Posted by Been there... on November 20, 2000 at 00:22:01:
In Reply to: Facial muscles? posted by Mr. W on November 17, 2000 at 19:02:12:
Mine didn't go to this degree but I think I've experienced what you are talking about. I suspect it is more common than we realize but I'm with-holding my name for the same reasons you are. May I ask what kind of daily routine you do? You may consider breaking it up differently and adding some variety. I wouldn't spend much time with long tones or checking against a tuner.. for me doing some flexibilities things to get myself loosened up and the air doing more of the work did wonders for breaking me out of the mental loop that was causing the problem. Maybe do some very basic rochut type melodies that will allow you to spend less time focusing on the physical demands and more on the melodic?
Both times I suffered this problem it was directly connected to me transfering to a larger bore instrument with notably less resistance. I wanted to immediately sound great on the new horn and was working very hard to do this. I let a lot of tension creep into my playing in an attempt to muscle the horn in tune. I could play this way with a relatively good sound but it was a *ton* of work and was really starting to hurt. One day I was commenting to a friend about this and he simply said, 'stop working so hard'. The next time I picked up the horn I made a conscious decision to let the air do the work and spend my time making statements rather than internalizing. At first this felt odd but it has been a wonderful transition and didn't take more than a week or so to become comfortable.
Hopefully some of this was helpful to someone.