Here’s another embouchure question I got asked a while ago. Apologies to Mike to not getting him a reply until now.
I have a question about how much of the circular muscle of the lip should be on the teeth or within the gap created between the teeth. I find that I play with the muscle top and bottom entirely within the gap between the upper and lower teeth. I personally feel that this condition is detrimental to both range and endurance even though I can get a reasonably nice tone. When I finish an hour practice session, there is a sore area above the muscle in the inner surface of my upper lip created by my teeth even though I use a minimal amount of pressure to play.
It’s a little hard to follow your question, but I think I may have an idea of what you’re asking. Without being able to watch you play in person, I can only speak generally and offer speculation on what’s happening with you, so take this with a grain of salt.
Before I do that, I want to describe my understanding of the anatomy of the lips. It really isn’t necessary to go into this to answer Mike’s questions, but it’s a common enough misunderstanding that I wanted to use this opportunity to address it quickly. When you refer to the “muscle” in your question I think you’re talking about the vermillion part of the lips, or the red part of the lips. The muscle we’re placing the mouthpiece over is the orbicularis oris. The red of the lips is over this muscle, but this muscle doesn’t stop at the red membrane of the lips. There’s no “muscle line” along the red. The vermillion border of the lips is red because the capillaries are much closer to the surface of the skin there. Another interesting bit of trivia is that this is unique to humans, no other animals have red lips like us.
Getting back to Mike’s questions, if I understand correctly your teeth are digging into your upper lip while you play. This is a common enough issue, but different situations call for different solutions. If you’re rolling your upper lip in so that you’re kind of biting down on your lip while you play, then perhaps your embouchure formation isn’t correct.
It might be helpful for you to try the following during your warm up practice. Try sort of curling you lower lip slightly up against your lower teeth and then bring your top lip down as if you were saying, “em.” Hold your mouth corners firm and then place the mouthpiece on the lips with them already set in this position. Keeping your lips firmly in this position, breath through your nose and play your warm up exercises this way. If you need to breathe during your exercise keep your lips as firm as if you were still playing and inhale through the nose slowly (you may need to do some of this out of tempo, that’s OK for an exercise). If you get comfortable doing this, try replacing the nose inhalations with keeping the lip center touching while you breathe through your mouth corners. The idea is to firm your embouchure before placing the mouthpiece and then practice keeping your embouchure formation and mouthpiece placement consistent every time you take a breath. It feels strange at first, but it helps you play more consistently.
After you’re warmed up and practicing musical material forget about this and play as usual. Regardless of whether the above fixes your problem, I feel it’s good advice for all brass players to move closer towards keeping your embouchure formation and mouthpiece placement consistent. Over time it should become more natural feeling and you’ll start to do this unconsciously.
Another possibility is that your mouthpiece placement can be moved to a different spot on your lips where you don’t have the teeth digging into your upper lip. You can try placing the mouthpiece higher, lower, and to one side or another. It’s sometimes a useful experiment to carefully see how it works to play all over your lips. Sometimes players will find a “sweet spot” that they didn’t know was there that makes everything work much easier. Go with where it sounds good, not with how you think it should look. There are great players with very off-center or very high or very low mouthpiece placements. Everyone has a different face, so every embouchure will look different.
The last thing I can think of to try out would be to maybe check your jaw position and horn angle when you play. Some players tend to do better with a jaw position where the teeth are close to aligned, while others play best with a receded jaw position. It may be that you’re putting too much pressure on the top lip while playing. Perhaps your jaw should be a little closer together.
Be careful if you decide to experiment and just realize that I’m only guessing. Correcting any embouchure issues is best done in person. If you can find a private teacher in your area, some lessons might help you out. Any time you do embouchure experiments I recommend only doing them in small doses and take a lot of short breaks, anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 or more minutes. If you don’t fully understand how your embouchure functions you may end up doing more harm than good if you go too deeply into something that doesn’t suit your personal anatomy.
Remember, my advice here is free and you’re getting what you pay for!
It’s also possible to cut the inside of your upper lip (slightly) simply from the force of the lips themselves pushing against the teeth. This happens to me a little bit sometimes while free buzzing, so I know it’s not due to mouthpiece pressure.
It’s good to be aware of this, and stop playing if it starts happening. Keeping the inside of your mouth moist and lubricated (in this case, taking a moment to lick the inside of the upper lip, so it can slide easily over the teeth) can make a big difference.
In my case, making sure the lower jaw isn’t receding too much helps a lot. Sometimes what you’re describing happens to me when my jaw gets too tired and can’t maintain the forward position I need to play anymore. At that stage, it’s best to stop playing and rest until the next day.
Like Dave, I wonder if any of this advice is actually on topic. Comment here if any of this makes sense to you!
Good advice. Thanks for weighing in.
Hello gentlemen and thanks for your comments. They are definitely on target. Also, the muscle picture is very helpful. I have been able to work through a lot of this since I contacted Dave initially. First of all, I practiced for about a week at pianissimo trying to get used to playing with as little tension as possibe. I did not allow myself to get to the point where I would be swollen the next day. After getting somewhat normalized on that, I did as Dave suggested and tried moving in small increments on the embouchre. I found that lowering the position was the most helpful. Since I have an upper lip that is much longer in relation to my teeth, I ended up bunching the upper lip muscles somewhat over the top of the mouthpiece rim. I have seen pictures of many great players, particularly Malcolm McNabb and Jens Lindemann, with the same peculiarity. At any rate, this has gotten my mouthpiece contact away from one of the corners of my upper incisor and there is also much less loose flesh from the inside of my upper lip in the gap between the teeth. The soreness I was experiencing is pretty much gone. Now I can practice until my lip muscles get tired and not be sore. I am now practicing in two or three shorter 20 or thirty minute sessions a day and trying to build up more endurance. On most days, I can go for 45 minutes to an hour in the third session before I am tired. I am playing Concone studies without taking the mouthpiece off my lips as much as possible to build up the endurance while maintaining a good tone. I am also using the nose breathing technique along with this. I am almost to the cyclical breathing point. The biggest issue right now is getting the placement on the money every time I breathe. I will work on the mouth corners breathing technique you suggested. Thanks for your helpful comments and best regards – Mike
Can you tear the orbicularis oris muscle? I’ve been playing trumpet for over 40 years. I’ve been playing with a drum and bugle corps recently (so we are playing high and hard) ) and after our last performance had a tingling sensation in my upper lip. Not usual for me. The next day, when I tried to play, it almost felt like there is no, or very little muscle/tissue in the very middle of my upper lip. And had a noticable change in my tone quality. Feels like I don’t have any support in about a 3/4″ section of the lip. Any ideas?
Hi, Larry.
Yes, you absolutely can tear the orbicularis oris. I’ve recently blogged a bit on Denver Dill, a fantastic trumpet player who tore his orbicularis oris, required surgery to repair it, and has made a complete recovery and return to playing. You can learn a bit about it here and here.
If you suspect that you’ve got muscle damage in your lip I suggest you discuss this with your doctor and if you both feel it’s appropriate, get a referral to a specialist in this sort of injury. There are some physical therapists who specialize in helping musicians with injuries of this sort too.
You might also just try icing your lips (20 minutes on 20 minutes off) for a bit and take a day or two or even up to a week off from playing. Sometimes allowing your body to recover on its own works too. Talk this over with your doctor.
Good luck!
Dave
Hey Dave,
I’m a grad student studying trombone performance. Lately I have been having some weird lip issues. I have been experiencing a tingling sensation in my upper lip while playing. It is quite random, but this morning it my upper lip had a tingling sensation during the first 5 minutes of playing (Buzzing). I took a five minute break and came back to the horn, and it seemed to go away. Later that day, I was in rehearsal, and the tingling sensation came back, just for a couple of seconds. I notice that if I continue to play in this manner, that my lip begins to swell exponentially. I have a great endurance, but most of the time my lips become swollen before my embouchure gets fatigued. I am a very healthy and active person. I eat healthy 95% of the time. I also exercise 5-7 days a week. This lip swollenness has been a constant problem since freshman year of undergrad, but this tingling sensation has only recently (this last month) been bothering me. I would love to hear your opinion, Dave.
Best,
Austin
Hi, Austin.
Of course I can’t diagnose a medical issue like a pinched nerve or torn muscle. For the tingling and swollen lip I recommend you talk with your family doctor.
If I can watch you play I might be able to spot something in your playing that might be contributing to your issues. I’m based in Asheville, NC if you every make it out this way. Sometimes I perform out of town and usually post about where I’m playing here. Video isn’t an ideal way to do this, but if you have the ability to video tape yourself and post it for me check out the following URL for what I would like to see.
http://wilktone.com/?p=4580
Good luck!
Dave