Is this legit?

[JCBone]

looks sketchy

[ArbanRubank]

There's no shortage of voodoo embouchure pedagogy and each camp has it's cult members. Membership pending...

[jthomas105]

This guy had some kind of accident (falling off a stage maybe) and his face/embouchure muscles were damaged pretty badly. There is a video on you tube somewhere where John Marcellus was working with him after the injury. At some point he developed this "Stratos" device and was able play again. He now sells it to "help" others. He has several other videos where he gives "advice".

[Vegasbound]

Marcus did indeed have a really bad accident when the part of the stage he was playing on collapsed and from what he told me the contractor didn't have insurance/ refused to payout and the accident caused severe injury to his face and leaving a lot of scar tissue

[ArbanRubank]

I don't think the FB site is very legit. I withdrew my request to join after about 12 hours of not getting any response. Apparently, it is not well administered.

[Wilktone]

Yeah, you'd think that a group with 1.7K members would have more than one administrator around to accept members. I also sent a request to join a couple of days ago and have yet to get a response.

FYI, Stratos Brass is a device that clamps to your mouthpiece shank. Part of it extends below the mouthpiece and is designed to be adjusted so that it touches your chin while playing. The idea behind it is that it's supposed to help you reduce mouthpiece pressure and help you keep your jaw forward.

https://stratosbrass.com/

In older videos posted to YouTube (now taken down) it's inventor, Marcus Reynolds, claimed that the "red ring" that some brass players get is a sign of too much pressure (not really), that your teeth should be aligned while playing (it's good for some, not for everyone), that air stream direction is a matter of jaw alignment (it's not), and that the air should be blown straight down into the shank of the mouthpiece (it doesn't). It's possible he's changed his mind about these things, which might be why those videos are no longer available.

The device itself is interesting and I can see how it might actually work for certain circumstances. But at almost $300 it's way too overpriced. I imagine that a trip to the hardware store and some creativity that you could rig up something similar if you wanted to experiment.

Dave

[ArbanRubank]

Hmmmmm. I believe we pretty much all know what can happen on a site that isn't monitored often and well.

I don't even really know why I tried to join. Comic relief, I guess. I don't need any embouchure information or instruction and if I did, I would seek more mainstream advice, instead of "wisdom" from some whacked-out fringe group.

I suspect that pricey device is marketed for those with more money than brains.

[Wilktone]

For what it's worth, I finally got added into the Brass Embouchure Advice Facebook group. It looks as if there's only one admin and he adds folks every so often.

Scanning through the posts most of the more recents ones seem to be made by just a couple of folks. A lot of them are pushing devices or method books, but Marcus Reynolds also seems to be offering regular Zoom classes for free.

[ArbanRubank]

I'm surprised there isn't a Maggio System FB chat group!