Aging Lips

bzzn87 · New Member Joined: 20 Jun 2023 Posts: 3 Location: Manassas

Hi! Besides regular practice, there are a few things you can try. First, make sure you warm up properly before playing. Consider doing lip exercises and incorporating lip slurs into your routine. You might also want to consult with a brass instructor for medical professional who specializes in musicians' health. Also, consider getting fillers or other procedures at https://rawbeautyaesthetics.com to make your lips look younger. I hope that helps.

LadFree · Regular Member Joined: 30 Jun 2022 Posts: 57 Location: NY

If you have shifting or loose teeth that can really set you back.Keeping
salt water on the area a few times a day can tighten up the gums;
Sometimes taking a full day off away from the trumpet can help;
When you next practice do some pre air long tones..Form embouchure, mouthpiece (and trumpet) on and just puff(no tonguing) relaxed air and let the
lips come together after about 5 seconds and let the sound form without
thinking how that happens;I would start on 2nd line G...Rinse and repeat until you feel warmed up.Then do G# a few times,F#,A,F etc all pre air.
See if that helps with response ...After that, sometimes a different mouthpiece
will help, but try the pre air thing first, and leave any tonguing out of the picture until the response clears up.
I use things like this the morning after loud gigs to get the response going.
Good luck!

Irving · Heavyweight Member Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 1888

Seymor B Fudd · Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2023 5:30 am Post subject: Re: Aging Lips

Weekend Warrior · Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2023 12:41 pm Post subject:

A couple of people have touched upon the most common reason for loss of range and flexibility by older players - shifting teeth. As people age, bone loss occurs in the jawbones in which the teeth are rooted. As a result, the teeth will move. As the lips, muscles, and nerves are all very accustomed to operating with the original dentition, this can cause havoc for trumpet playing. Muscle memory is a powerful thing. In some cases, if the teeth do not shift to a less-favorable position for trumpet playing, the player can eventually adapt and regain their range as long as the teeth stop moving. In other cases, the teeth may shift in such a way that they don't provide the same physical advantages toward range and endurance that they used to. In such cases there isn't a lot that the player can do to regain their previous ability, unless they have dental impressions from years ago and have a dentist who can restore their old dentition with bonding, veneers, or crowns.

This is why it is very important that all trumpet players who are serious about their playing should have dental impressions made so that if their dental configuration changes due to either natural or unnatural causes, they can have a dentist restore their previous configuration. Dental technology has come a long way. They now have CAD/CAM type programs that can mill crowns to match the previous configuration exactly, as long as impressions had been made previously.

With all of that said, there are other factors associated with aging that can reduce a trumpet player's strength that all have to do with the body's natural aging process that we can't really do too much about. --Or can we? Staying in the best physical shape possible, keeping the abdominals and intercostals strong, and doing breathing exercises to maintain lung capacity are one line of defense in combatting this.

But there's a golden nugget of info that not a lot of people know about: One of the factors that causes the body to weaken as it ages is it's ability to produce nitric oxide as prolifically as it did in youth. To keep up the body's nitric oxide in a sense is like a finding the fountain of youth. Nitric oxide is what keeps levels of various hormones including human growth hormone from declining, thus it can inhibit and sometimes even reverse the aging process. There are a few ways to elevate the body's nitric oxide levels, so I urge you to research this further. You can Google it and find out a lot of great information on it. Nitric oxide can be increased with all natural means and supplements. No drugs are necessary. If you research this, you will be amazed at the healing power of nitric oxide.

One thing I'll mention though, is that one of the supplements that you'll see mentioned to increase nitric oxide is an amino acid called L-Arginine. That's good for younger folks, but when you get into your 60s the body's ability to convert the L-Arginine into nitric oxide is reduced, so for those over 60, it's better to pursue the many other methods of increasing nitric oxide. Another downside of L-Arginine is that it has a tendency to activate and cause an outbreak of viruses, particularly the human herpes family of viruses (there are 8 of them, you can Google it to obtain a list of them) that may be lying dormant in the body's spinal fluid. So for anyone who has any of these viruses, it's best to avoid the L-Arginine. One of the human herpes viruses is shingles (HHV-#3) and you don't want to activate that one if you've ever had chicken pox in the past. If you've ever had mononucleosis in the past, that's the human herpes virus #4 (HHV-4). Mono is the acute version of HHV-4, and the chronic version that can return after lying dormant is known as chronic EBV, or Epstein-Barr virus, which is very similar to "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome." You don't want to mess with EBV, either. L-Arginine is good for the young and strong, but as people get older, it's best not to supplement with it.

spitvalve · Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2023 2:23 pm Post subject:

I'm about to turn 66 and have noticed that I have to warm up more carefully as well as keep my lips from drying out. I keep a tube of lip balm with me at all times and also drink a lot of fluids, keeping an RTIC cup with ice and vitamin water with me at all times.

Mouthpiece buzzing actually works for me--I confine it to medium-loud playing in the middle and low registers, just enough to get the muscles loose and the lips tingling. I also use my Warburton P.E.T.E when my practice time is limited, and just enough to maintain the set of my embouchure.

A lot has changed since I was young. I've weathered the gradual and mostly natural adjustments to my teeth and lips over the years and can still do most of what I could back then--just not for as long, and a strenuous practice session or performance requires a longer recovery time than it used to.

I saw a video of Doc Severinsen doing a masterclass at Southern Mississippi in the '90s, when he was 63. He said at that age that it took him longer to sound like himself than when he was younger, and he advocated long, patient warmups.
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Bryan Fields
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1991 Bach LR180 ML 37S
1999 Getzen Eterna 700S
1977 Getzen Eterna 895S Flugelhorn
1969 Getzen Capri cornet
1995 UMI Benge 4PSP piccolo trumpet
Warburton and Stomvi Flex mouthpieces