Just Thinking....

I was thinking this morning that if it weren't for BE, 
there's no way I would have the confidence to calmly approach the high register.  What other method teaches you exactly, precisely how to set your chops to play the highest notes on the horn straight on, cold turkey, without slurring or "glissing" up to it? I could be wrong, but there are none that I'm aware of.    Jeff Smiley is very clever.

The Balanced Embouchure Book with CD is $45.00.
The BE for French Horn booklet and/or PDF of horn adaptations is $3.00 (with book purchase).
Shipping & handling is $5.50 to $25.00 depending on location. (The quoted prices are in US dollars.)

Those who purchase The Balanced Embouchure with a Comfy Horn Strap, receive a $5.00 discount (as well as break on shipping).

To Order:

Step 1. Email me: ValerieW78 “at” Gmail “dot” com. Please tell me what instrument you play and the country you live in.

Step 2. I send you an invoice with payment options (credit card, PayPal, check or money order).

Step 3. You pay the invoice.

Step 4. I ship your BE book.

Happy horn playing!

Valerie Wells

BE Now for Doug Wagner

The following is an email sent to Jeff Smiley and shared with me March 16, 2016.  Doug is retired, played trombone for many years, and took up horn 10 years ago.  Doug has been studying BE since 2010.  

Jeff,

Jeff,

It has been a few years since I contacted you, and I don't even remember what I told you about my progress. The main thing I remember from your first reply, was that age was not my issue. That had to have been nearly seven years ago, and today I am approaching seventy years old, and my chops have never been in better shape! You were so right, and I am so grateful for your encouragement back then. 

The thing I believe age has influenced, is how long it takes to get to the same place a younger person would take. The good news is that consistent practice and dedication can still get you there. I will never play with a major orchestra, or even play professionally, though I have been paid for a few performances. My goal is to play to have fun and to get better and have even more fun. Music and playing horn is the passion of my retirement.

For several years I have not steadfastly practiced the BE routines, but I have always kept firmly in mind the BE principles as I progressed. I have stayed in contact with Valerie over the years, and she and I have become good friends.

What is personally important to me is that I struggled and struggled with the lower register on horn, and came up against the Reicha trios for horn, opus 82. The 3rd part drops down into the bass trombone/tuba range and expects that the player has the flexibility to play nimbly in that range. So I began experimenting, keeping BE in mind. I certainly could play the lowest notes without any difficulty, having learned from BE how to play that low, but to move back into a more RI embouchure for the higher notes was a daunting task.

I kept experimenting and one day recently, the epiphany/eureka moment arrived and I found that I could still roll out enough to reach those lower notes without rolling entirely outside the mouthpiece. It's kind of a pooch of the lips that still allows a quick roll in of the embouchure. It made all the difference.

I'm not quite up to tempo yet on being able to perform those low passages, but I'm closing fast. On the high side, my upper range has increase a solid performable fifth, from my beginnings. This I truly believe is because of embracing the principles of BE, and finding ways to implement them in my day to day playing.

I play principal horn in a small town pops orchestra in Colorado, and occasionally sub in area orchestras that play major works. I travel to California each summer to play in the Brass Chamber Music Workshop at Humboldt State University, and have such a fantastic time with all those terrific brass players.

So I just wanted to give you an update and a huge thank you for what you have brought to my playing. I'm so glad to see that your web site is up and active, and that BE is alive, well, and thriving. 

Regards and appreciation,

Doug Wagner

Lakewood, Colorado

 The Balanced Embouchure Book with CD is $45.00.
The BE for French Horn booklet and/or PDF of horn adaptations is $3.00 (with book purchase).
Shipping & handling is $5.50 to $25.00 depending on location. (The quoted prices are in US dollars.)

Those who purchase The Balanced Embouchure with a Comfy Horn Strap, receive a $5.00 discount (as well as break on shipping).

To Order:

Step 1. Email me: ValerieW78 “at” Gmail “dot” com. Please tell me what instrument you play and the country you live in.

Step 2. I send you an invoice with payment options (credit card, PayPal, check or money order).

Step 3. You pay the invoice.

Step 4. I ship your BE book.

Happy horn playing!

Valerie Wells

"Try BE first... it might be the cheaper solution to your problem."

Last week, I received a delightful email from Marina in Germany.  

Dear Valerie,

First of all my husband and I want to say "thank you".  The BE book and the French horn booklet I had ordered on march 31st arrived quite quickly. Your e-mail with some additional information for French horn players was very helpful to me, too.

BTW:

This e-mail is quite long and I´m going to refer to different topics.

It might be helpful for you to know what I´m going to write about. Otherwise you might find it somehow unstructured.
So:

1. " 3 weeks of "To BE and not to BE": what happened?"
2. "Surprise, surprise: Uwe Zaiser´s performance of the LCS on Youtube!"
3. "What I (long time ago!) learned from three different teachers:
     (Short summary: lots, nothing, nothing.)"
4. "How you (with BE) can save or (without BE) can waste a big amount of 
      money ;-)"

There we go!  

1. " 3 weeks of "To BE and not to BE": what happened?"

After 10 days:  Now both of us (my husband (trumpet) and I (French horn)) are practicing BE for about 10 days and we can sometimes give feedback to each other; that´s great.  And yes, there are already funny things happening during our every day practicing sessions and during the rehearsals.For example:  I recognized that that very little bit of "finding the double pedals" , "RO#1" and "figuring out the lip clamp squeak" is affecting my flexibility in normal playing in a positive way.  Even the sound is getting richer. I should tell you that I quite soon could hear that myself, but I refused to believe my ears.  I thought: "It´s somehow psychological... you WANT that big sound and now you started practicing BE and that´s why you´re thinking you can hear it yet. It´s like going to see the doctor and while you´re speaking to him you already feel a little bit cured." But, hey! Others can hear it, too! (So I don´t have to go and see a shrink ...)

The most funny thing is that since the sound is becoming richer, there are incredibly large amounts of water in the slides, while I´m practicing in the same room and at the same roomtemperature as before. I could almost fill my dog´s drinking bowl with it!  (By the way: my dog is a ShiTzu, not a Saint Bernard, in case you start wondering about the size of the bowl...)

So I started thinking about that. Result: there can only be two reasons for it:

Reason 1: It´s not water, it´s spit. Well, I could tell you funny stories about huge amounts of spit in the third valve Bb-horn-slide, related to being the principal during Tchaikowsky 5th... but in this case, it´s NOT spit.

Reason 2: The way my lips are moving in the mouthpiece is changing. Because of this I´m blowing more air into the horn than before. The richness of the sound and the water are due to (still small) development of the embouchure. I suppose, that´s more likely. Honestly: I can´t get through an Gallay-Etude anymore because I have to stop and empty the slides. If the producer of the slide grease I use has shares on offer, I´m going to buy all of them! (Just kidding...)

After 3 weeks: After those 10 days of practicing BE I unfortunately got a serious cold that affected my breathing in a way that I could neither speak nor play horn. (But I did the Lip Clamp once a day!)  I had to stop playing for more than a week and started again 3 days ago.  The first 2 days the BE-effect seemed to be gone, but I didn´t worry about that.

Yesterday (third day of playing after the cold) I started practicing at 6 p.m. That´s normally the time of the day we have dinner. So I told my husband he would have to wait for one more hour.  At 8 p.m. he said: "I´m really hungry..." Oooops! 2 (!) hours of playing? And I had already been playing for 1 hour that morning. 3 (!!!) hours of practicing a little bit of BE, some scales and arpeggios and 4 different Gallay-Etudes? Three days after I hadn´t played for about 9 days?  And: the sound was almost as good again as after that 10 days of BE before I got ill.  And again there´s a lot of water in the slides...

 2. "Surprise, surprise: Uwe Zaiser´s performance of the LCS on Youtube!"

There´s ´something else I wanted to tell you about:  When I tried to figure out the LCS for the first time, I didn´t really understand what Jeff meant by using the word "squeak". I was asking myself if it was something like buzzing a very high pitch. So I asked my friend "Youtube" and found a guy called "Spasstrompeter" demonstrating the LCS. With his heavy German accent he says: "No-no buzzing!" This helped me a lot! Without that little video I would have done the wrong thing without being conscious of it. (Later that week I read about the fact that some years ago he had uploaded almost all BE-exercises, but Jeff convinced him not to share all of them on YouTube, because people would imitate his embouchure. And BE is not about imitating somebody, but about figuring out what your own individual balanced embouchure is like. I think Jeff is right, but I´m also very happy that the LCS can still be found on Youtube. It´s helpful because of the  "mosquito-sound". And yes, the player´s corners are quite tightened, but it´s his individual way to do the LCS...)  

When "Spasstrompeter" appeared in front of his camera I immediatly recognized him as Uwe Zaiser.  I know him for more than 20 years, even he does not know me at all. Uwe Zaiser is not only first chair in a very good German orchestra, he has also been (and still is)  a member of the excellent German brass quintett "Rennquintett". The Rennquintett was founded in 1987 and I started taking French horn lessons in 1993, when I was thirteen. The first 2 years my teacher (and band leader) was Ralf Rudolph, tuba player of the Rennquintett.  (In my first e-mail I told you that my first teacher was a tuba player, which might be the reason that I have kind of a trumpet embouchure and that I´ve never been told anything about such strange things like "einsetzen"...He also played the trombone quite well, but couldn´t get a proper sound out of a French horn (*LOL*).)  Of course I heard Uwe perform with the Rennquintett and I still have some 20 year-old Rennquintett CD´s... (Time to get the newest ones!)  

And I think it´s funny when I as a German order the BE-method (which is quite unknown here) from someone in the United States and then find my old teachers colleague on Jeff´s official BE-teachers list and as the one who solved my LCS-problem via Youtube.

 3. "What I (long time ago!) learned from three different teachers:
     (Short summary: lots, nothing, nothing.)"

 Due to the fact that I almost didn´t play between my 20th and 30th birthday, it took me quite a long time to recognize that  I have had a good teacher (-> Uwe´s colleague). I didn´t recognize until the time when I was a "come-back"  in the Dutch orchestra I´m playing now with. More than once one of the other horn players said: "You must have had a  good teacher!" Yes, I´ve had a great teacher who was not able to play French horn at all, and I´m very, very grateful for that (*LOL*)!  After two years of teaching me he decided that I  needed someone who could teach me more specific things concerning the French horn. The next 18 months I tried two professional horn players as teachers and what I learned was: nothing.

At that time I also got some health problems and so I quit.  I gave up the idea of becoming a professional player, but I went on playing in the orchestra as long as I still went to school. When I became an university student I had to move to another town and I couldn´t find an orchestra which I could have joined.  I (almost didn´t) play anymore until I was 31 years old.

 4. "How you (with BE) can save or (without BE) can waste a big amount of money ;-)"

By the way: In the second year of my come-back-period I struggled enormously with my horn, especially with the sound. (It´s one of the very early Engelbert Schmid horns, manufactured after his plans, but not by himself. My first teacher (-> the one who played tuba) found it for me in 1995. One of his colleagues wanted to sell it.) So I took it to a professional horn player near Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for a general overhaul (...the first one after 15 years...shame on me!...) This man is also a French horn manufacturer and I told him that I was thinking about buying a new horn. When he seemed very interested in buying my instrument, I became suspicious.  So I looked up Engelbert Schmid´s price list on the internet in order to find out what my kind of horn would cost right now when it would be new. I almost lost consciousness...And I decided that I´m a lucky devil.

I also decided that it must be me who creates the bad sound, not the horn. At the same time a Dutch horn player whom I had told about my plans to buy a new instrument gave me a magazine from the Dutch horn society (Nederlands Hoornisten Genootschap).  In that magazine I found an interesting article. The title was: "There exist no bad horns, just bad ...(horn players)".  The next day I opened the website of my favourite search engine and entered (in English): "French horn embouchure".  And I found a website with a picture of a very nice looking lady and her horn ... Guess who... I started practicing more seriously, which helped a lot (*LOL*), but after 4 months I wrote you an e-mail...

So if somebody says: "I need a new horn, because mine sounds badly somehow!", you can answer: "Try BE first, because it might be the cheaper solution to your problem..."

(And OF COURSE there are bad instruments and buying a good one is not a waste of money, but it doesn´t make sense to buy an Engelbert Schmid Triple or an Alexander 103 when you cannot play properly...)  It´s unnecessary to say that not all of my dreams concerning my horn sound and flexibility have come true yet.

Kind regards from Germany, Marina

Newbie Preparing for the BE Journey

Here I've cut and pasted various posts from the Balanced Embouchure for Horn group on FaceBook.  https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/101746176633232/

•  Rhodri Spearing:  The journey begins *today*!  Wish me luck...
  

  

  
  

  
  

  •  Andrew Joy:

    Rhodri, a wise investment.

    
    
  •  Rhodri Spearing:

    I'm praying with every ounce of my being that you're right. I'm approaching 3 years now of endless frustration, and I've tried *everything* to get my chops to work, with only temporary and limited success...I really feel like this is all that's left now. "Help me BE you're my only hope"...

     Colin Ng:
  • .. do best to forget all concepts, conventions and imagination until you are done reading for its simple literal meanings and practicing like you are ignorant and under supervision of an esteemed master. Then FORGET BE totally when doing 'normal' stuffs like etudes, excepts or repertoire. Do not expect miracles but enjoy things getting surprisingly easier little by little, day by day.

    
    
  •  Colin Ng: 

    Colin Ng there is no end; no 100%. You just keep discovering things getting easier each day... for me, its been like that since 2011. Just when you thought you know something, you go even further the next day... Then you start to wonder, did we actually know anything at all? That is the genius of Jeff Smiley. Just as Beatrice put it, "BE is not an embouchure"

    
    
  • Alexander Shuhan:

     Well said, Colin and Beatrice. BE is definitely NOT an embouchure. It will help you discover awareness and understanding where there was previously frustration and confusion. I swear that rarely a day goes by without me feeling like some small thing is intuitively, unconsciously being tweaked. But know that you cannot force it to happen. Doing BE exercises for hours a day is NOT what it's about. He gives such GREAT advice in the book. Heed it well and things will start happening. And when you have that first "Aha" moment, you'll feel an enormous weight lifted off of your shoulders. Good luck and enjoy new beginnings.
    
    
    Everything I have learned and am continuing to learn from BE thus far, has done more to help me understand "traditionalist" approaches than any of the language that they tend to use. But we're preaching to the choir here! :-) BE is like a "key" to understanding some previously unintelligible language. Use it the way he (Smiley) suggests, play and forget about it, read it again, think some more, play some more, etc., etc., and little by little, over time, as your playing improves and changes in ways that you truly cannot comprehend just yet, you'll experience just how grateful you are to have discovered that "key."
    
    Rhodri, just enjoy the ride for a while. You will not likely have daily revelations, and you may not have any for a while. But something will happen at some point and you'll realize that the only reason you even recognize that it did is because you have the "key." 

    
    Valerie Wells: 
  • I found the most appropriate sentence one time on the BE forum of Trumpet Herald: "BE is not boot camp!" I never have been able to find who said it. It sums it up so well. BE isn't boot camp or a severe gymnasium workout. It's more like a university for your embouchure.

    
     Rhodri Speearing: 
  • Day 1 over and my perception of playing is already beginning to change. Looking forward to what tomorrow might bring!

    
    
  •  Beatrice Latherings: 

    Just remember it is not a quick fix; it's a journey.

    
    
  •  Valerie Wells: 

     BE is intended to be a friendly influence on the embouchure, not a hostile takeover!

    
    

     Colin Ng: 
  • To BE is not to BE.

    
    

Micah Cooper Recommends BE for Range Development

A horn player recently asked tips to improve the upper register on Facebook.  Micah Cooper's answer was short, sweet & to the point!  

Get BE and do the exercises. I went from 4 to 5 octaves in one month. 

Later, he shared this with me in a message:

I wish I had BE when I was in high school. Things would have been a whole lot easier. Also, I said 5 octaves for my range in my post. When I am practicing a lot my range pushes 5 1/2. And when I come off a multiple month layoff, I can get back my chops in a week or two with the program. Just Awesome.

BE works!

I'm Back and Feeling Grateful!

Six years studying The Balanced Embouchure.  It just keeps giving me more & more.  The progress never stops unless I stop.  I'm not the greatest horn player in the world, of course.   I'm just a little old lady, come back horn playing grandma with a chronic neurological disease, who plays in community ensembles and gets the occasional paid gig.  But, there are so many things I can do now that I wouldn't have been able to had it not been for BE.  I'm thankful.

Once again, BE has come to the rescue.  I injured my upper lip in an accident December 2nd, driving my front tooth clear through the center of the under side of my upper lip.  Five days later a little blob of dead flesh sloughed off leaving a small hole, then a scar right where the aperture forms.  (It reminded me of the injury Adrew Joy described that prompted him to find help, and eventually BE.) http://beforhorn.blogspot.com/2011/08/joy-continues-on-balanced-embouchure_07.html  After taking few weeks off, I found myself with severely limited range and endurance, not to mention horrid tone.  It was definitely a déjà vu experience.  My embouchure function was eerily similar to what it had been 7 years ago before I started studying BE! 


I thought it would be a quick fix, but progress was slow because my lips would swell at the slightest provocation severely limiting practice time.  It took a full four months before I had recovered the range & endurance I had before the accident.  Thanks to BE, I'm back & enjoying playing again.  

Three cheers for Jeff Smiley!     

BE and Verdi

This is from an email I received from Doug Wagner.  Doug had a career as a trombone player and music arranger.  After he retired from arranging & trombone performance, he decided to pursue one of his dreams, to become a horn player.  He's written several times about how BE has helped him.  Here's his latest in a spontaneous email I received from him just this week.

Val,
I just got the music (3rd horn) for Verdi's Otello which we are performing in August. So far I've found horn in: Bb, C, D, Eb, E, A and A Basso, and your favorite, horn in B. He either loved or hated horns. Lot's of nice solos in the 3rd part. Dave threatened to take 3rd away from me and make me play 1st.   

I don't think that anyone who has never experienced something like this could even remotely begin to understand.  The old joke is that playing in a symphony orchestra is like flying: endless boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror.  We've all been there and done that. But the thrill of getting it right is what keeps us coming back.... And actually, it wasn't until I started BE that I ever had any confidence that I ever would perform.     

The Otello horn parts have stuff that is right out of BE exercises. I would never have thought I could play some of these passages before BE. Now it's - "Oh yeah, I know how to do that." I'm not bragging, it's just that I've done those exercises so much, that it's very natural to incorporate the BE techniques into real world playing. I approach every playing situation from a BE perspective, practice, rehearsal or performance, because first I have to be able to produce the notes. After that I can work on the musical aspects. If I can't play the notes, there isn't anywhere to go. BE has helped me make sure I can play the notes.

Doug

The Balanced Embouchure for Horn on FaceBook

I've formed a group on FaceBook called The Balanced Embouchure for Horn.  Postings are open for the public to read.  All BE students (BE'ers) with a Facebook account are invited to join.

Alexander Shuhan's Early Impressions of BE

Alexander Shuhan purchased The Balanced Embouchure January 25th, 2012.  One month later I received this from him in an email:

Valerie, Greetings!  Starting to wade into BE and pushing my studio along on the cart ahead of me.  Thanks!  More sharing will follow soon... 
Alex

A few days later, Alex emailed again to order BE books for all his students:

I just had a freshman in for a lesson who had never played below a low F# on the F horn--she was just now getting pedal B's to speak a fifth lower!  Unbelievable!  :-)  . . . .


Looking forward to sharing my experiences w/ you as my students have a little more time to soak all of this in.  A couple of them have already shown significant changes in their playing.  My own playing improvements are blowing my mind.  I'm trying to keep track of everything I'm thinking about and how BE is informing change/growth, but it is seriously almost overwhelming in a positive way.  All I know is that just about everything I've ever heard said about how to play NOW makes sense...and at least for me, it's all nearly completely opposite of what I thought I understood.  I'd call that somewhat significant!!! :-)  More later...and thanks again!


Alex

BE for Horn, Dreams Realized

I started BE in the spring of 2006.   At that time, my dream was to acquire the ability to play the full range of the horn with ease.  I believed if I could do that, everything else would eventually fall into place with enough practice.  I remember writing to Jeff Smiley, "If this works for me, I'm going to tell my old  horn professor about it," because nothing he and I tried helped me improve my range and endurance.  After my sophomore year, I dropped out of university music school in 1973 feeling defeated.  Some 30+ years later, I decided to give horn playing another try.

Now, after nearly six years of studying BE, my dream of having command of the full range of the instrument has been realized.  I have the range to  play any note in the literature and any horn part for a very long time before tiring.  (That's not to say I can play any part, just the range needed for any note of any part!)  For example, after performing 1st horn on Beethoven's 7th, my chops still felt "fresh."  Having good range and endurance frees me to focus on the many other aspects of horn playing such as tone, phrasing, technique, etc.

Ten months after I began studying The Balanced Embouchure, seeing that BE really "worked" I had another dream, to share BE with the horn world.  I wanted all horn players with a desire to improve their embouchures to know that there's a simple method available that not only promises, but delivers results. (See Christain Hansen's testimonial here.)  I wanted to tell them that this method works without the drudgery of slaving away for hours a day on strength building exercises.  This method is technique driven and is mastered by practicing a few exercises that are so simple, kids can do them.  

I especially wanted to share this message with college students who may be struggling with embouchure issues like I did.  I am very happy to see my dream come true as college level horn students and instructors from all over the globe are now studying BE.  In addition, there are now high school and middle school band directors teaching BE as part of their brass instruction.

What I never dreamed of in my BEginnings was to see professional horn players embrace BE for their own use.  That was a complete surprise to me.  I naively assumed that all professional horn players had perfectly balanced chops so had no need for BE.  I was wrong and have enjoyed seeing a substantial number of pro's embrace BE for their own benefit.  I've even had the pleasure of seeing a couple who had thrown in the towel on professional performing due to embouchure issues, but return to it joyfully!  (Search my blog for testimonials of professional horn players who use BE:  Andrew Joy, Dave Stoller, Steve Park, Sandra Clarke, John Ericson, Julia Rose, Hans Christian, Alex Shuhan....)

This gives me a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment to have my dreams come true.

Valerie Wells

Truth Passes Through Three Stages

Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher (1788 -- 1860), wrote:

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."  

I believe The Balanced Embouchure method is approaching stage three. I am glad I haven't been "violently opposed" as I've promoted BE, but anyone who has followed this little saga since the spring 2007 can not deny that I've been opposed with vigor and venom!  There remain only a few who openly ridicule me for what I do.  However, The Balanced Embouchure for horn is now used by over 237 French horn players on every continent, except perhaps Antarctica.  It's exciting and satisfying to be a part of this.  

Jeff Smiley is making a significant and positive contribution to brass pedagogy.  

(Update in 12/23/13:  I stopped counting a about a year ago when the number of French horn players using BE passed 320.)          

More BE Analysis from Lou Denaro

I've tried for years to analyse & understand BE. I've just about given up. The embouchure is such a fluid thing, and so difficult to analyze, I've adopted this attitude: Just do BE because it works.  But..... Lou Denaro is different.  His analysis on BE fascinates me. Lou's also teaching me a thing or two about the mysterious world of mouthpieces.  Here's a discussion he recently initiated on my FaceBook wall. 

Lou: Latest BE observation: I've compared it to a "Lip Stretch" (ala Yoga). Now I believe that it's really about using the settings to harden our too soft lip tissues. Ultimately the player ends up covering both sides of Farkas' "oboe reed" aperture, build up the inner tissues in roll out to maintain the larger aperture and build up the outer tissues in the tighter roll in aperture and it's simply a matter of intuitively playing to your dual strengths rolling in and out across the registers and keeping things nice and smooth and beautiful. Amen.

Lou:  Also left out that this tonguing on the lips business is as basic/san artifice attack as most players can manage, it prompts the appropriate response in the appropriate tissues that should be engaged. All of my comments are not purely scientific, but I believe Jeff left it vague in order to let us explore for that reason.  

David:  Lou, great update. Question, given the increased strength of lip muscles due to rolling in, and out, have you found that the ID (inner diameter) of the mouthpiece is sufficient or have you switched, might switch to a larger or smaller id mouthpiece?

Lou: David, this is a put on right? It's almost too good that you're asking this question. I switched to a G&W 4.75 (the biggest cup in their lineup Inner Rim: .709 / Cup Depth: 1.040 / Throat: .184) 3 weeks ago. I also put a bigger rim ID on my Cantesanu piece (for the Paxman). I'm not proud of this. The thing is that Jeff's method is supposed to work with smaller IDs, but it got to the point that I was visibly overpowering the G&W 3.25 (modified Schmidt 10 copy) on my NiSi Schmidt last month. The 4.75 diffuses sax-player-playing-on-a-metal-reed effect that I was starting to get on the 3.25.  Not that matters any way, because I can still play on smaller rims (provided the horn can take it), but Schmidt's have lighter more penetrating sounds than most other horns out there and having more cup volume up front gives you something to back off from and in any case I'm glad I've got more choices up front on how to power up these beasts.

Valerie:  Lou wrote "but I believe Jeff left it vague in order to let us explore for that reason." Exactly! I think you've nailed the "universal principals" side of BE, Lou.  The "vague" part that Smiley left out are the exact details of how these principles apply to the individual. I believe it would be impossible for Jeff to describe exactly how each person's lips achieve balance... so it's best not to speak of such things. 

Valerie: I love the Yoga analogy! 

 Lou: I thought of it last month in Winter Harbor, I was up by myself doing BE on the seashore every morning crack of dawn, we had an Alexander Technique (efficient use of the body) class and participants shared that there was overlap between Yoga stretches and whatever exercise we were doing at 7:45am and then it hit me that I've been doing my own stretches since 6:00.

For more of Lou's insights see this.

Julia Rose Is At It Again!

Well, Julia Rose is at it again, and this time she made me laugh out loud.  I won't spoil it by telling you what she wrote that made me laugh, but she made some thoughtful observations, great suggestions and a funny comparison!  I left a comment that will refer you to a pertinent article I wrote nearly two years ago.