Things have finally settled down a little bit since our move to Fabulous Las Vegas and it’s about time to start the posts again:

In this post I’m going to tackle something I don’t like thinking about:  Teeth.  My biggest fear (and probably the biggest fear of most wind instrument players) is having something happen to my teeth; whether it’s getting kicked in the mouth inadvertently by one of my kids and knocking one loose or an accident much worse.  Ugh…the yuck shivers set in…

Let’s move on to something that is under our control.  Someone had advised me a long time ago that it’s not good to practice right after waking up because your teeth can be loose and it can cause shifting.  I was reminded about this recently when a Facebook friend had posted a status mentioning dissatisfaction about playing early in the morning.  I had always blindly followed the advice about not playing upon waking up because it made sense; I had suspicions that the slight shifting in my teeth were caused by playing early in the morning while using too much pressure when I was playing in marching music ensembles long ago.

After a tiny bit of research (thanks to the aid of the search bar on my web browser), I found this article:  My Tooth Feels Loose.  While it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for (it did mention about teeth being looser in the morning), it did give a couple good reasons for loose teeth (trauma and grinding) and good advice (to see your dentist immediately if you do have a loose tooth).  I recommend taking a look at it.

I recently had a bunch of dental work (mostly removing and replacing old silver fillings) and it reminded me of how valuable your teeth are in relation to playing a musical instrument.  I was reminded of several things during this ordeal:

• TAKE CARE OF YOUR TEETH AND GUMS.  Brush and floss everyday and see your dentist every 6 months…you don’t want to end up with the trumpet issues that Chet Baker had in the late 60’s (staying away from smack and drug dealers also helps:  Allmusic.com – Chet Baker bio).
• Give yourself an hour or so in the morning before practicing.  This lets your mind and body wake up and lets the teeth settle in if they loosened up during sleep.
• Adopt a minimal pressure approach to playing if you haven’t done so.
• Learn and always use proper marching technique instead of relying on mouthpiece pressure to make your playing smooth while marching and playing if you partake in marching bands, drum corps, military bands, etc.
• Do a warmup of some sort instead of just jamming the horn to the face to make it happen.
• Schedule extensive dental work more than 4 and a half hours before a 4-hour rehearsal…ugh…lesson learned……….

Thanks for reading!