Playing Trumpet With Braces: Mouthpiece Pressure and the Transition

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Hi, here’s a video on embracing the braces. We’ve got to get braces. Generally, sort of high school, early um years of uh your playing, a lot of people panic. Now, the worst things that I’ve heard are stop playing or don’t put the braces on, don’t fix your teeth. Both of those I believe are awful bits of advice. You’ve got your teeth for your whole life. So whilst you’ve been playing for a while, you’ve got to a particular level, your teeth are important. So get them taken

care of. We’re going to use this braces experience as a real positive for your future of playing your brass instrument. I actually believe between you and me, there is a benefit to getting braces. One of the massive issues that I deal with here at Mystery to Mastery all the time is people using too much pressure, especially arms pushing onto the mouth. Now, as I talk about in my 10 steps, my 10step tuneup is how to use the muscles. This muscle around here around the mouth is

really strong. And so what everyone does is stretch their lips out and push hard onto their lips. Now, we can’t be doing that when we got braces. It’s going to hurt too much. So what we do is actually form using this really strong muscle, an a r a What that does is use this really strong muscle called the orvicularis orus. It’s step four in the 10 steps. Mm. A mow. What I want you to recognize is that when we do this, if you were to put

your finger between your your teeth, I’m biting on my fingernail, but I’m biting on my finger. Take a breath. Just relax. Then we’re going to stop the air from coming out by doing up our lips. What that’s going to do is use these muscles here, and I call them the goalposts at the sides where the air comes out. Now, what that does is give us some cushion, or I call it just under here, the landing pad. That’s where the mouthpiece pressure goes there and there. So,

we’re not pushing on our top lip because, of course, the lip has to vibrate faster. Now, I saw a forum post this morning on Facebook and it devastated me. All these people talking about blowing faster to play higher notes, blowing harder, more air. Imagine the notes are going across the other side of the street to play high notes. It’s all very wrong. The way that we play high notes is inside the mouthpiece rim. [clears throat] And it’s what we do with the lips. And would you

believe it or not, having braces is a really cool way of learning how to do this very efficiently. The top lip, the skin of the top lip has to vibrate fast. Then the air that comes through just keeps it vibrating. Okay? But the pitch comes from what you do inside the cup. So having the braces is going to stop you from pushing onto the lip. So what can you do? You can walk around all day long. Now, just think about this. If I take my finger

out and stop blowing, it doesn’t feel like you’re doing much. Oh, everyone can do this. If you hold your mouth like that, then put your mouthpiece on, but on the landing pad or on the goalpost, not on the top lip. It has to vibrate fast. All of a sudden, you’ve got lots of cushion, lots of lip tissue, and you’re not ramming your top lip onto those steel braces. So learning the is a really really efficient way to play and a great idea. So there’s also invisalign.

Invisalign will make life less uncomfortable. Uh but still there will be issues. So the number one thing is you can still play when you’ve got braces. In fact, it’s a bonus to learn for your future trumpet playing that it might actually be a bonus for you, believe it or not. So, don’t panic about if you got to get braces. Yes, there will be a step backwards. We expect that. Be cool with it. Slowly do your work. Don’t push to get the result. Just know that you’re

going to have a transition period from before you get them on to getting them on. uh once you’ve got them on to getting back to where you want to be will take some time. So be patient. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a part of life that we have to accept. The bigger issue that I’ve experienced is seeing when the braces come off and then the brain’s confused cuz the feelings change. So we have to do the same thing. Go back to the start. Nice cushion.

Loose top lip. Strong muscles. landing pad. Oh, body’s concert hall. Nice and relaxed in the body. So, you just have to relearn. Uh the brain will remember pretty quickly, but there is a transition period. But my advice is don’t panic. Get the braces. Be smart. You can come and check out all the 10 steps if you want to really learn how to do it. It’s not going to cost you a thing. I’ll give you seven days of free lessons and you can work your way through

it and work with your teacher to figure out what we’re talking about here and how to set the aperture so you won’t have any problem with pressure when you’re playing with braces. Please uh put some comments below if you’ve got any questions. I’ll definitely get back to you about how to uh combat getting the braces. Um we’re here to help. Okay, maybe even press the subscribe button because I’ve got lots of cool stuff coming out, too. So, don’t panic about braces and you have a great

day.