@Sound-Advice said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:
Or a big difference between the regular facial skin and the "red" of the lip. Indeed quite a number of brass playing systems that teach high notes are either intentionally or subconsciously trying to get us to "pooch" out more inner upper lip flesh into the mouthpiece. Maggio was well know for this. And in the early days of my career Louis Maggio's "monkey lips" pucker brought out my first truly good high notes. High G anyway. It wasn't until some years later that I discovered this to be a "finite" or limited range setting for me.
Thank you!
The Maggio "monkey lips" method is less about range acquisition as it is about playing with more muscle efficiency. With the Maggio method, you really end up recruiting more facial muscle to support the orbicularis muscle, the ultimate muscles required for vibrating the tissue creating the sound wave, and has much less to do with how much "red" of the lip is involved. So I see this method less about increasing range but more about increasing endurance. HOWEVER with that said, the more endurance one has, the more support that individual has in improving range.
As Dr. Mark alluded to, it is more about relaxing the muscles that are required to produce range than it is about muscle force. This is what the Maggio method accomplishes. When you have muscle that fatigues less, you do not have to provide increasing pressure with the mouthpiece to try to artificially keep muscle fasciculation. vibrating at a higher rate. HOWEVER if the habit is to still cram the mouthpiece into the lips, you do 2 negative things. You decrease the ability to achieve the same level of vibration frequency making it harder for the lips to perform against increasing force AND you decrease blood flow to the lips, leading to rapid development of fatigue. Double defeat for what ever method, yes even the Maggio method, is used.
AND AGAIN, You're welcome.
