General
BE is very suitable for beginning players. The fundamental exercises are easy to learn and can be performed even by someone who has never touched a trumpet before. In a lot of cases beginners tend to do the exercises easier than advanced players. BE gives you the right fundaments and builds an embouchure right from the very start. For advanced players it is a great and safe way to build and/ or restore a healthy 'balanced' embouchure when frustrated by forcing, wrong methods, teeth problems, heavy duty playing etc. Many advanced players and even pro's can benefit from the exercises in BE.
Absolutely not. It is a developmental method for all aspects of trumpet playing. Flexibility, tone quality, endurance, tonguing and of course range will improve. There are a lot of people who increase their range considerably, but that is not the main goal. The main goal is an efficiently operating embouchure.
BE is not an embouchure. BE is a method to develop and balance your embouchure through very specific exercises in order to play as efficiently as possible.This looks different from person to person. There is no embouchure setting that you have to maintain in your normal playing.
No, BE is not about music. BE enables you to play whatever music you want to play from a technical point of view.
This is unpredictable and varies from person to person. Small changes can be felt in the first couple of weeks, but it is rather a development than 'being there'. It is not a quick fix, but there are people that play better in a very short time. Others take considerably longer, but in the end everybody can benefit from doing the exercises.
Personally, I do the exercises on a daily basis. There are also people that do it twice or three times in a week and also have good results. In the beginning it does not take very long because you cannot do all the exercises. After that it is up to you how much time you want to spend on it, or need to spend on it. If you can play the whole program it takes you half an hour to forty minutes a day, but you can make a choice and adjust it for personal use. Most of the time it takes me about half an hour. Sometimes I want to dig deeper, sometimes I only do a few exercises and it takes me fifteen minutes.
Breathing is absolutely important, also in BE. Without proper breath support, some of the BE exercises are unplayable.In a more indirect way, your breathing will improve, too. It is right to say that BE does not overemphasize breathing. Mostly because a lot of breathing theory tends to overcomplicate matters. One of the most important differences with other methods is that the order is exactly the other way around.If the lips don't operate efficiently, you can have the best breath support in the world and still suffer from poor tone and endurance. This is one of my own observations in the process. Also, it is very well possible that if your lips work efficiently and you improve your breath support, you can make a big leap forward. So, breathing exercises can be very useful (if your lips move in the right direction).
Not as far as I know.
If there were one method that I could speak of as a selfhelp method, than it would be BE. The text is very clear and the CD adds to this clarity. On the other hand: BE is not a traditional method and some people will need some explication. A lot of people ask if I teach BE. When I advise them to buy the book and find it out for themselves a while, most of them don't come back to me for lessons. I don't think it is absolutely necessary to take lessons, but I also found that giving people a good start and coach them once in a while is a great way to keep track of the development. My advise would be: buy the book, read it, try it for a month and THEN take a lesson or two. Personally, I found that beginners need some guidance in the process.
I did it, and it made me a much better player.There are periods of instability, but frankly my worst BE days were my former best days. BE is an indirect method. It does not require a direct manipulation of lip, tongue or whatever. It is a set of exercises that will develop your chops in a safe way. You can keep playing and still gradually change the way you play.
In the first place it is important to abandon your frustrations once more and take the leap. If you have tried everything and you don't believe this is going to work, it probably won't. If you step into it with an open mind, chances are that in a short time things start changing that you didn't consider possible anymore. BE works unconsciously. You cannot 'think' what your lips have to do to play the trumpet. If you do the exercises slowly but steadily muscles that cannot be activated in another way, are triggered. BE gives you the unconscious muscle coordination you need. You do not really have to understand it, you don't have to think of what you are doing, just do the exercises and discover a much more effective way of playing the trumpet.
