Re: Re: Embouchure Dystonia


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Posted by lazarus on October 02, 2000 at 15:29:12:

In Reply to: Re: Embouchure Dystonia posted by Mary Ann....a possible answer on October 02, 2000 at 10:21:07:

I'm not sure how dystonia varies for players of different insts., but I occasionally get a "shaky" tone as well (euph.) For me, it hasn't been a real problem and is gone now, but looking back I think I may see how it developed. I started doing a lot of long tone exercises to develop endurance, about an hour's worth every day. By the end, my tone would be quite shaky. I found that developing strength didn't seem to be related to the shaking; in fact my long tone marathons may have tightened my chops up to the point where they were counterproductive and a partial cause. Shaking phenomenon then crept into my playing in general occasionally. I stopped doing the long tone routine for a while, and the shaking subsided. Now I do the routine every 3-4 days coupled with a ton of flexibilities (about 45 mins/day) and I haven't had any problem in a long time. I am not sure if our symptoms were (are) alike, but you mentioned you've been using embocheure builders etc. Maybe it would be worth a try to back off those for a little while? SOmetimes developing a "super" strong embocheure could make things worse? Maybe not... just a thought.

I also found that when my tone shook I would start focusing on it and not use good air flow. I don't mean to be condesending or suggest that you don't know what you're doing; but maybe some breathing exercises could help? I had a student (euphonium) that had this problem as well; his problem seemed to originate from an attempt to use vibrato all the time, he was a fine player in many regards but couldn't really hold any one note steady and had a phenomenon of "blowing up" lip slurs and flexibilities... i.e. he couldn't control them at all due to shake and so would miss badly on these sorts of exercises. If you use vibrato a lot, you might try going without? Again, just a thought.

One thing that seemed to help my student was a "pop" exercise. I would have hime play stacatto loudish notes ascending chromatically, with a metronome at say 84 or so, one note at the top of each 4/4 bar. He didn't really have "time" to shake on the very short notes and eventually this helped him. We increased speed, and eventually went to 2 notes per bar.

Perhaps your condition is different, but who knows... maybe a few thoughts that could help. Good luck!


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