Mouthpiece Placement Causes Pain?

[Wilktone]

Hello!

I find myself coming once again here to see if I can get some advice about a trumpet student of mine (a different student from the one I've already spoken to many of you about).

When he first started lessons from me it was obvious that he used two different embouchures. His normal playing embouchure I would type as a IIIA (downstream, pretty high placement, pivots up and to the right to ascend). It works resonably well up to a certain point. When he plays high, however, he moves his mouthpiece down and plays as a IVA (low mouthpiece placement, upstream).

So I suggested that he begin to play his whole range on the IVA embouchure, and we worked on this for about three weeks. He can play a G above high C and bring that down all the way to the bottom of the range, but from middle G to G on the top of the staff is very fuzzy (above and below those pitches sounds OK, especially above). His complaint, however, is that in that trouble range his upper teeth dig into his lower lip and really hurt him.

I've tried having him move his placement to either side, as well as higher or lower. These other placements either don't help with the pain, or just don't work well. I've also tried having him move his horn angle up to play as a type IV, which also choked off his sound. We've also worked on lightening up on the mouthpiece pressure, but his teeth are still digging into his lips.

Any suggestions? Before you say you have to see and hear this, I've taken some photos and video with my department's digital camera, but just haven't had time yet to put them up. I'll try to upload them later today or tomorrow and post a link here or send the link to you via e-mail.

Thanks!

Dave
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[BeboppinFool]

[hairy james]

Dave,

When I first saw Doc, my horn was pointing at the floor. The first thing he said to me was that I had to get my jaw out. Well when I tried getting my jaw out and getting the weight on my lower lip my bottom teeth would cut the inside of my lower lip to ribbons.

What I did, although I'm not saying your student should do this, was to have a dentist smooth out the sharp edges of my lower teeth. It didn't take much for the dentist to set me strait.

Good luck, and let us know how it's going. Chris

[BeboppinFool]

On the subject of having a dentist grind down teeth . . . may I suggest using this only as a last resort?

When I was battling my chop injury problem in '80-'81, I tried many things, and one of those things was getting a tooth filed down by a dentist. I must say that in retrospect, I really wish I hadn't done this, because now that tooth is very sensitive. Drinking hot or cold beverages, eating certain foods, and even playing very demanding gigs can make me really feel it in that one tooth.

Our teeth come with a certain amount of enamel, and removing some of that makes the nerves inside the tooth that much closer to the surface. As we get older, things that didn't bother us in our youth often become more and more pronounced, and at age 46, I'm wishing somebody had cautioned me not to use filing away enamel except as the very last resort.

Back to you guys . . . .

Rich
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Puttin’ On The Ritz

[DSR]

On the subject of teeth, I had one my teeth ground down by the dentist last spring. This particular tooth, jutting out quite far on the bottom in the middle, was cutting into my lip as I played. It became so painful that I couldn't play without being distracted by the irritation. So I went to the dentist and had him buff the edge off. In the end it made no difference, the tooth still cut into my lip. So I've settled for playing quite far off to the right where I have a three legs and the darn tooth doesn't get in the way. Although I have another 3 legs to the left side of my mouth I have decided not to use this side because of other complications.

Interestingly enough, when I pivot ascending my mouthpiece slides (with the lips of course) down and to the right. So when I play high tones the mouthpiece looks like it is at the corner of my mouth. Whatever works I guess!! Individualism is the key.

Most of this is irrelevant to the question but I wanted to type something.

-Brendan

[Wilktone]

Quick update on this student and his embouchure:

I thought of a couple of possible solutions not quite as drastic dental work, which includes getting a plastic mold to fit over his teeth to keep them from cutting into his lip. A student of mine said he used some sort of tape when he had braces.

All that said, I was walking into our rehearsal space to get ready for our jazz band rehearsal today and he was warming up playing some good fat notes above high C, with his downstream setting. He said by using a type II pivot, instead of the type I (which he had been using with this mouthpiece placement) that he was able to get those notes. Since I didn't really have time to watch him while doing this, I'm not sure if he's changed anything other than using the opposite pivot here.

Man, this stuff is hard to figure out! Sometimes I wonder if I should be leaving some of these student's alone and let them work their own way out of problems. Then other times a little suggestion solves a long-term problem and I feel like I'm the greatest teacher in the world!
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