I took a flute lesson from Guido Fazio at House of Woodwinds last week, to get an alternative view on how this
instrument is supposed to be played. The single most useful thing he
told me about the flute embouchure (how you hold your mouth) is to
visualize yourself sucking on a thin straw. That puts your mouth in the right formation, then you blow with the same mouth position.
Since that lesson, I've also been experimenting with my sax
embouchure, hoping one day to wean myself of my wax & gauze
crutch that I've been using for a while to help play without
feeling any pain. I managed to do a couple of rehearsals last week
without using the crutch, but had performances Friday and Saturday
night which I absolutely needed to be able to play comfortably.
The sax and flute embouchures are similar, except for one
important difference: you need to support the reed without letting
any air leak out of the mouth, but without biting the lower lip with
the bottom teeth. This is the source of my frustration, how to
keep from biting my bottom lip, while supporting the reed enough to
get a pleasing sound. Ironically, the sax tone is much
better the more you allow the reed to vibrate, but it also feels much
more out of control.
11:55:43 AM 
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