Rachel H wrote:
Get yourself a small square mirror and put it on your practice stand.
Center your mouthpiece on your lip where you are most comfortable with it, making sure to support a portion of the mouthpiece with your lower lip. Your lower lip is part of the foundation for your whole embouchure setup and specifically is needed to free the upper lip to vibrate and to provide endurance support.
Practice long tones in the mid range that way, watching the mirror to make sure you are not sliding around and to make sure that you are not dropping your jaw. This is most important.
Well, Rachel, I'm not convinced that most players will be interested in spending long hours practicing while looking in a mirror. The difficulty is that most players are not as good looking as we are, so it is likely that visual fatigue will take over, reducing the benefits obtained from looking in a mirror. In addition, as visual fatigue increases, most players will attempt to compensate by increasing mouthpiece pressure, with well- known catastophic consequences.
For those hornlist members who have tried mirror-gazing as a means of improving their embouchures, and who have obtained unsatisfactory results, let me suggest that Cabbage Enterprises, Inc. is making availalable small photographs of Rachel (or of the Cabbage Himself, if you prefer) with convenient adhesive backing. (That is, the photographs have adhesive backing.) Just stick one over your mirror, and I think you'll be astounded at the degree of embouchure improvement you will achieve as a result.
Gotta go,
Cabbage