BRACES!!!!!!

[Lost_in_Music13]

I was (and still am!!) A pretty good Trumpet player. Not to long ago I got braces. At first I couldnt play at all!! and now I cant really play very well (well not as well as I used to) the most trouble I have is when I try to go above a C in the Staff :space3: . and most of my notes are fuzzy (even below thec). I know, that most people are going to tell me just to practice. But I have been and it just doesnt seem to be getting any better! So if anyone has gone through this and overcome it or if anyone just has some advice, I would much appreciate it.:)

[schnautza]

ive never had braces...but i think i would consider what i went through to be worse...
I'll start out by saying that i play (in this order) french horn, trumpet, baritone/euph, tombone, tuba, and flugelhorn.
a couple years back, i had a slight accident in which i busted out 1.5 of my front teeth...which is BAD for a brass player (thats the first thing that ran thru my head)
I ended up getting a partial set of dentures. Needless to say, when i tried to play, my range on ALL of them was shot, although f horn seemed easiest. I basically just had to start from scratch and relearn the embrochure.
months later, i had to get a new set of dentures because i broke the others.
Once again, relearning.
Finally, I got the implant teeth put in, and it felt drastically different.
Now I have excelled past the point I was before and am ripping out screamer notes on all of the instruments...especially in horn.

all i can tell you is to be persistent. That's the only thing you can do to get better again. don't be afraid to experiment with new types of embrochures. As a result, I now play slightly off center to the left a bit because the teeth i hit were towards the right. Try different positions for your mouthpiece, be it up/down, left/right.

And whatever you do...DON'T GIVE UP! It was a long road to relearn embrochure 3 times (for 6 different instruments), but it was well worth it.

[bluesaxgirl]

Wow. It just got answered. :shock: