For BEST Results, Do The Whole Thing!

LOU GETS IT!

When I initially began studying BE, I formed a misconception that I've since observed in other horn players who study BE. I believed that the roll-out (RO) exercises were obviously designed to develop the low register and the high squeaky roll-in (RI) exercises were obviously for developing the upper register. Fortunately for me, I didn't apply this idea to my practice of BE exercises. I worked the whole program and enjoyed very satisfactory results.

The truth is, roll-out and roll-in exercises are designed to develop the embouchure, not a particular register. When the embouchure is developed in a balanced fashion, all registers are improved. RI exercises will improve your upper register, as well as your mid and low registers. RO exercises will improve your low register, as well as your mid and high registers. (Funny how that works!)

The elements of roll-in need to be balanced with the elements of roll-out to develop balance overall.

It's true that some people may benefit more from RO than RI and vice versa, but it may not be obvious exactly what exercises are needed. For me and quite a few others, learning RI seemed like a miracle pill that opened up the upper register. Since I've been working the BE system for 5 years, I now see benefits from practicing RO exercises in myself. I've seen experiences in other horn players that support this as well.

For example, one of my young horn students was struggling with the upper register. After introducing him to Roll-Out #1, he came back one week later thrilled because playing high notes became easier. Jonathan Penny is another who has had unexpected benefits from RO that were not even range related. http://beforhorn.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html It's a good thing Jonathan didn't decide to ignore the RO exercises!

Jeff has shared similar stories of RO exercises improving the upper register of trumpeters. Keep in mind, compared to horn players, trumpeters don't even have a low range. Yet, an exercise that appears to a horn player to be designed to develop the low register actually helps trumpeters develop upper range (as well as other aspects of playing).

If you decide you may not need Roll-Out or Roll-In exercises, be aware that you run a risk of missing important elements in the BE system that can help you develop a balanced embouchure.

If you want the maximum benefits of The Balanced Embouchure development system, you need to work the whole program, not just a few exercises.

Lou Denaro has recently been tootling around with the BE exercises. He's found early success with increasing his upper register and recognizes the value of working both extremes. He recently wrote this on the Yahoo Horn:

I think Jeff laid out the book well and users have to work both Roll-Out and Roll-In as Jeff intended and I do believe the overall results in the upper register come from retraining the soft inner lip tissues (roll-out) to work with the harder outer tissues (roll-in). In fact, if you really want to be solution oriented, I suspect that is the whole point of this BE thing.

Thanks, Lou, for sharing your insights. You've stated in just a few words a concept I've been struggling to both understand and communicate for years! For more recent comments by Lou, see this. 

Some have asked why Jeff Smiley doesn't make public one or two of his BE exercises so people can try them out and see if BE really works. There's a good reason Jeff does not do this. BE is a comprehensive system that is greater than the sum of its parts. One part, one exercise, taken out of context and practiced alone will not yield the desired results that the BE system will.

HOWEVER.... to keep things in perspective, doing the "whole thing" doesn't necessarily mean practicing every exercise every day. Some have found success by rotating and/or alternating the exercises. See Pressed for Time and Practicing BE.

The Embouchure and Cherry Picking

I liken the embouchure to a cherry orchard. You’ve got 300 trees, but only some make sweet cherries. Your job as a cherry picker is to find and pick only the sweetest cherries. It will take quite some time to sample the fruit of all 300 trees, so you need an easy-to-use system to enable you to quickly locate and remember the best cherry producing trees before the season is over. If you approach the orchard randomly you are sure to miss some trees, check others redundantly, and forget where the best fruit is found.

The embouchure is like a cherry orchard because there are hundreds of lip shapes (trees) possible, but not all will produce the desired notes (sweetest cherries). The Balanced Embouchure (BE) is a system that enables you to explore all possible lip shapes in a short period of time, with enough built-in repetition to store the memory of the most desirable note-producing shapes into both the mind and the muscle. It sounds complex, but BE is so simple, children master it.

The Balanced Embouchure systematically challenges the embouchure (or scans the orchard) in these important ways: (1) to play from as low as possible to as high as possible on an a “low note” embouchure, (2) to play from as high as possible to as low as possible on a “high note” embouchure, (3) tonguing with a rolled-out embouchure and (4) tonguing with the rolled-in embouchure, (5) an articulation/breathing challenge for accuracy and stability of attacks (snaps), (6) a breathing/articulation challenge to encourage tone support of individual notes, and (7) a breathing challenges to encourage support of the tone through phrases (specific crescendos). The basic Roll-Out and Roll-In exercises provide all this (and more) in a tidy, user friendly package that only takes about 12 to 20 minutes to execute.

The BE system is an organized plan for scanning all the possible shapes an embouchure can produce. The Roll-Out and Roll-In exercises are for locating and identifying the lip shapes that produce desirable notes. The Advanced Lip Slurs develop speed and efficiency to smoothly move from one desirable shape to the next.

To further abuse the cherry orchard analogy: BE is the plan that provides an organized method for checking every tree in the orchard. Roll-Out and Roll-In exercises are the part of the plan that provides a ladder to climb each tree to sample its fruit. The Advanced Lip Slurs are like providing a motorized cherry lift that makes quick work of gathering the sweetest cherries.

I hope this helps horn players better understand the purpose and value of each BE exercise as well as the entire BE development system. Understanding this should help the BE student appreciate that BE is greater than the sum of its parts. Practicing any one single exercise will provide benefits to the embouchure, but working the whole system is the surest way to achieve the maximum results of The Balanced Embouchure is designed to deliver.

Valerie Wells