useful tip for sore lips

[Anonymous]

had a 3 week break from playing my sax, and started back playing a couple of days ago – result – got a sore bottom lip after a couple of hours.

so got some dental paper adhesive strips, cut a rectangle shape and folded it over my bottom teeth. Then played the sax for much longer periods – stops your teeth from cutting into your bottom lip and provides a soft cushion between bottom teeth and bottom lip!

[Anonymous]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000052YCG/dcmatters-21

[paddy jordan]

Interesting James your bottom lip rests on the teeth as a cushion, i used to do under intruction from a teacher but now i actually push the lip just in front of the lower teeth gives a fatter fuller sound dave liebman did a real cool utube on this very topic check it out.
paddy

[Anonymous]

thanks paddy – i have 2 very high pointed incisors and 4 very very sharp teeth between the 2 incisors, so they can frictionally quite quickly make my bottom lip sore.

I picked the dental tip from someone off youtube who was playing all day snd gigging at night & needed to carry on playing without killing their lips.

But thanks – i will try your tip out tomorrow, but failing that i’ll stick to the paper as that works for me, until i’ve got back into the groove🎷

[Jazz Cat]

I used to use a cotton ball (like the kind women use for cosmetics), works great…got the nickname ‘cottonmouth’, lol…did that for many years

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Cotton-Balls-Triple-count/dp/B00E8T2X36 or walmart/etc

nowadays i just practice 40-60 minutes max, no problems

[Anonymous]

Jc – i’ve used cotton wool in the past, when one of my crowns broke off, stuffed the cotton in the tooth, went back to the dentist & he cleaned it out & stuck the crown back on!

The dental strips are amazing, because they have glue on the sides, this tends to absorb extra spit in the mouth, dries thr inside of the mouth out and gives a more raw sound – makes the growling sound really agressive

[Marc]

Hey, that’s a cool tip for beginners like me.
I’ve just found that after 40-45 min of practice (I play about 1 hour daily) my mouth muscles start to fatigue and I unconsciously begin biting harder to keep the embouchure pressure. Sometimes I even notice air leaking from the sides ot my mouth (where lips are weaker). That causes me a sore lower lip, and forces me to a 10 minute break. I assume it’s due to muscle fatigue, since it appears after several minutes playing.
However, I could not discard breathing fatigue as well, since that happens at the end of long tones or at the last notes during long scales practice.
I’d like to know some recommendations that could help me in gaining mouth muscle and/or breathing strength (Oh, yeah…. more practice LOL…).
I mean kinda excercises that could be done without the instrument, during other hours of the day (i.e. quietly, noiseless)

Keep soundin’ 🙂
Marc.

[Anonymous]

hi Marcelo – i started doing this in the last month or so, and it has completely turned my sound around, and my perception of sound that i an hearing when playing.

It’s not a new method, but its basicsly called playing the virtual sax – you can play it all dsy without going near a sax.

What you do is hold a pencil just like you hold a sax, and press all the keys on the pencil, exactly like you would on a sax.

But what you have to do is hum/sing all the keys you press on the pencil. The most important thing (if you dont do this you achieve nothing) is you have to hum/sing the notes in exact tune to a tuner/keyboard – this includes all 7 white keys & 5 black keys. Start with simple songs like ‘mary had a little lamb’ and work up.

It helps if you hum –
do – c
di – c#
re – d
ri – d#
me – e
fa – f
fi – f#
so – g
si – g#
la – a
li – a#
ti – b
do – c
if the octaves are too high/low for your humming/singing then just use the same octave range you can hum/sing in.

Then when you pick up your sax, and play a sheet music, imagine working in do re me fa comparing your huming sound to the sax sound, instead of working with c, d e.

What i do is pick up a sheet, and hum through the whole sheet in the correct pitches for each note, when i’ve mastered that, i pick up the sax and play it in one take.

[Marc]

Hey, James… thanks for the tip. I use to do something like that, fingering with a 1-foot drawing ruler instead of a pencil. But I’m afraid I miss the main point: I do not hum, nor sing the notes. I’ll try to do it nex time.

Anyway, what I’m looking for right now are some excersises to strengthen embouchure muscles.

[Anonymous]

cool – the only exercises i know of are pressing the lips together as tight as possible & counting to 30, relax and repeat.

but i’ve got no sore lip today thanks to the dental strips covering my teeth – i can practices for hours on end now!

[Author]

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