 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: bflatclarinetist
Date: 2005-08-07 15:50
My mom says I need to get braces, but I'm scared it'll affect my embouchure. Here I've read good and bad sides of it but I'm still not sure which would be the better choice. My friend plays the Oboe and when she had to get braces she said it hurts a lot...Maybe it's a different issue for the clarinet?
thanks.
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Author: Cindy
Date: 2005-08-07 16:28
There are many posts about this, and it's generally a personal decision. We cannot see how your teeth are, we don't know how they affect your everyday life, etc. But, I played with braces for 5 years and was very successful. They make these plastic covers for the brackets that keep them from cutting into your lip if you need them.
So many instruments to play........so little time to play them!
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Author: marcia
Date: 2005-08-07 19:40
Am wearing braces for the second time-first time was in my teens, many years ago. Did not stop me from playing on any occasion. Yes it feels different, and yes it will hurt but there is orthodontic wax (to put on the abrasive hardware) and painkillers (Ibuprofin works well for me). My front top teeth were crooked and getting more so all the time. It was so bad that I played for years with only one tooth on the MP. After the application of braces they were straight in four weeks, both teeth on the MP, much better than before!
So if you really do need them it does not need to prevent you from playing, and the end result may give you a better embouchure than you now have. That is certainly true in my case.
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Author: bflatclarinetist
Date: 2005-08-07 20:09
I actually don't really need them at all because my teeth aren't crooked nor do I have an overbite so I don't really know why I need them oh well.
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Author: CheezyClarinetist
Date: 2005-08-08 03:27
Braces aren't all that bad. It takes a moment of adjusting to get back what you had, but you should be fine. As far as dental wax goes, I hate that stuff! My clarinet teacher suggested getting cigarette paper. Fold it up and put it over your bottom lip, so that you cover your brackets down there and your two front teeth. I guess if you play double-lip you can also put some on the top teeth as well. This works even if you don't have braces, try it, it feels so comfortable.
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Author: marcia
Date: 2005-08-08 04:50
With a firm embouchure wax can sometimed be necessary on top teeth even if you don't play double lip. I managed to produce a few top lip wear spots from time to time. I think I'm pretty much past that now, but each new arch wire takes some getting used to.
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Author: joannew
Date: 2005-08-08 08:08
First of all, your mom wants you to get braces, or your dentist does? Or is your mom a dentist? Just because all the other kids have braces...
Call me a sceptic, but I'm not convinced dentists / orthodontists always have our best interests at heart, particularly when it comes to wind players. My (ex-)dentist recently proposed to reset the position of my jaw over the course of a couple of weeks to facilitate putting a filling in one of my back teeth ('proposed' meaning refused to do the filling otherwise, and charging an extra $300 in the process). Sure, it would have made the procedure easier for him (despite that previous dentists had been able to fill my back teeth just fine), but as a clarinetist, this is not a proposition I take lightly. My guess is (caution: sweeping generalization ahead!) that they have fancy new techniques and want only the slightest excuse to try them out, and keep the patients / insurance companies forking out the big bucks.
Do yourself a favour, and get informed before you make any decisions. Talk to more than one dentist. Why should you have braces, if your teeth are straight without over/underbite? What is the probability of a successful procedure (teeth don't always behave as expected)? What are the possible side effects (my jaw only started clicking & locking AFTER the denstists had had their way with retainers, spacers, etc)? What are the risks of leaving your teeth alone, if any?
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2005-08-08 11:24
As a kid I played with braces for about five years, including three of my four years as first clarinet in my high school orchestra. I did need to cushion the lower teeth for clarinet playing, but after about a month, the slightly changed embouchure felt normal. However, I agree that if your teeth aren't crooked and you don't know why you're supposed to get braces, you have every right to ask, and to expect a reasonable answer. "Because I said so" is a reasonable enough answer for a five-year-old, but not for someone who's old enough for braces, IMHO.
I recently refused to have a perfectly sound wisdom tooth removed so that my dentist could get to a cavity more easily, and in consequence it appears I will have to change dentists, because we've been at an impasse for more than two years now and that cavity isn't getting any smaller. I think it's worth the hassle of changing dentists, because I use that tooth for chewing, it's been there since I was in my thirties (I'm in my fifties now), its root is close to a nerve that controls the tongue (taking out the tooth might damage the nerve), and I can't think of one good reason why I should have a healthy, useful tooth removed just because technically it's a wisdom tooth and "everybody" has their wisdom teeth pulled. That seems stupid to me. I have a pretty stong suspicion that the dentist (who has commercial advertising for Crest products all over the office now, including a door-sized poster--another thing that bothers me) is looking for extra fees to pay for the new wheelchair lift he installed recently by the front stairs. He probably needed that wheelchair lift to comply with accessibility laws. Well, fine, but I need that tooth.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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