[Trombone-l] Embouchure

[Chris Tune]

Timothy is absolutely right regarding education.  One size DOES NOT fit all. 
Do we realize that Thomas Edison had to be "home schooled" because his 
elementary school could not teach him?  He learned wonderfully from 
experimentation and project work (by his teens he had patentable inventions 
in telegraphy), but could not rote memorize to save his life.

What's more, although it is possible to characterize a person as having a 
"particular" personality which may have a "theme" just like Edison did, I 
don't think that our typical "Left Brain", "Right Brain" and other 
dichotomous models do us very much good.

I think of it like this:

There are TREBLE controls and BASS controls on every stereo.  Does that mean 
that any combination of settings is a TREBLE style or a BASS style?  NO! 
Emphatically not.  There is an infinite combination of settings for bass and 
treble.  I believe that is the way the brain works.

We may have a general tendency toward depression or toward paranoia, but 
that does not mean we are ill with chronic depression or with paranoid 
schizophrenia.  We may have more of an analytical bent or we may be more 
intuitive, and we may have relatively high settings in BOTH (that happens to 
be my case. . .).   It is even possible to have relatively low settings in 
both, yet be productive, given the right incentives.

We may pay attention very steadily, or we may be more sporadic in gathering 
attention, with periods of very long intense attention interupted by lack of 
paying attention (the so-called ADD and ADHD type, which is rapidly being 
reclassified as simply another type of thought pattern. . .after all, Edison 
had this pattern and was not subject to horrendous problems because he was 
fortunate to have a clever mother).

I'd encourage those wishing to teach to read up on current educational Psych 
literature and particularly with the more skeptical and leading edge 
material, because there is some great advancements happening that are only 
gradually being accepted in the "norm" community in this field.

Anyway, good luck.  We are essentially back improvising anyway, so what 
works is what counts with the only caveat, that we should go about this with 
as much knowledge as possible.

Chris


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richardson, Timothy Mr. DAC USAG Franconia DPW" 
<timothy.a.richardson at us.army.mil>
To: "Jackie Harris-Stone" <bassboneladymail at yahoo.com>; 
<trombone-l at server5.samford.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 5:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Trombone-l] Embouchure


>I tend to think one size does not fit all.
>
> One approach to embouchure probably does not work because of the 
> differences
> in student physiognomy and current embouchure faults.
>
> But more significant in my mind (and I know others violently disagree) is
> that students have different preferred learning styles and very little
> ability to change this.  This is most obvious when the "Inner Tennis"
> teacher meets the analytical style student.  Or vice versa.  I think it is
> very easy to get confused between problems resulting from teaching style 
> and
> problems resulting from the wrong embouchure advice.  Probably the air vs
> chops division splits along the learning style lines.  It is easy for a
> teacher to teach how and what worked for himself, and have success with 
> the
> group of students this works for.  The other students drop or fail and 
> move
> on.
>
> I do think that most successful embouchures share common features and
> probably can be divided into a three or four main variations.  I couldn't
> tell you what these are but there are some Reinhardt followers on the list
> who might have a starting point.    But it might be just as worthwhile to
> try to identify the learning style as quickly as possible as to classify 
> the
> embouchure.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jackie Harris-Stone [mailto:bassboneladymail at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 22:05
> To: trombone-l at server5.samford.edu
> Subject: [Trombone-l] Embouchure
>
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