Creative uses of new video technology have resulted in an unusual sight: a video of a trombonist's lips vibrating to make music, shot from inside a trombone mouthpiece.
Trombone professor Jay Bulen shot this video of his colleague Peter Ellefson playing the instrument. Ellefson, a professor at Indiana University, performs frequently with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. This video shows how his lips ripple together when playing high tones, low tones, etc.
As such, some may find that this video provides a little "too much information" about playing a brass instrument. But as unusual as this video seems, it provides a rare glimpse of a brass player's lips in action while playing an instrument:
When I was a music student at Northwestern University, I studied horn with Richard Oldberg, a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He once told me that one of the hard things about teaching (or learning) a brass instrument was the difficulty of explaining what happens inside a player's body while playing a brass instrument. How much pressure do you use? How much air do you blow? What do you do, physically, to play higher pitches? So much goes on inside the mouthpiece, out of sight.
This video, as silly as it may be, helps dispel some of the mystery.
When I played the horn, I didn't place the mouthpiece on the middle of my mouth, but rather off to one side. And my lips were kind of crooked when I buzzed. Another horn professor at Northwestern tried to "correct" my embouchure (the position of the lips on the mouthpiece).
It would be interesting to film a similar video of great horn players playing, to see if there is a relationship between lip position and sound.
It might also be useful to put a tiny camera inside a player's mouth and film what happens there while playing a brass instrument. The video could show how high the soft palate rises, the position of the tongue, etc. I realize this concept sounds disgusting, but it could illuminate the parts of brass playing that have always been in the dark.
