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Information about lip swelling, lip pain, and other debilitating embouchure problems.

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Excerpts from  Broken   Embouchures

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So, what's in Broken Embouchures, The Embouchure Handbook? Well, here are a the  first pages of a few chapters:

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Chapter 1 Just Having a Bad Day--or Is It Really a Chop Problem?

    The Embouchure Twilight Zone

"About three weeks ago I was very stiff from an excessive amount of practicing the day before. The next two days I continued to play as usual. The third day, my sound was full of air, and I had no ability to play softly. I took three days off and tried to play again. After playing for two days, it was obvious that something was still very wrong. I decided to take the last month of the season off, canceling all sorts of solo concerts as well. It was all pretty embarrassing and upsetting. It's been over two weeks that I haven't touched my horn. I thought in another week that I would try buzzing. There is still a prominent scar on the inside of my top lip."

If you have ever suffered the effects of  embouchure overuse, you have likely traveled into the fourth-dimensional space known as the Embouchure Twilight Zone. But far from Rod Serling’s wonderful 1960s CBS television series, the Embouchure Twilight Zone is a very real prison, replete with its own daily nightmares. Many adjectives are offered to describe embouchure problems. Few do so adequately.

"My symptoms are as follows: 1. localized pain at the point where the mouthpiece contacts my upper lip where the pink of the lip borders the white skin above, usually on the right side of my embouchure but occasionally on the left 2. swelling of the upper lip. The impact on my playing: diminished flexibility and response, dull sound, difficulty in centering pitch, harder to play in extreme registers, etc. Like many horn players, I had occasional minor bruising or a "fat lip" which I was able to overcome with a day or two of rest until about two years ago when I hurt myself particularly badly during a very heavy week. I went to see my doctor who referred me to a local ear, nose and throat man who put me on prednisone. After a week off, I went back to playing and quickly re-injured myself, forcing myself to have to take more sick leave. Since then, my symptoms have come and gone with regularity, depending on the heaviness of my schedule." 

There are no Disabled Lists for instrumental players. No one will get up before a performance to announce the names and ailments of all of the distressed players on stage as they do for singers, soloists, or professional athletes. Brass players have to suffer their discomforts silently with no merit badges for playing under duress. We’re just expected to play well regardless of how lousy everything feels, and, in large part, that’s what we expect of ourselves.

No one can begin to understand what it’s like to play and perform in pain or with a dysfunctional embouchure unless he has personally experienced it. When a player’s embouchure stops working comfortably, playing is reduced to a terrifying effort, requiring much more mental and physical energy. It’s easy to conclude that it sounds just as bad as it feels, and that everybody is hearing exactly what you feel.

Unfortunately, it is within this confused, emotional prison that a player is faced with figuring out what’s not right and how to fix what he cannot figure out. It becomes an even greater task when one’s career and livelihood are on the line. But how does...............

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Chapter 2 Playing Mechanics Piece by Piece

    Batter Up

To understand how overuse physically injures a brass player’s lips and face, you first have know a little about how the basic mechanical structure of the embouchure actually works in playing.  By mechanical structure, I mean the trained physical system brass players employ to configure the facial muscles and lips into an embouchure. 

One reason embouchure overuse syndrome is so fiendishly difficult to overcome is that playing mechanics are incredibly mysterious to us. Brass players usually aren’t taught specifically how the embouchure is supposed to work in playing.  Embouchure technique is communicated through prompting from a teacher, such as, “Don’t puff out your cheeks.”  “Keep your chin down.”  “Don’t smile when you play.”  “Keep your corners in.”  So we learn to shape the embouchure and to play in large part by rote, and by feel.  In fact, most of us were very young when we first picked up our instruments, and we didn’t have the mental or intellectual capacity to understand how things worked physically.  We were far too consumed with figuring out which button to push, where the notes were, and what rhythm to play.  We developed technical proficiency through the trial-and-error method that consisted of playing something over and over enough times, that the physical techniques for correct playing eventually imprinted and programmed themselves into our chop muscles and mental hard drives.  As we grew older and more advanced in playing, the more we were able to play successfully by habit and by feel. Thereafter, we came to believe that all of our personal playing systems and embouchure configurations were permanently fixed into muscle memory.  

Our playing mechanics are, for all intents and purposes, made up of a balanced system of mutually supporting systems.  Because each of us is built differently, we don’t all utilize our embouchure systems exactly the same, although there are many structural mechanisms which are common in all good players.  

Each of us has a distinct impression of physical playing sensations (when we bother to notice), but few players play with a conscious eye toward what they are doing physically in playing.  We certainly know when things don’t feel right, even though we may have no idea of what’s not working properly............

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Chapter 4 Embouchure Speak

    A Translation of the Most Common Physical and Playing Symptoms

"I have had the same problem with my chops for years. When I play too much or too loud, the tiny part of the inside upper lip that actually vibrates gets irritated. Its seems that after a while the skin just simply can't take the vibrations. Playing loud seems to be the real culprit. A bump kind of raises and I can feel it with my tongue. Then I know I'm in trouble and I have to really back off. Other than taking it easy playing, the only things that seem to help are drinking lots of water, vitamin C, diet and maybe ibuprofen.

I have talked to other players and have gotten unbelievable different response about this thing. Some have no idea what I'm talking about. Some have experienced the problem but have been freaked out by it and haven’t told anyone." 

If you listen to your chops, you can learn a lot.   Pain, swelling, bruising, stiffness, and abrasions are all part of your embouchure’s idiomatic lingo.  Ancillary to that is what your playing is telling you.  A hollow, airy sound, a problem high range, difficult attacks, feeling more mouthpiece pressure, loss of endurance are all ways that your embouchure communicates with you, but do you know what it’s saying?  

“I can’t focus my sound any more.  My lips feel like they are made of rubber and that I’m playing with both cheeks puffed out, and I have no control over what I’m doing.  My lips are already tired after a five-minute warmup.  I just don’t know what could be wrong.  I’ve added several hours of practice each day, but it hasn’t helped.”   

Injury to a player's embouchure system from overuse masquerades as a variety of nasty physical and playing symptoms.  The symptoms most often appear after a very heavy period of intense, physically demanding playing, where the muscles have become so taxed and the lip tissue so stressed that the player's normal mechanics, thereafter, are unable to configure properly and begin to deteriorate.  Therefore, analyzing lip, mouth, and throat discomforts, as well as playing symptoms, can help a player determine whether his lip pain and playing problems are temporary or associated with embouchure overuse syndrome.  

At the end of an average day of playing, which would consist of the amount and kind of playing one is used to, a player may experience mild lip puffiness and facial fatigue which disappear within a few hours. However, because the buzzing aperture is so tiny to begin with, any change in the physical contour of the lips from swelling can make playing very challenging.  

In general, lip swelling is anathema to playing.  Brass players describe it as “stiff lips,” because that’s how it feels. Swelling narrows the gap of the buzzing aperture, preventing the lips from vibrating freely.  To overcome swelling in the............

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Last modified: April 13, 2008