply over blowing in the register between low C and High C.

Over blowing is the #1 cause of poor endurance, and more importantly the lack of practice progress.

Here are negatives that can and do occur when you overblow (tip the core balance in favor of air ):

1.    Lips chase the air into the cup – thus exposing the soft moist inner lip surface vibrating
2.    The rim cuts off circulation due to the air chasing
3.    Tonguing also follows the lips into the cup and the lips are forced open, and cannot fall back to a gently closed position, further increasing pressure on the lips.
4.    With the lips opening too far the airflow must widen to surround the increased area of contraction.
5.    The tongue slides back into the throat to create a larger volume at the front of the mouth.
6.    External intercostal muscles tighten to add additional force to the air stream.
7.    Neck and back of throat tighten – at times creating pressure against the carotid arteries and created lightheadedness.
8.    Flexibility is greatly reduced
9.    Orbicularis orbis tightens around the lips and the lips then purse more to allow increased quantity of air into the horn.
10.    Lips thicken to fight air escaping and press themselves into the rim as the rim is pressed into the lips more to contain them – a vicious circle.
11.    The lower lip is trapped and retreats up and in towards the top teeth edges, as the muscles weaken against the over blow.
12.    The bottom lip touches the edges of the top teeth and the sound stops……