I’ve noticed recently that I have a lot of excess effort that happens as I’m forming my embouchure that is obviously hurting my articulation and tone. I’ve been working towards making my embouchure more and more similar to a totally neutral face, with only enough added effort to keep the note together and have been seeing a huge amount of improvement in basically all aspects of my playing.

I’m curious what others experience is. How much different is your face from neutral in the various ranges of your instrument? Do you think it’s a viable goal to strive towards to make them as similar as possible?

This is a tough question to answer. I do think it's a good goal to have the vibrating surface of the lips inside the ring of the mouthpiece neutral and free to vibrate - though for many it's not quite that simple.

As to the musculature surrounding the mouthpiece, it needs to have structure, but I think you're on to something about avoiding over-tightness. I always strive for the best kind of simplicity and the most natural tone production I can achieve.

Lips: chillin

Corners: engaged but not tense

I'm not sure I can answer you directly but will share some ideas that seem to be working for me. We all have different builds in our teeth, skin, and bones... so what works for one may not work for another.

The most visible change from my relaxed face to a formed embouchure is the chin flattening, and the bottom lip pulling down, firmly hugging the bottom teeth. The bottom lip is the only part of my embouchure that I feel is okay to have some amount of tension.

I gently hug my gums/teeth with the corners of my lips - maybe the idea is similar to making a small smirk...not stretching the lips sideways but bringing the corners in towards the teeth. Enough firmness to make a stable connection, but not too much to add tension to the upper lip that is inside the mouthpiece. I want as little tension as possible in my upper lip. I want my upper lip to have the freedom to vibrate, flex, and "fill" the inside of the mouthpiece.

I have/had an old habit of "snarling" my upper lip, which pulls the upper lip up and tighter against the top teeth, which leaves less lip to vibrate (and eventually reduces circulation for me). This would normally happen when taking a breath - I will pull my upper lip up when breathing and would not relax it before setting the mouthpiece back on the face. Doug Elliott pointed this out to me during a lesson. The remedy that is helping has been to set the embouchure before placing mouthpiece on the face, then to not lift the mouthpiece off the face when breathing. When I watch myself in a mirror, I make sure my nose isn't wrinkled at all (side effect of the "snarl") and my upper lip is staying as natural and relaxed as possible.

Another couple of ideas/quotes I've heard that have helped my playing:

1. Dietmar Küblböck - "(pointing to the inside of the upper lip) ... a lot of vibrations here. I try to really feel it inside the upper lip."

2. Joe Alessi - Vaguely quoting this, as I can't recall which interview/masterclass I heard this from, "I try to keep a lot of lip inside the mouthpiece, even when playing high." He was making a (exaggerated?) puckered face, or "kissy lips," when discussing this idea.

I believe both of these quotes lead the idea of reducing any type of smiling/stretching in the embouchure and therefore reducing tension in the upper lip.

Pretty much what BPBasso just posted ahead of me...

A totally relaxed embouchure doesn't work, and excess tension doesn't work. You can't force yourself to relax but you CAN direct where the effort or "tension" is.

Put virtually all of the effort into the "dimple" area below your corners. That firms all the way across your chin and lower lip. If you do that in more-or-less your normal resting face position, it creates a pretty much ideal position for playing with minimal tension.

It's NOT a stretch, NOT a pucker, NOT tension "in" the corners or the cheeks.

This same starting position applies to every embouchure type.

[quote="Doug Elliott"]You can't force yourself to relax but you CAN direct where the effort or "tension" is.[/quote]

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

I think this applies to pretty much everything about playing trombone. And life.

I like to call that effort "The Work." By getting The Work in the right place you can let the unnecessary tension go.

My embouchure is anything but relaxed, but the rest of my face and body remain as relaxed as I remember to make them.

For me, I try to set a very strong and stable foundation with the lower lip and muscles around the mouthpiece, while leaving the lip muscles inside the mouthpiece flexible enough to make really quick, subtle and tiny adjustments, note to note. I find that setting the foundational muscles very firm is super important. But the muscles inside the mouthpiece have to remain flexible while never being completely relaxed.

And anything outside of the muscles surrounding the mouthpiece needs to remain completely relaxed, from my forehead to my shoulders and below.

I'm sure I'm not alone on this... which has required re-training and re-conceptualizing how brass instruments actually work.

Many of us were taught by well-meaning teachers that our lips are akin to a 'camera iris', and that the high notes require a tight, small hole in our 'iris', and that a low note requires a larger diameter hole in the 'iris'.

So, we go through many years focusing on this, and in the process, are playing we end up playing with far too much tension before we even get to trying to create a sound on our instrument.

Right? That's been a teaching methodology for decades and decades by some school of brass playing.

Of course, the teaching always included an emphasis on maintaining firm corners of the embouchure and proper breathing, etc. The importance of tongue placement, 'vowel' placement of the tongue, etc. hardly comes up.

But, bad habits and hesitation before playing any notes will build up over years of worrying about the 'camera iris' in our setup.

Speaking for myself, I'm playing better than ever after having some lessons with Doug Elliott a couple of years ago, when he pointed out that I not only needed a different mouthpiece for my face, but that I should forget some old playing habits and start some new ones. Best investment in time and money ever!

Dave Taylor was actually my first exposure to a teacher who ever talked about the importance of tongue placement, and he never mentioned the 'camera iris' concept at all...just tongue, embouchure 'pucker' (Dave's definition), and that the lips have to be able to adjust and be able to vibrate as they must in different ranges. He's still refining his thinking on how 'things actually work'!

And I do think that we trombone players can learn an awful lot from some of the great trumpet pedagogues, like James Stamp, Roy Poper, Jim Pandolfi, and many other great gurus of brass playing that aren't necessarily other trombone players.