How to Make a Good Clarinet Embouchure [Back to Basics]
Illustration by Fast Ink on Unsplash
Embouchure is one of those core factors that makes a big difference in how easy the notes come out and in your overall clarinet sound, but it's not as straightforward as just covering the tone holes or blowing air well. In this post I'm going to walk you through the what, why, when, and how of making a good clarinet embouchure.
This is the first post in my Back to Basics fundamentals series. These are perfect if you're just getting started and also if you have a little more experience and you're looking for those little things that make the big difference. Fundamentals are the foundation to everything we do on the instrument. The stronger of a foundation that we have, the easier everything else will be.
In This Post:
- Why I'm Starting the Series with Embouchure
- What Makes a Good Embouchure
- Two Things to Avoid
- Setting Up Your Embouchure
- The Finger Straw Exercise
- Common Mistakes Even When Your Shape Is Right
- Check in with Yourself
Why I'm Starting the Series with Embouchure
I wanted to start this Back to Basics series with embouchure because I do think air is the most important part of playing the instrument. But the air, the fingers, and some of those other things are a little more straightforward than an embouchure. And, some of the more complicated things, like the tongue, don't make as much of an impact as the embouchure does.
That's why embouchure is one of the first things I want you to get right. It can change how easy the notes come out and it can change your overall sound.
What Makes a Good Embouchure
The whole role of the embouchure is to facilitate, enable, and encourage reed vibrations. The air is the fuel to the sound. The embouchure is sort of the engine that converts that fuel into energy and motion. You can think of embouchure as the energy and motion of the reed, which is what actually creates the sound of the instrument.
Since it is the engine of the instrument, it's really important for your embouchure to function as efficiently as possible. That way you transition as much air as possible into actual reed vibrations which then turns into good sounds.
Two Things to Avoid
When it comes to enabling reed vibrations, there are two very important things to watch out for.
The first is dampening the vibrations of the reed with your lower lip. This happens when you have a really squishy bottom lip and it creates a really airy, fuzzy sound.
The other extreme is pinching off the vibrations of the reed. There can be a little fuzziness to that sound too, but it's most notably a very thin sound.
Fuzzy and thin are the two sounds we don't want. So how do we set up our embouchure to avoid them?
Keep your bottom lip firm
To prevent that fuzzy dampening, make sure your bottom lip is nice and firm to the touch. The way I like to think about it is pushing the jaw forward a little bit and having the bottom lip come flat against the teeth. Sometimes we call this a flat chin or a pointed chin. Pointing your chin forward feels like the jaw coming forward. Smashing the lip muscles against the bottom teeth is the flattening of the chin. Either way, the end goal is the same: a nice solid surface for the reed to vibrate against.
That way, as the reed vibrates against your lip, the lip isn't squishy and dampening the vibrations. It's a nice, firm surface that lets the reed vibrate freely.
Don't pinch off the reed
The other big part is not pinching off the vibrations of the reed. That comes from the corners of your mouth and how open your mouth is in general.
Biting down is a super natural motion for our jaw muscles. We're really comfortable with it from talking and chewing. But if you do that on the clarinet, even with a nice firm bottom lip, you'll end up pinching off the reed vibrations.
Instead of putting pressure that way, I want you to think about squeezing in the corners. Putting pressure in that direction naturally opens things up. The idea is a firm surface on the lip that isn't pressing into the reed too hard and that maximizes the vibrations of the reed.
The Finger Straw Exercise
My favorite simple exercise to feel what it's like to have this nice embouchure shape is what I call the finger straw exercise.
Take your finger (hopefully it's clean) and put your top teeth onto your fingernail. Then pretend you're drinking out of your finger, like you're trying to drink a really thick milkshake.
Just like when you're drinking out of a straw, it's really important that you aren't putting too much pressure on it. If you just squeeze down and pinch off the straw, your milkshake is never going to make it through. We need that strong suction, but we also need to stay nice and open. We don't want the bottom lip to bunch up and just squeeze the finger, because that pinches off the straw or, in clarinet terms, pinches off the reed vibrations.
So think about pointing the chin down, bringing the corners in, and opening the jaw. You should end up with a flat, pointed chin, corners in, top lip coming down, and a good seal all the way around.
That's exactly the shape we want to bring to the clarinet. Just like we put our top teeth onto our fingernail, we do the same thing with the clarinet. The clarinet is anchored up into the top teeth, and between the top teeth and the thumb we have good stability. We're sort of pushing up that way. Then we bring that same shape and structure from the sucking motion to the clarinet.
This clarinet embouchure, along with blowing good air, should give you a nice, clear, full sound. You should not be hearing a fuzzy sound from the lip dampening or a thin sound from the lip pinching off the reed.
Common Mistakes Even When Your Shape Is Right
Here are a couple more common mistakes that can give you thin, fuzzy, or crazy sounds even if your embouchure shape is right:
How much mouthpiece is in your mouth
If you're getting a very thin sound and you know your embouchure shape is great, that probably means you need more mouthpiece in your mouth. You need more reed in the airstream so that it can actually vibrate.
You can go the other extreme, too. Too much mouthpiece gives you a big, wide, uncontrolled sound that's quite honky. Go even further and you get a very loud, really squawky squeak, not just a little chirp. So experiment with how much mouthpiece makes you sound the best.
The angle of the instrument
The angle of the clarinet makes a big difference in how your embouchure interacts with the reed. If you're holding your clarinet way too far out from your body, you get that big, unfocused sound again. If you're way too far in, you get that very thin, pinched off sound. We want to find the happy medium.
Covering the tone holes
This last tip isn't quite embouchure, but I want to give it to you anyway. As you put your fingers down, you will also get squeaks if your fingers aren't completely covering the holes. Make sure you're covering all of them.
Check in with Yourself
Look in the mirror and see what your embouchure shape looks like. Check that you're keeping that shape as you come to the instrument and cover all the holes. Maybe you know these things, and maybe there were some new ones, but are you actually doing them, and doing them the best that you can? No matter what level you're at, even at my professional level, I'm still thinking about it. Am I really pointing my chin? Is my embouchure really good? Am I enabling and facilitating the best reed vibration?
Whether you're just starting out or at any point along your clarinet journey, this is great information to keep reviewing and refreshing. Let me know if you learned anything new, and tell me if there's a particular basic or fundamental skill you'd like me to cover in more detail.
Want to see and hear all of this in action? You can watch this video: [Back to Basics] How and Why of Forming a Great Clarinet Embouchure