Re: Articulation Flaw = Sore Throat ?


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Posted by Rick Denney on October 21, 2003 at 11:03:46:

In Reply to: Articulation Flaw = Sore Throat ? posted by Paul on October 21, 2003 at 10:19:07:

I had this same problem during my early return. I would use a glottal stop to help me change notes during a lip slur. My teacher noticed it right away--"Are you doing something glottal there? Don't!"--and I started consciously avoiding it during lip-slur exercises. For me it was easier to address the problem doing lip slurs than doing articulation exercises.

Sometimes, I find myself vocalizing by accident during technical passages, but I find this is a reaction to weak chops and poor air flow. When we have a weakness, we compensate by recruiting other muscles, even those that are not efficient in meeting the objective. While glottal stops and vocalizing are two different things, they are both things we do to make up for other weaknesses. I find that the more of those lip slurs that I do as exercises to consciously blow through pitch changes, the more headway I make against both problems.

At this point, the remaining trouble I have with recruiting the wrong muscles is in squinting my left eye. When I do it, lip slurs are difficult. When I consciously relax that side of my face, lip slurs are far easier (and so it everything else). My vision is partly to blame for the squint in the first place, and it is something that I work on all the time, with the hope that eventually I'll groove on the relaxed face and won't have to think about it any more.

The point is that all these effects are compensations for lack of proper air flow and a weak embouchure. The air provides the energy and impulse needed to articulate fast passages and also to blow through lip slurs smoothly, and the strong embouchure establishes the proper buzz without having to recruit muscles that eventually cause more problems than they solve.

Rick "who has been working on these two issues for, oh, 20 years" Denney


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