Anatowind℠ Music Clinic

I have asked Rob Lewandowski, a Trumpet student of Anatowind, who plays professionally in the Chicago area, to discuss the subject above

James Simmons     Clinic director

Analyze/Paralyze & Fear of Embouchure Change

Many trumpet players are wary of altering their embouchure in any significant way, probably assuming that messing around with how the mouthpiece meets the chops will be disorienting and/or destabilizing, and they are generally reluctant to chance losing hard-won gains in the embouchure they have established over many years.

What I came to realize once I begin studying Anatowind is that it’s not so much about “changing” your embouchure (in the old way I thought of it: 2/3 upper lip—1/3 lower lip) as it is about changing your conception of what an embouchure is.

At the time I began my investigation of Anatowind, my range was very erratic, like my endurance. Some days I was encouraged, other days not so much. In any case, I had been searching thru the published trumpet literature for information about the fundamentals of forming a correct embouchure, which I had never formally studied (I did not major in music in college). I read and studied books by Philip Farkas (his book has photos of the whole CSO brass section demonstrating what an embouchure should look like), Arnold Jacobs, James Stamp, Claude Gordon, Carlton McBeth’s book on the Maggio method, Chase Sanborn, Don Johnson, Donald Reinhardt, Jerome Callet and many more. In more recent years, I poured over stuff I found online, like Trumpet College and the ITG site.

Analyze/Paralyze

I did once study privately for a few weeks with a trumpet instructor at Northwestern University in the late 1980s. He said he would cover the fundamentals of sound production, tone, etc…just what I was looking for. However, I soon found out there would be no discussion of how to correctly place the mouthpiece on the face, how to pivot, how to take a breath, the proper position of the tongue and its relationship to range…that’s what I assumed we would be talking about.

Instead, he had me buy a copy of a best-selling book (at the time) called “The Inner Game of Tennis.” That was his approach to teaching the physical skill of playing trumpet: hear the note, play the note. Let your body do it…don’t get in your own way. This is always good advice, but I was looking for information about the mechanics of playing.

He said talking about the physical aspects of performance was a waste of time and effort and would cause “Analysis/Paralysis.”

And besides, I shouldn’t try to “change” my embouchure because that was rarely successful, he said.

Fear of embouchure change

That was the first time I heard the Analysis/Paralysis expression, but I believe it is a very common point of view among trumpet players.

It’s curious how brass players avoid experimenting with the embouchure. Professional athletes aren’t afraid to study their physical skills—they watch films of their movement in slow motion, etc., take apart their swing into its component parts, experiment with stance, form and so on. They make changes based on what they discover, all in an effort to develop their skills to the maximum. But I get the feeling that many trumpeters apparently feel you should never alter the embouchure set-up you established when you first learned to play!

In my personal experience, I always thought there must be something wrong with my original embouchure set-up because it was so limited in range and endurance. So I was looking for a better way. Before I even began studying Anatowind concepts, I was already experimenting with trying to find a “favorable embouchure setting” (that’s how I thought of it) using the Maggio/ Claude Gordon pedal tone system, Carmine Caruso, The Pivot system, and what I could find out about Roy Steven’s out-of-print method books, which apparently had a lot to say about the role of the lower jaw in trumpet playing. So I was searching for something and felt I had more to gain than lose if I could discover a more efficient, better way to form an embouchure.

Although there is some published advice out there about forming an embouchure, the approach of most trumpet method books is to provide exercises that will hopefully lead a player to correct physical functioning. The idea being that the exercise itself will require the player to do certain things physically just to get the notes to come out and therefore, thru repetition, your body will find the most efficient way to get the note to sound.

Play on the muscles of the face

One of the first and most profound Anatowind concepts is a simple, but revolutionary statement (for me it was anyway) — You play on the muscles of your face!

Of course…when you think about it. The lips themselves have no muscles, being membrane and tissue. I guess I was aware of some facial muscles like the orbicularis oris — ring-like muscles surrounding the lips. I’ve heard trumpet players talk about that.

Sometimes trumpet method books talk about the drawstring effect of the obicularis or compare it to a camera aperture closing in. A well-known lead and jazz trumpet player around Chicago used to advise trumpeters when fatigued to “use your Buccinators” more. So I think that many pro players know these concepts… some of this knowledge has been around before and maybe goes back a long time. The word for the Buccinator muscles in the cheeks was derived from the Latin word for trumpet!

But the method books that I am aware of do not delve into an examination of musculature. The only time studying the facial musculature is ever mentioned, it seems like, is to dismiss it… “Yes…[teachers will say]… books have been written about all the muscles in the face, etc. etc. but studying anatomy & physiology is a waste of time and just causes Analysis/paralysis…etc., etc.” 

Anatowind Theory and Practice

Actually, I used to always wonder where are these books detailing the facial musculature and their role in playing the trumpet? I’d like to see that book! I guess I always assumed that somewhere, maybe deep down in some university file of doctoral dissertations, someone may have published a text showing the muscles in the face involved in producing a tone on a brass instrument and explaining how they function. Apparently not, though, until Joseph Simmons published his History, Theory and Practice of Anatowind textbook in the late 1988, the result of 35 years of research and study.

A key finding of Anatowind can be summarized in this statement:

A tone is directly related to the physiology from which it was emitted.

And a major corollary can be stated:

Although the body has voluntary and involuntary muscles, “It is possible to reach the involuntary muscles through voluntary techniques.”

You play on the muscles of your face, particularly the large, back facial muscles associated with opening/closing the jaws: the Masseters. The Buccinators are thought of as connecting muscles between the Masseters as a source of power, and the Triangularis muscles in the front of the face working with the Mentalis muscle as a control points.

Comprehensive, Scientific approach

Anatowind has a systematic, comprehensive approach to instructing brass players how to correctly hook-up the breathing to the anatomy & physiology of the facial musculature. It’s a scientific approach, based on more than 30 years of specialized research in the fields of anatomy and physiology. I can’t summarize Anatowind methodology, as it is quite complex and of course varies according to each person’s unique teeth, jaw, lips and so on. Some of the basic concepts can be learned thru study of the Anatowind textbook and the Manual, but basically it is a clinical process and requires the guidance of a trained instructor in the method. They have a process and a patent on the process, so it is a long-term course of study, and a long and very interesting journey toward discovery and understanding.

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