I've been thinking over the pat few weeks about the importance of air in trumpet playing, or brass playing in general. Based on no scientific data at all, I figured that 90% of all brass playing issues would be to do with the air, or lack of it. Much of the focus, much of the time is on the embouchure or the tongue or lip position or other stuff along those lines, which is all good stuff, but most of the time is not the root of the problem.
This image can be found on http://jwz.livejournal.com/
This image shows how the human body would develop if every part of the body grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its sensory perception. There's heaps of sensory perception in our lips and tongue, compared with the amount in our trunk. As trumpet/brass players, we should naturally have a great awareness of how our mouth/tongue/lips are working when we're playing. Since there's not much sensory perception in our trunk, we are often not aware how much our air is working (or not working)
Much of the focus on embouchure development is tinkering around with the lip positioning, and not much focus with the air, thinking that it will take care of itself. My view is on the opposite side. We have so much perception in our oral area, so in theory the embouchure should take care of itself. We should focus most of our effort on working on our breathing and air support, which will not improve without focussed practice.
Tinkering with the embouchure can be a good thing, (I've experimented quite a bit with different embouchure positions/methods) but air, not embouchure, is the most important factor in trumpet playing.
K.
