Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-09-15 08:15
Aussie Nick wrote:
>> ...I have tried the Tally Ho Paper thing and also green stretchable florist tape. I have had success with both...>>
...success as judged by the musical results as well as by increased lip comfort, no?
That's what is suggested by your further statement:
>> ...as an experiment, I put my teeth guard back in my mouth and it felt very bulky (invasive) and when I went to play the sound was tighter and smaller because, as I suspected, it does encourage me to use more pressure than I would without it.>>
This, for me, lays bare the (unjustified) assumption that the difference in sound between the two setups is due to you using more pressure when using the teeth guard.
Rather, the different geometry of what supports the lower lip wrap results in a different shape and area of the lower lip presented to the reed, and it's well known that the resultant sound is highly sensitive to that shape and area. That's explained in more detail in 'Embouchures in general':
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2002/04/000770.txt
...which also gives a definition of 'biting' that allows us to understand why it is counterproductive, and why it has been discouraged by insightful teachers.
Unfortunately, the instruction not to 'bite' is now misunderstood by people, some of them on this BBoard, who think that it means there should "IDEALLY" be ZERO pressure between the lower teeth and the lower lip -- which is just not true, as almost any professional orchestral or chamber music player will tell you. I choose those categories of players, by the way, because THEY have to produce playing that satisfies fairly well-defined criteria of excellence -- as opposed to simply 'expressing themselves'. Otherwise they'd lose their jobs.
(Actually, I maintain that there isn't 'ideally' ANYTHING -- apart from what produces a musically required or musically justifiable result.)
In my own case, because I have an overcrowded lower jaw, and therefore sharp and uneven lower teeth, I have been playing with various sorts of teeth guard (tg) for some 40 years. As a young player, I suffered unnecessarily because I never considered orthodontistry, which for that matter wasn't very advanced or known about in the UK at the time. I first used gutta-percha, and quickly found that the thinnest tgs that I could make produced the best sound, and gave me the most flexibility. Unfortunately this (natural) material became crumbly after a bit, and I now find that mouldable plastic works much better. But different mouldable plastic tgs definitely produce different results -- and to a surprising degree, I find.
You can verify that that's due to the effect on the lower lip wrap by CHANGING your lower lip wrap -- you can often then mimic the result of one tg whilst using another, even though you wouldn't want to play like that routinely.
BTW, it amused me that some of the people who were definitely against your using a tg, because 'it might encourage biting', spoke of your developing a lower lip callus. What could be more indicative of 'biting' than that?-)
Tony
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