Avian Imposed Cacophonic

[KennyC123]

What a thread title – Avian Imposed Cacophonic – what on earth?

I use to be somewhat active on TH, but I've been away for awhile. Three years ago I quit playing trumpet (been playing off and on for over 45 years) because I became frustrated, nothing was working for me anymore. I knew I had to quit before I plastered the wall or put a hole in it with my beautiful YTR-8335LA. Yes, that level of frustration.

Now fast forward to about five weeks ago when I decided to give the trumpet a chance again. At first it was okay. However, as I progressed my sound regressed. It got to the point that I couldn't even make a low C sound nice and what sound did come out was a struggle to achieve. I've studied and successfully implemented many trumpet methodologies/embouchure techniques, even coming up with a couple of my own. So I know many ways to achieve sound on the trumpet, however they were all producing the same result – crap sound and as I said it was a struggle to even produce this crap sound.

I was just about to pack the trumpet up for good and probably list it for sale when I noticed with my tongue I could feel a knot or a hard spot developing in the center of my upper lip. Upon close examination of my upper lip I realized that this developing knot is at the exact location that an accident occurred a few years back. Here's the Avian Imposed Cacophonic – An umbrella cockatoo (large white parrot) bit my upper lip right where I have (or should I say had) a small cupids bow. His beak pierced completely through my upper lip and he clamped down with both his lower and upper beak as he swung from my lip. The pain was excruciating till a few minutes latter when my entire lip went numb. My upper lip took several months to heal and did leave a scar on both the outside and inside of my lip.

I've discovered where this knot has developed (more than likely scar tissue from the parrot piercing), my lip is resistant to vibration. If I were to put the resistance into a percentage, I would say that this area of the lip is 80 percent resistant to vibrations as compared to what it use to be. Once I realized this I tried an experiment of moving my mouthpiece to the left and to the right from center. I've determined that approximately 1/4 of an inch to the left of center with my mouthpiece an easily produced vibration with a beautiful sound (my sound concept) emerges. The discovery of the upper lip dead zone explains so much now. I don't know why I didn't make this connection before (three years ago) as so much frustration could have been avoided, but at least I now know what is going on and it gives me a path forward.

I guess if there are any lessons to be learned from this it is always protect your lips when around parrots and listen to your sound, it will tell you if something is wrong. And when it does tell you something is wrong, figure out what is wrong and what you can do to correct it. As for now I'm just going to follow the sound on my new found vibration area, even though this is going to take some time to develop a new playing placement, I'm just happy to have my internal sound concept back and coming out of the bell, singing to me – ahhhhh such joy!
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Kenny

Stomvi Big Bell S3
Always remember that you are unique just like everyone else!