Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • December 2014
12
allow. Conversely, rolling only to the color change will
produce a sound more mellow—more like the sound
of Larry Combs. For my taste I generally like to have
3/4 of the red part of my lip rolled over my teeth.
In any case, you should never roll beyond the color
change as this will dampen the reed considerably.)
4. Place the mouthpiece against your top teeth only:
Insert the clarinet mouthpiece in your mouth so it rests
against your top teeth only. Do not move anything else
in your face during this operation. You should be able
to hold the clarinet in place this way only holding the
clarinet with your right thumb on the thumb rest. The
clarinet should balance nicely with roughly the correct
amount of mouthpiece in the mouth. Be sure not to
move your lips or to change the position of your teeth
during this step.
5. Move your bottom jaw forward and bring your
corners in to make a seal :
Move your bottom jaw
forward (parallel to the floor) until it meets the reed.
At this point your bottom teeth should be slightly
in front of your top teeth. Then bring the corners of
your embouchure in towards the mouthpiece to make
a seal. Be careful not to allow the position of your
bottom lip to change as you make a seal.
6. Blow- - “Shh! ” :
Without moving anything, blow
“Shh!” as if you are telling someone to be quiet.
It is not difficult to form an embouchure following
these six simple steps once they are understood. The
difficulty is holding on to each step once it is formed
as you play.
I have started beginners this way and they
almost always have little trouble making a well-
formed embouchure quickly. College students who
have developed issues with some aspect of their
embouchure, however, find maintaining this new
embouchure incredibly difficult. I usually like to
remind my students that if you want to get a lot better
you need to do something a lot different. It is possible
to fix a troubled embouchure after years of incorrect
habits if you are committed to the change and to the
necessity of the change.
Further Ref inement
As a teacher I firmly believe in what I refer to as
“positive teaching”. I feel that the teacher should try
to show students a constructive direction to move
forward, and resist the temptation to teach through
a series of corrections. When teaching through
corrections students get immediate results, but usually
are left feeling lost and ultimately struggle to eventually
know how to teach the same things to their students.
When you tell a student a correction they also tend
to go too far in that direction and ultimately end up
with the opposite problem. Furthermore, they have a
difficult time articulating their pedagogical beliefs.
Once students have been taught to form an
embouchure in the manner outlined above you can
continue to refer back to these simple underlying
principles to further refine their mechanics.
(See the chart on the following page.)
Forming a Single Lip Clarinet Embouchure