The Soundwise Embouchure

The instrument of the woodwind player really appears to behave as his megaphone, thanks to his embouchure.

Get Your Mask Down !

Your mouth / mouthpiece / reed / ligature set defines your global embouchure : this configuration may vary between players, closely associating your morphology and the gear you use.

Your inner resonance propagates to the reed, which should easily vibrate, opposing a low resistance, hence a not too hard reed is recommended in order to be able to master the depth of the sound, shaped up at the bottom of the air column (Peter King had told me once how he had bee surprised to see that Cannonball Adderley was playing a really weak reed, when he substituted him in England in the 70’s).

This way, you define the best mouthpiece/reed combination for your sound control : this compromise depend on several factors, but you must know how to adjust it, mainly by selecting an appropriate reed, with your usual mouthpiece. And if you need a softer reed to ease out your playing, then you would be able to modulate your reed strength later on, bringing full balance and self-confidence : through your mentally visualizing that your emission remains centered on the sound source, you avoid unnecessary contractions above your diaphragm (which would be triggered by a harder reed), following the recommendations of Alfred Tomatis in The Ear And The Voice.

deep throat

« The objective for both the pharynx and the larynx is to keep the throat open and supple, avoiding closure by the constrictor muscles. The regulation of the pharynx under the organizing control of the ear consists of achieving what is famous in singing as the open throat with the help of the dilator muscles and the tongue.»

Alfred Tomatis, The Ear And The Voice

Think Your Sound, But Do Not Pinch It

The wind player sets up his vibrating attitude by rooting his sound column in his heels, and mentally pictures his embouchure at the sound source, down to the bottom of his diaphragm : then, letting the relaxation down, his inner vibration gently takes off on the « ah » vowel, to feed the instrument through his embouchure.

Dominique Hoppenot describes how the violon player lets his vibration propagate to the violon body through his clavicle.

« The most important of all is to listen to the sound that will come and not just to the sound already achieved. »

Dominique Hoppenot, Le violon intérieur (Translated by Guy Robert)

Une fois sa posture installée, l’instrumentiste amène naturellement son instrument en mains (et en bouche pour un soufflant) pour amplifier le son préparé à l’avance ; alors entre en jeu l’embouchure, souple et décontractée, et même oubliée, car son attention est concentrée sur la base de la colonne de son : là se réalise la liaison entre l’émetteur (le corps de l’instrumentiste) et l’amplificateur (le corps de l’instrument), dont la projection sonore est ensuite travaillée par les doigts, puis par la langue.

Once your posture is set up and stabilized, your hands naturally seize your instrument (entering your mouth if you are a wind player), to amplify the anticipated sound ; then your flexible and relaxed embouchure, which you actually forget, since you are focussed on the bottom of the sound column, comes into play : it links you, as the sender (the player’s body), to the amplifier (the instrument body). The projected sound gets then sculpted out by your fingers, and your tongue.

« The goal is to be as relax as possible in the embouchure area, so that the delicate mechanisms at the reed can be free to occur without exerting a strain on its vibrational capacity. By the time the air stream reaches the mouthpiece, the major portion of the work for a personal sound has already been completed.« 

David Liebman, Developing A Personal Saxophone Sound

When you let your mouthpiece come to your mouth, enjoyment also enters as an intruding momentum. The same way as when you take momentum to jump over an obstacle, boom ! there it goes, you are played by your instrument, so you should not play yourself, this is not a wordplay.

As little as your embouchure takes off, then you nail your mouthpiece pinch, without looking for it, playing means then sitting on the air, this is fantastic !

Robert Pichaureau, A tous vents (Translated by Guy Robert)

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Your Sound Sensations

Mastering your expression leads you to enjoyment, all the more spontaneous as it results from a relaxation, rather than from a physical strike.

Have Fun !

Letting your internal opening spread downwards fosters your feelings, enhancing your self-confidence and ensuring your sound quality.

« Your thinking drives your will for sure, but since your will may cancel your desire, you cannot reach your balance without desire and you cannot succeed without enjoyment.

Yes, these are only sentences, but they depict the real life, it’s as simple as the art of being yourself, however you should not think in order to be yourself, this is the reason why we say that you should be self-confident.

You should feel as an artist, and develop an expressive relaxation, in other words, as Mrs Hoppenot states it in “Le violon intérieur“, tonicity in relaxation.»

Robert Pichaureau, À tous vents (Translated by Guy Robert)

« The less energy spent on technical production, the more available for creativity.

Being as relaxed as possible in playing allows the creative mind as well as the emotions to more easily come forth. »

David Liebman, Developing a Personal Saxophone Sound

« (…) the whole thing is about relaxation ; all of music for me is about relaxation : if you’re uptight when you’re playing, the music is uptight.

And if you’re totally in the zone where you’re just so cool, you’re having fun (…) »

Eddie Daniels, The Music of Eddie Daniels, Eddie on Standards – Warner Bros Music 0742B – PP 6031 – 2005

have confidence…

Speaking of which, George Kochevitsky analyzes in The Art Of Piano Playing the linking between the muscles synchronization and the quality of the musical output.

Stabilizing your mental images associated to your proprioceptions helps you to reproduce your body preparation at your will, hence reinforcing your self-confidence. Then, your body should remain ready to vibrate, from its prepared state, allowing you to picture your own image associated to the vibration laying and sounding : from that point on, your sensations develop, among them your being centered around your sound. That ensures the continuity of the tone, as if it were radiating from your heels.

Such an approach is indeed valid for any instrument, the piano among them, and has a direct impact on your live technique, coming out through your fingers, and combined with the tongue articulation of the wind player.

« { Ludwig Deppe (1828-1890) wrote that tone must be produced, not by finger stroke (…) but by coordinated action of all parts of the arm. }
Ludwig Deppe required her (Amy Fay, one of his pupils) to follow consciously the duration of each tone, to imagine the pitch and volume of the next one, and only then to transfer very carefully from that tone to the next.« 

« And until there is a connection between the inner musical imagination, the innervation of movement, muscular sensations, and careful and critical listening to the results, no form of movement is of practical value.« 

« So movements in piano practicing differ, sometimes considerably, from those in piano playing. In the first case we have to consider not only artistic purpose but physiological points as well.« 

« (…) the main materials for the building of piano technique are the proprioceptive sensations. Hence lack of clearness in these sensations from finger activity will inevitably result in indistinct finger technique.

The player must receive a clear proprioceptive sensation from each movement, sensation which does not coalesce with the sensation from the next movement, and is not suppressed by it. »

George Kochevitsky, The Art Of Piano Playing

Finding Your Optimal Position

That being understood, you quietly settle your internal configuration, then you, as a wind player (you are still not supposed to blow !), drive your instrument to your mouth : at the same time, capturing your diaphragm positioning at the very end of your natural inhaling, you let that sensation flow backwards, starting or keeping your stable vibrating on your exhaling. You end up sitting on your voice sound propagating from the ground through your feet, then in the surrounding space – as Alfred Tomatis shows it in The Ear And The Voice.

your vibrating aura

The internal vibration of your body, surging out of the sound column, feeds your singing, which is then amplified by your instrument.

Being concentrated on the source of your internal song eliminates unnecessary tensions and fosters the link with your musical intent : you feel like filling up the space with your ​​voice.

« The body literally vibrates with song and harmony. (…) The act of singing permits us to open a dialog with space so that we become flooded by its vibrations and merge with it, acoustically speaking.« 

« The interactions between the singer’s physical body and the acoustic environment create a proprioceptive image of the body, and they structure a sensory-motor experience of the surrounding space in a perpetual dialog.« 

« A professional singer with a great technique causes us to breathe fully, our pharynx opens, our larynx moves without tightening. The articulation is supple, passing from one syllable to another without breaking the melodic line, without losing intensity, and we are transported.« 

« Teaching voice relies on subjective sensations that can only be described in words. (…) We have to make our sensations conscious so that they can be reproduced at will and associated to the corresponding muscular response.« 

« Singing requires mastery over yourself to attain maximum sound output with minimum muscular effort.« 

« Your sensations will be confined to the organs involved in singing. It sends acoustic stimulation to every part of the body, encouraging it to adopt certain postures. It helps to straighten the trunk, for instance, which helps it to resist the pull of gravity, thus increasing the charging effect on the brain.« 

« When singing is well executed, it triggers a wealth of internal sensations that make the body into a vibrating instrument.« 

Alfred Tomatis, L’oreille et la voix – (Translated by Guy Robert)

Your absolute non-pushing (since you do not blow !), combined with the vertical sensation generated from your Hara, lets your vibration spread from your heels, in the same fashion as does the one from Dominique Hoppenot‘s Inner Violin.

playing for pleasure

Your aim is to re-produce at your will the rewarding feeling of inner vibration, by quickly retrieving the relevant attitude : your body configuration is then assessed by your  self-confidence coming with the stability of the sound source, which is just waiting to be revealed and instantly revived, to be next amplified by the instrument.

« The most constructive motivation in the conquest of the instrument is the enjoyment motivation (…)« 

« Our approach aims at developing an intimate and acute awareness of what you feel from a gesture or several combined gestures, until you can retrieve them and perform them exactly without any doubt, from a mere instantaneous mental evocation of the revealed sensation.« 

« Sensations can only arise from shaping our desires, hence by creating associated mental images (…)« 

« The appropriate feeling corresponds to a well-being suited to everyone, adapted to the prior mental image (…)« 

« (…) the feeling of “your self“ (…) leads you to experience the vertical axis, the mobility in space, the balance of opposing forces, the centering in “Hara“ (…) The contact feelings are generated from a keen awareness of your rooting to the ground, from the quality of your fingers presence on the bow and on the violin (…) Other feelings develop later during the playing itself ; they result from an already very elaborate achievement : a precise gesture, the feeling of “playing on yourself“, of “letting go“ and “laissez faire“ linked to the extreme vigilance of perception and listening (…)« 

« (…) we are forced to consider that a performance is felt only through the pleasure of “vibration“.« 

« He who has found his voice, that is to say his sound, no longer has to search it nor to fear its failure because it actually is. He just needs to call it without ever forcing it, to let it come and “let it go“ according to music, its master !« 

Dominique Hoppenot, Le violon intérieur – (Translated by Guy Robert)

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The Musician Sound Grows From His Breathing And Air

Driving your internal vibration with your natural breathing is key for your sound quality, and requires only a minimal air consumption.

Breathe, You Bet !

The inner motion propagating your vibration towards your instrument comes from your sound center, the location and feeling of which you get accustomed to through watching yourself naturally breathing : air naturally surrounds you and your body spontaneously ingests it during your inhaling, thanks to the spontaneous action of your diaphragm, released then by the muscles surrounding it.

“What happens in normal respiration ?”

“You have to take in a comfortable amount of air, no more. Then you distribute that air with minimum pressure, as if caressing the vocal cords. This excites the spinal column so that it starts to sing.”

Alfred Tomatis, The Ear And The Voice

“The trickiest idea to grasp is that the player must RELEASE his diaphragm during his inhaling… in other words, he should not control it, which would prevent it from freely operate by itself. To voluntarily act on this muscle, even thinking about it, would readily limit its operation.”

Dr Delphine Olivier-Bonfils, La respiration diaphragmatique – Article publié dans le Journal de l’Association française du Cor 2000 n° 78 (Translated by Guy Robert)

singing in the open air

To sum it up,

• wanting to take some air would trigger contractions altering the depth of the internal vibration (i.e. the sound spectrum) ;
• such contractions would subsequently disturb your column of sound : you would not be « sitting » in the air any more ;
• at the same time, more energy would be ill-advisedly consumed through those disturbing contractions, in order to develop your musical speech, down to your next inhaling :  your playing sequence would therefore last a shorter time and be less mastered than you would be able to do.
  

“Again, you are reminded that everything lies on the effort necessary to avoid stress.”

Alfred Tomatis, The Ear And The Voice – (adapted by Guy Robert)

“Singing well brings about the rediscovery of true respiration, calm and unstressed, with a natural physiological rhythm. The diaphragm is liberated, autonomous, not locked in expansion.

Certainly all these movements and gestures are equally muscular. But they respond to a set of muscles that are the antagonistic push muscles, the flexors.”

Alfred Tomatis, The Ear And The Voice

When you watch yourself breathing naturally, releasing your lower back rearwardly to avoid unnecessary tensions, you become aware of the connection of your body with the ground, embodied by your lower members, like a tree trunk linked to its roots.

“I used to consider the broad breathing process, coming without any pushing.”

Alfred Tomatis, The Ear And The Voice

Then, while relaxing down to the base of the sound column, you want to pronounce the « a » vowel, which gets your inner vibration take off from your heels, and you certainly do not push, consuming then as little air as possible and thus developing a rich sound spectrum.

“You should actually concentrate on your self letting-go”

“Such a correctly emitted sound rebalances breathing on a non-pushing mode.”

“Part of vocal training is learning to breathe so that the exhalation coordinates with the activity of the larynx. Once we acquire excellent listening, the mechanisms that regulate the larynx, pharynx, tongue, lips, etc…, must be implemented and the vocal apparatus must function perfectly.

When all that is mastered, singing indeed seems to be simply a matter of breathing.”

“With breathing exercises as with exercises for the larynx, you will need patience. Acquiring exceptional mastery over the breath is a long and serious learning process. You need to acquire ample, calm breathing. Never work over tension or fatigue. Short sessions through the day will yield better results than one long session.

Once the respiratory mechanism is well regulated, you have to integrate it with all the other proprioceptice sensations specific to singing.”

“With training, only the diaphragm takes part in respiration for singing. The thoracic muscles remain in relaxed extension so the ribs stay open and cannot exert too much pressure. In fact, it is not easy to consciously direct the movements of the diaphragm to retain the air and make it flow over the vocal cords without ever pushing. (…) The thorax, as expanded as possible and relatively immobile without being locked, assures phonation.

Everyone has a different way of describing this. Gigli told me that he let his belly “fall to the ground “ to breathe and maintained the same feeling as long as the breath steam lasted. That way, the abdominal muscles do not interfere with the diaphragm.”

“Singers must be taught to act judiciously on the exhalation.”

Alfred Tomatis, The Ear And The Voice

Awake Your Internal Sensations

Hence, the best air quality is provided by a perfectly relaxed abdomen until the sound smoothly takes off, springing out of the sound source and synchronized with your exhalation, as it is scientifically explained by Claudia Spahn, Bernhard Richter, Johannes Pöppe et Matthias Echternach in their Physiological Insights for Players of Wind Instruments : you can reach this configuration by focusing on your spontaneous inhaling process while avoiding any disturbing stress by letting it going down your back. Then, you feel your column of sound vertically rolling down from the diaphragm, as the air gently vibrates through your heels and the ground.

“This flexible system of controlled breathing is typically called breath support. The amount of emitted air is therefore controlled by a flexible coordination of simultaneously activated inhalation and exhalation muscles. ”

Claudia Spahn, Bernhard Richter, Johannes Pöppe et Matthias Echternach

let your letting-go fall down !

By letting his chest relaxation flow down to the sound source, the music player secures the continuity of the internal propagation from inhaling to exhaling ; his configuration then brings a strong support to the vibration carried on by the exhaling.

“Exhalation is primarily a passive activity during non-exerted breathing, since the diaphragm relaxes while gravitational and resetting forces of the chest and the lungs act as a spring during exhalation, which narrows the chest.”

“Exhalation must perform slowly and regularly in order to play a quiet ballad. ”

“If the chest is expanded, as with inhalation, exhalation automatically begins when the muscles relax and the air is exhaled without any significant muscular contraction.”

Claudia Spahn, Bernhard Richter, Johannes Pöppe et Matthias Echternach

Unification of your body results from this attitude, all feelings above your diaphragm being ignored, as Dominique Hoppenot explains it in Le violon intérieur.

“The division between the “upper“ and “lower“ parts of the body vanishes when it gets unified by the tilt of the pelvis.”

Dominique Hoppenot, Le violon intérieur (Translated by Guy Robert)

We can extend the analogy between the violin bow and the column of sound, as mentioned before, for the sound laying at its initial emission : the first push of the bow matches the column of sound beginning to vibrate, at the very moment when inhaling becomes exhaling, during the handover from the diaphragm to the transverse abdominus muscle.

“To hasten the awareness of your back muscles and integrate them quicker into your instrumental action, it is recommended to “imagine“ them, to develop their role, to locate them, to play them at will (…)”

“One who knows how to terminate a sound is sure of being able to resume it.”

“Breathing (…) involves the entire trunk, from the nose to the anus, in a complex and admirable muscular synergy that appears as a huge wave which rises and falls down along the trunk, without border demarcation between the “upper“ and “lower“ parts of the body.”

“Inhaling then consists of an active tension of the diaphragm, together with a relaxation of the abdominal and pelvic muscles, while exhaling develops as an active tension of those same abdominal muscles pushing up the then-relaxed diaphragm.”

Dominique Hoppenot, Le violon intérieur (Translated by Guy Robert)

your sound flows from your whole body

Then, the conscious motion reaches to the seamless laying of the sound (triggerring the vocal cords vibration) during the exhaling phase. This relies on the action of this specific transverse abdominus muscle, as singled out by Marie-Christine Mathieu : to maintain your sound quality, you must still want to sing a low « a » vowel, in order to feel its action flowing inwards and downwards, although it makes the diaphragm slowly raise, appearing as a seeming paradox only.

“The transverse abdominus is really the main muscle antagonistic to the diaphragm. It comes into play to quickly and powerfully expel the air, when the diaphragm relaxation – rather inefficient then – cannot achieve it any more.”

Marie-Christine Mathieu, Gestes et postures du musicien (Translated by Guy Robert)

When you run out of available air, releasing that transverse abdominus leads to a new spontaneous inhaling through the natural down-run of the diaphragm in your back, pulling down the lungs bottom to inflate them : keeping the feeling of your sound source under your sternum will insure that your deep sound extends through your next exhaling.

“A true person breathes through his heels.“

Robert Pichaureau, Expressions favorites (Translated by Guy Robert)

“You must relax when completing your inhaling, doing so, your instrument is naturally played.”

“The floating ribs get raised, which we name the costo-abdominal-diaphragmatic breathing. We should even say “diaphragmatic-costo-abdominal“ breathing, since inhaling is generated by the diaphragm.”

“Whether you play or you sing, the diaphragm raises, you don’t care about it, but it does go up. Relaxing carries inhaling, you don’t have to inhale, the diaphragm works that out. Release everything ! Don’t take any air in ! Thank you, and here it goes again and now…music comes in, not air.”

Robert Pichaureau, La respiration (Translated by Guy Robert)

“The diaphragm operation determines the freedom of the aerial ways which proves vital to the technical operation of a wind instrument.”

“For singers and wind players, the breathing maximum does not mean the technical optimum.”

“The diaphragm mobility around the floating ribs and the jaw flexibility both determine the pharynx opening, the free air flow, hence the sound magnitude and its spectral richness together with its emission comfort.”

Dr Delphine Olivier-Bonfils, La respiration diaphragmatique – Article publié dans le Journal de l’Association française du Cor 2000 n° 78 (Translated by Guy Robert)

“Air should flow down while you inhale and certainly should not go up for the exhaling phase, but to the opposite, it should keep flowing down. Whichever way it runs out, you should consider that it does not flow back up to exit through your mouth, but it keeps flowing down during your low exhaling and your vertical pushing.”

Michel Ricquier, Traité de pédagogie instrumentale (Translated by Guy Robert)

“Thinking about the breath causes restriction, by forcing muscles to act counter to natural principles… Just focusing on the musical result you want will dictate how you’re going to use your air. ”

Joe Allard

David Liebman  remembers these words from Joe Allard (of Quebec ancestry, and whose first clarinet teacher Gaston Hamelin was French), the teacher master who made him discover his sound mastery :

“Joe Allard would say (in perfect French of course) : “Jouer, c’est respirer, il n’y a pas de différence.””

David Liebman, Developing a Personal Saxophone Sound

And George Kochevistsky shows that knowing how to manage your vibration source means a minimal physical effort for your sound production :

“The execution of a complex movement requires not only precise timing regulation but also involvement of the least muscle work needed for any given action. This is achieved by localizing the excitatory process.”

George Kochevistsky, The Art Of Piano Playing

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