Braces Killing Your Trumpet Playing? Here’s BTB’s Guide to Playing the Trumpet Successfully with Braces

Introduction To Playing Trumpet With Braces

As a trumpet player, getting braces on – and later having them removed – can be a major challenge to overcome. Not only are the braces themselves physically uncomfortable, you also have to basically retrain your playing embouchure and technique from what seems like the ground up. As you can imagine, this harsh and sudden drop in playing ability makes getting braces a tough time for many trumpet players.

Because of these challenges – and the general confusion surrounding any sudden embouchure change – this article is meant to help trumpet players get through what may otherwise be a very sucky time. We will cover what you can expect braces to do to your playing, ways to remedy the initial discomfort of playing with braces and then outline a path in the practice room that ultimately makes you a much stronger player.

Please enjoy the read and when you’re done, be sure to share your experience playing with braces in the comment section below.

I’ve Been Playing A Few Years. Will I Have To Relearn Entirely? 

If you have recently gotten braces put on – or taken off – then you already know what this can do to your trumpet playing. If you are about to get your braces, and are wondering what might happen, here is an answer you can bank on:

Things you used to be able to play you will barely be able to play anymore.

Here are a few other common symptoms players face during the transition into playing with braces:

• Just got braces off – tone and range are garbage.
• Since [getting braces off] intonation has been horrible.
• Notes that were effortless are now impossible.

Basically, you’re going to have trouble controlling the note in any way whatsoever.

And as if the sudden drop in technical ability wasn’t already enough to contend with, you also have to learn to cope with the feelings that all of your hard work up to this point was a complete waste of time. Since musicians are notorious for putting their self-worth into the way they sound, any kind of an embouchure change is a time ripe for depression and feeling like a worthless POS.

• Sucks to be set so far back
• I can’t stand to hear myself worse and worse every day.
• I feel so frustrated, and too discouraged to play.
• Right now it feels impossible.

Now, none of this is meant to freak you out. With realistic expectations you can become empowered and make the most of this time. While it can definitely suck at first, and there will be struggles along the way, learning to play with braces will make you a more aware, competent and straight up better trumpet player.

Band Starts In A Week And I’m Freaking Out. How Fast Can I Get Back To Normal?

Why Braces Mess Up Your Trumpet Playing

To get the most out of your time playing with braces it can be helpful to understand why they screw you up so bad in this first place. Once you wrap your mind around the concepts of how we produce a sound, your practice time should be easier, more enjoyable and perhaps even fun.

To get an idea of how the embouchure works, take a look at a sax mouthpiece. The sax mouthpiece has a barrel, a wooden reed, and a ligature that holds the reed in place. When the player blows air past the reed and through the barrel, the ligature anchors the reed, holding tension, and allowing it to vibrate. This is essentially how the trumpet works as well – except for the fact that our reed and ligature are made up by the muscles of our face. This makes trumpet playing a sick and twisted game.

The center part of the lips that the air passes through – the aperture – acts as our vibrating reed. The quality of the aperture is controlled by the embouchure. The embouchure can be thought of as the total unit made up of the teeth, jaw and face muscles working in coordination.

Since all of the pieces of the embouchure need to be working together, any seemingly small change can have a big difference on the way we sound. The braces, in effect, force an embouchure change by essentially changing the thickness of the teeth, thus moving the aperture farther out in front.

Learning to play with braces is basically the same as any other embouchure change but with one added twist – the physical pain of sandwiching your soft fleshy lips between sharp metal braces and a metal mouthpiece. Ouch!

Impatience: The Embouchure Killer

The first thing you need to do is alert your instructors and band-leaders ASAP. It can be kind of an awkward conversation explaining to folks that you don’t know if you’ll be able to play for awhile, but most should be pretty understanding*.

*Shortly after being invited to join a band a really wanted to play in, I had to call the leader and let him know I was going to be changing my playing embouchure. He was cool and said, ‘just do what you can do.’ A year-and-a-half later no one even remembered I struggled for awhile.

As far as practicing goes, it’s good to recognize that embouchure development – and really learning in general – is a natural process that we have little true control over. Of course we are the ones that choose to practice everyday, but we can’t make the brain and muscles develop any faster than nature wants to go.

• Not much improvement after a ton of frustrating hours.
• Practicing every day and there has been little improvement.
• Braces off three months ago and I’m still struggling.

This can become frustrating as we desperately want to – but don’t tend to – get a little bit better each day. When it comes to our consistent playing level, the reality is more like we level-up from time to time.

So you practice, practice, practice – and nothing happens. Practice, practice, practice. Nothing happens. Practice, practice, practice. Then, BOOM! Suddenly you’re ripping through music you were never able to play before – and you’re doing it without even trying.

It’s also safe to say that each of us will recover and rebuild at different rates. If you already have a well-developed embouchure, you’re probably going to have a shorter transition time to playing successfully with braces. If you feel your embouchure wasn’t adequately developed to begin with, it’s probably going to take a little longer. However, in time these differences will probably prove to be irrelevant.

The trap, then, is giving into the pain of not improving as fast you’d like. This can lead to the temptation of over-doing it in the practice room. While it might seem counter-intuitive, practicing too much, too soon, will merely over-tire the embouchure, exacerbate the negative effects the braces initially have on your playing and possibly even extend how long it takes to adjust.

• Acquired poor technique just to compensate and get back to where I was.
• I didn’t get better with practice – I got worse.

The key – if there is one – is to make a good, moderate plan and follow through while trying your best not worry so much about daily results. It will click. And when it does – stay the course. Your embouchure and trumpet playing will be better for it the rest of your life.

What Should I Work On To Speed Up The Process Of Getting My Embouchure, Tone, Range And Overall Ability Back?

The quickest and most direct way to learn how to successfully play with braces is to have a practice routine you can stick to through thick and thin. It’s super important that your practice routine is something you will actually do. To this end, it can certainly be helpful to choose something you enjoy.

Keeping that in mind, I’ll recommend a routine that has two major parts; an exercise for strengthening and conditioning the embouchure muscles, and another exercise for improving your tongue and finger coordination.

But first…

Sometimes I Bleed A Little – Is This Normal?

Ah, the bloodbath that is playing the trumpet with braces.

First of all, yes. It is completely normal to have pain and even a little blood shed while playing the trumpet with braces. When determining how much pain is OK – be a good judge. The pain will alleviate as the embouchure strengthens. This is because a stronger embouchure lends itself to requiring less mouthpiece pressure to play. The skin inside the lips will also toughen up a bit making it more comfortable as you go. If you notice a little bleeding, it’s safe to say it’s time to set the trumpet down for the day.

I played for a few years with braces and remember that aside from some general soreness, along with getting grooves in the lips now and again, the pain was not a huge obstacle. However, if you do find it too uncomfortable to play, an item that comes repeatedly and highly recommended by real trumpet players with braces is the Morgan Bumper*.

* You can swing by Amazon and read reviews containing the keywords ‘trumpet player.’

Some players also report that a mouthpiece with a wider rim and maybe even a deeper cup made playing more comfortable. Now, I’m not anti-mouthpiece experimentation, but equipment changes can probably wait until you’ve spent a few months getting acquainted with your new embouchure. Besides, you can also learn to balance and counteract painful mouthpiece pressure by examining your embouchure using the points below.

Believe it or not, the pain of playing with braces can be a helpful source of feedback in learning to play with less overall pressure – i.e. more efficiently. Since playing without braces doesn’t hurt as bad, many trumpet players get in the habit of using tons of mouthpiece pressure. This prevents the embouchure from developing to its fullest potential. So even though it might seem like a woo-woo, self-help twist on a crappy situation – let pain be your guiding light during these first few days and weeks.

A little pain coming and going from day-to-day is totally normal. This will continue until the embouchure is strong enough to play with less overall pressure. Pay close attention in the practice room and aim to stop playing before it hurts. You won’t always be successful, but focusing on this goal will prove to be worth its weight in embouchure gold down the line. Hang in there and don’t over-do it.

Embouchure Muscle Workouts

Since you will have very little control over the way you sound until the embouchure becomes sufficiently strong – plus the fact that playing with braces is going to feel weird AF for awhile – it’s useful to practice some non-musical, muscle-building trumpet exercises during this transition. Not worrying about how it sounds, and blasting through an embouchure workout is also a good way to get through your fear of sounding like trash.

There are many ways trumpet players train the muscles of the embouchure. These range from lip and mouthpiece buzzing, to dangling weights between their lips, to just straight-up squeezing their mouth muscles as hard as they can. For the reasons outlined above, I suggest picking one of the many methods that has you playing your horn.

Here are three of about a zillion ways you can go about strengthening your embouchure. They will all work, so try each and pick the one you like. None of this needs to be pretty – it’s all about strengthening the muscles in their new position.

• Try the two-part warm-up at the bottom of last month’s RoutineTracker
• After scouring Reddit’s archives this routine looks good (by commenter GinsengandHoney)
• Here is Mark Zaus’ explanation of Carmine Caruso’s ‘Six Magic Notes’

When you begin playing these exercises it is completely normal to have trouble holding a steady note. Don’t be surprised if your face starts jumping around. Remember that it’s all just muscles – in the same way that you can hold a plank until your body starts to shake. Try doing this style of practice first thing in the morning and then giving yourself plenty of rest before continuing on. So long as you’re doing it every day, no amount of rest between exercises is too much.

Technical Routine For Tongue, Finger & Aperture Coordination

Along with your embouchure muscle-builders, I’ll recommend a basic routine aimed at developing your tongue and finger coordination. If you practice slowly, with a metronome, this will teach your embouchure how to hold each note at the aperture along with realigning your basic playing techniques rather quickly.

All you have to do is pick something – anything – and play it every day with the metronome. The most difficult aspect of this is picking one thing and sticking with it. Try to avoid the temptation of keeping yourself entertained by your practice routine. You don’t need to know what the ‘best’ exercise is. You literally just need to pick one and do it.

Only play as fast – or rather, slow – as you can play through the exercise ‘perfectly.’ What I mean by ‘perfect’ is that it sounds pretty good, and you’re able to notice things in the sound that you’d like to fix. Then try again to fix them. Once you’ve got a run-through that you’re happy with, kick up the tempo one beat for tomorrow.

If you don’t know all of your major scales by ‘feel’ – now is the time. Of course, anything else from the Clarke, Arban or method book of your choice will work just as well. But building up to the point where you can run all twelve major scales, cleanly with a metronome – at any tempo – will do your trumpet playing a world of good. If you’re curious about how this can pan out over time, check out BTB’s RoutineTracker(s).

The Path Of Habits

Each of us is different and we all learn in our own ways. However, I must share that of the many things I’ve tried over the past 25 years playing the trumpet, nothing, and I do mean nothing, has helped my playing as much as sticking with the same routine for many months and even years. This means doing the same exact technical routine each day during your entire time playing with braces. Of course, some players stay on track with more of a ‘variety is the spice of life’ attitude, but I do believe that if you want to make the fastest, deepest and most permanent changes to your playing, stick with the same exercises for a few years.

Since the routine exercises do not change, you will eventually find yourself performing them more ‘automatically.’ This frees up some brain power, allowing you to focus your attention on different aspects of your playing. You can then use this awareness to purposefully develop your playing habits.

These are a few basic recommendations I’ve made in various places over the few past years. If you have a private instructor, bounce these ideas off of them as well – they know your playing better than I do. Taking the time to focus on each of the items below, one at a time, every single time you touch the trumpet, will absolutely help you develop a strong and flexible embouchure that reduces your reliance on mouthpiece pressure while granting you more freedom in playing. It will also make future transitions (braces off) easier. Not to mention making you a more relaxed and focused performer.

1. The Skill of Chill
2. The Embouchure Set
3. Reduce Mouthpiece Pressure
4. Teeth Alignment For Even Pressure (From RoutineTracker)
5. You may also find BTB’s Play Trumpet Effortlessly series very helpful during this time.

These suggestions are just a start, but taking the time to develop each will give you a greater awareness of what it feels like to play the trumpet more efficiently. From there, you’ll be able to direct your own growth and learning much more confidently.

Focus on each habit, one at a time, and adjust your practice routine to match what you can do while focusing on that habit. For example, if you change the way you hold your horn and press the valves, you’ll probably need to slow the tempo down to whatever speed you can accurately play with the new position. Then build from there.

Stay in a comfortable range and pay attention to mouthpiece pressure – always! If you notice more pressure, stop. If you get frustrated or upset, stop. The goal is to build a strong embouchure, develop accurate technique and all the while keep your head screwed on straight. Once this is achieved, everything becomes exponentially easier.

Remember to pace yourself and take it easy until you adjust to playing with braces. I like to practice in ten-minute chunks followed by a break of about 15-20 min. If I didn’t have this rule, I would, without a doubt, overdo it every day.

You might also enjoy keeping a practice journal during this time. It can help in the moment and become an incredible resource to look back on years after your braces have been removed.

When I Get My Braces Off I Feel Like All Of My Hard Work Will Have Been For Nothing.

Have no fear that your playing will get derailed once again when your braces come off – expect it. There will be another adjustment period. However, if you stick to the guidelines above while wearing braces – or come up with some better ideas with your teacher or on your own – you’ll be perfectly fine and come out ahead.

By choosing a brief and doable routine that builds your embouchure and slowly develops your technique, along with working through the habits above, your transition out of braces will be much easier and likely take far less time.

You will have also developed a greater awareness of mouthpiece pressure – and possibly even have the bloodshed to prove it – which will make exploring the upper register after your braces come off a more logical, enjoyable and rewarding process. You can also look back at your practice journals and use your ‘braces-on’ experience to better guide yourself through this next phase of playing.

Now Go Forth, Trumpet And Be Well!

Remember to stay cool and stick to the plan. You can do exactly as this article prescribes, pick and choose what you like, or try something else completely. Just remember that overdoing it in the beginning stages is the greatest pitfall that sets players back. Another thing, cycles of being able to play well – and not being able to play hardly at all – are completely normal during the first few months to a year(ish) of any embouchure change.

If you’d like to take a few days off of the trumpet after getting your braces on – do it. Just forget about what you could do before and take it from square one. The first few days might really suck but playing will feel more normal in a few weeks. Once it does, you’ll still have plenty of practice ahead as your technique will need to resettle. Try to think of this time as a fun, new puzzle for your brain. And be patient.

If you do find your chops overextended from time to time due to band rehearsals, concerts, etc., it’s perfectly fine to take a day or two off from playing every now and again to recover. Let this be a lesson in what it means to push too hard.

The overall process of building a ‘new’ embouchure from scratch is one that teaches you the most difficult aspect of trumpet playing – producing a consistent, reliable tone daily. After you understand how to do and learn that, you’ll find your ‘trumpet brain’ much stronger and yourself a far more confident, consistent and relaxed player. Nothing has had a greater impact on my own self-confidence as a musician than having to relearn to play in my late twenties. Take your time, explore and pay attention.

And finally, while it’s not always easy learning to play with braces, it is something many players do and very much worth the effort. Be diligent, stick to the plan and always practice the Skill of Chill.

~ James Blackwell

Do you wear braces and play the trumpet? Do your students? Please share your experience in the comments, below!