Lip slurs are great. A series of lip flexibility exercises is the one dose of medicine that we must remember to take every day, right? I do know that I routinely prescribe lip slurs to my students more than any other type of embouchure conditioner or tone development exercise. However, all students may not have yet reached the stage of development to comfortably execute an exercise such at the following:
If the exercise cannot be played in a comfortable, relaxed manner the tension which could build up could actually contribute to the formation of bad playing habits rather than improving the facility of the trumpeter. We must approach our studies in a progressive manner, playing exercises which provide us with a challenge, yet which are not so far over our head that we must resort to using unsound performance techniques such as mouthpiece pressure or excessive tension.
I have written a series of exercises which serves as a preparation for more advanced lip flexibility studies. Notice in the first two series of exercises that there is constant vertical motion, although the demands are quite limited - each exercise only covering a range of a Major 3rd and Perfect 4th.
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