JOhnlovemusic
(1279 points)
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There could be several possibilities causing your 'stuck' lips.
1- be sure you are doing warm-ups and not exercises
2- how much pressure are you using to seal your lips to the mouthpiece
3- are you using a correct embouchre (too much smile and you will wear out quickly)
4- older lips can't play as long as younger lips without MORE conditioning.
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Short Lecture begins here:
Most often the lips stop vibrating because they get stiff. Lips get stiff because of a lack of oxygen and blood to the orbis orbitalus muscle(s). There are other reasons that can cause the lips to stop in older players and those are the inability to recover, lack of conditioning, and any nerve damage you may have incurred in or around the lips, the neck, shoulders, etc.
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Master Class begins here:
Let us look at the four common reasons listed above -
1- be sure you are doing warm-ups and not exercises.
Many books have "warm-ups" that are not warm-ups at all. Playing high, long, or loud in the begining is NOT warming up. Bach Chorales are NOT warming up. Although long tones help build strength, stamina, and focus; long tones do not help you warm up. My strongest suggestion is that you purchase the Walter Moeck warm-ups for trumpet. This little exercise will cost you about $3. The warm ups are published by C.L. BARNHOUSE COMPANY. Your music store should be able to get it for you or there are lots of places online to get it. It's not very expensive and would be silly not to get it even if it cost $50 - - - but it only costs about $3.
The purpose of the warm up is to get blood and oxygen flow into your lips so that you can increase flexibility. Flexibility allows us our range and our ability to make fine adjustments so we can play in tune, and gives us our wonderful tone color. You want to increase your flexibility slowly and gently. If youhave recently retired you probably are familiar with Charles Shultz comic strip, PEANUTS. Remember Woodstock, the little bird? Remember how he flys around all wicky-wacky? Good, here is my Woddstock exercise. The tempo is slow and easy; play comfortably soft. Start on G (second line treble clef). What you are going to do is move up a half a step to G#, and then to A, maybe A# and then move back down in half steps going past the G down to F#, F, E, and then back up. You go up and down moving in half step increments. As you go up you will feel a little tension in your lips. When you feel this tension change direction and then come back up. Go up, go down, go up not as high, come down, go up a little higher, come down. It doesn't have to be the same note or higher each time. It is all based on how your lip feels. The goal is to this for awhile fliting around like Woodstock until you can slowly increase your range without tension in your lips. The moment you feel tension you are tightening your lips too much.
2- how much pressure are you using to seal your lips to the mouthpiece
You only need enough pressure to seal the air from leaking out. Play your trumpet and see if you can feel the trumpet mouthpiece pressure with your teeth. You should barely feel any pressure. Try it again and assign a number to this pressure on a scale of 1 to 10. Let's say you assign a number 5. Now think about the pressure and see if you can play with a pressure of 4. Make small adjustments over a period of time. Try to reduce the pressure one scale degree every 4 to 5 days. One thing I do with my students is have them play on screw rim mouthpieces - I have them remove the rim and play without the rim. Too much pressure and they will hurt themselves. I can play a double high Bb above the staff without a rim on my mouthpiece (it's all about flexibility and only enough pressure).
3- are you using a correct embouchre (too much smile and you will wear out quickly)
The embouchre should be more of a purse string aperture. If you were taught to smile and pucker then you will be fighting an uphill battle. When I play you can't tell by looking at my embouchre that I am playing. If you send me an email address through the Private Message, or my website email I can send you a picture of a mostly correct and a mostly not correct embouchre. That being said, I am not a big believer in changing embouchres. For the embouchre to be correct all the structure muscle to support it must be correct and this starts at your hips believe it or not. You want to be relaxed but taut at the same time. YOu want your torso and spine to be stretch and elongated, but still relaxed. You want your shoulders relaxed yet expanded outwards and slightly back.(Imagine if all your body muscles were given a topical treatment of metholathum) Imagine you feel light headed after running several miles. This is the mind set and physical feeling you should have. You want your head back and just slightly cocked or tipped forward to allow for a complete and very slight swoop from your hips to your lips to allow the air to move with as little resistence as possible. Air is your friend and it needs to flow easily. At the back of the jaw there are some small clusters of muscles about the size of three fingers. You can think of them holding your bottom jaw in place. You want to relax these rear jaw muscles. And when warming up, breathe through your nose slowly. Remember warm ups are soft,slow, and easy.
4- older lips can't play as long as younger lips without MORE conditioning.
As we age the skin changes and becomes more leathery, even if only slightly. And this will contribute to the difficulty of endurance. Also the lip muscle(s),oribis orbitalis, incurs some atrophy as we age, another issue to overcome. You should try and play everyday. The Walter Moeck exercise will take about 25 minutes to do the whole thing and you should be able to play after doing it. You might try doing my woodstock exercise twice a day.
And often missed or overlooked - WATER WATER WATER. For the blood and oxygen to flow well you must be hydrated. If you drink alcohol the night before you play it will affect your playing ability. Keep yourself hydrated!!! If you drink alcohol be sure to drink a glass of water after every drink you have. Yes you will have to pee a little more often but you will stay hydrated.
I hope this short discussion helps you (and others).
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