 The Oboe BBoard
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Author: Jaysne
Date: 2008-11-05 14:13
I've been practicing my oboe every day for 30-45 mins. I appear to have a callus developing at very tip of my top lip, right where the two sides meet at a point.
I'm just wondering if this is a common malady for oboe players, and if it's definitely related to my oboe playing or not. I'm trying to figure out how it could be happening. I form an "O" with my lips when I play, so that part of my lip should not be rubbing against the reed.
Any comments? Thanks.
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Author: Jaysne
Date: 2008-11-05 18:05
I don't know; it doesn't seem likely to be related, but it just began forming at the same time I began putting in some heavy-duty oboe practice, so it's an odd possibility.
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Author: Dutchy
Date: 2008-11-05 19:39
Can you get someone to either film you or take a still photo of you, showing you playing, so we can see your embouchure and how the reed might be rubbbing on your lip? Post it on Youtube or Photobucket, someplace like that.
I've never heard of anyone getting a callus on their lip, but it's possible that you have some kind of personal configuration that brings the two halves of your top lip together, so they rub against each other, when you play the oboe. I have something similar happening on one of my toes--the skin of the upper side of the joint actually rubs against itself, spanning the top side of the joint, because the toe bends too far the "wrong" way, so I have an otherwise inexplicable callus there, have had it since I was a little girl.
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Author: Jaysne
Date: 2008-11-11 02:20
It seems like my callus issue had remedied itself. I've been playing lots of oboe, and it has receded.
Must have been due to something else I was doing. Thanks to all for your concern!
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Author: triplereed
Date: 2008-11-26 11:06
This is a curious issue... But Jaysne's not the only oboist in the world to experience such an apparent oddity.
My upper lip, too, always showed a tendency to develop calluses. It first happened when I took my early oboe lessons and still happens nowadays everytime I put myself into an intensive schedule of exercises, even if that happens only occasionally. Yet everytime I find myself playing double reeds (oboe, shawm, chalemie and the like) more than a couple of hours in a row in a three to five days span, I know that the next morning I'll invariably wake up with this small, round, stiff 'button' of desensitized flesh which appears exactly at the center of my upper lip where the two halves meet in a tiny dimple, just a shade below where the labial mucosa blends into proper skin.
In the beginning I thought it might have been due to my still-undeveloped embouchure, since the callus itself disappeared and reformed more or less in time with my bouts of practice; but I think that it might be due to the different embouchures I use since I also play flute and clarinet (i. e. respectively lips alone or a huge, beak-shaped mouthpiece where only the lower lip is called into exercise).
Add to this that I always had a tendency to bite hard into the reed since I started out on folk shawms before oboe, and there're no speakers to them; one must learn to overblow octaves and fifths with great restraint in order to keep an expressive tone at the same time on an instrument that otherwise is likely to squeal and play out of joint if not severely kept in line; not that I disregarded the speaker key, but I never really put the uppermost trust on it alone for my very first handmade reeds were of antique strain, coarse and too-strong, so that they wouldn't respond at all if not given a good bite. Back then I simply couldn't coax a decent tone out of supple, long-scrape reeds.
So it might as well be a residual of an old bad habit, subsequently corrected yet never totally suppressed, that still surfaces from time to time in my playing. It doesn't annoy me anymore; it even relieves a bit of lip fatigue when I revert to the oboe after a hiatus, at least until I kick in into high gear. After that, presto my lip regains its usual shape and suppleness.
If music was an apple, I'd be the snake
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Author: GoodWinds ★2017
Date: 2008-11-26 13:52
If it reappears, I would suggest having a doc look at it. It may be unusual, and merely related to your playing, but it might be something you need to get treatment for.
seriously. In my non-oboe life I'm an RN.
GoodWinds
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