Thanks, Dave. I’ve been reading your suggestions for warm-up and range extension carefully, and have found them valuable. However, I believe that I’m fundamentally sound in both areas.
But the best warm-up in the world isn’t going to allow me to play a high double Bb; I don’t have your chops. Or turn it around: what do you, Dave, sound like when you try to play above a double Bb, even with a good warm-up? When your chops reach the point of refusal to comply, what is no longer working? I guess I’m more interested to learn the what rather than the why.
And regarding the swollen lip feel, the failure to establish a tone, this can happen -- for me -- even during a careful warm-up, during slow lip slurs, for example, so I’m wondering if we’re not talking about two distinct phenomena here. I suspect in this latter case that there may be some edema left over from previous heavy playing the day before, perhaps without a proper warm-down. (One teacher recommends a few minutes of pedal tones at the end of each practice to relax.) And you sometimes hear the same sort of failure to sound even on easy notes when a warmed-up player is tensed up, like during a solo, which makes me suspect that additional nerve-induced muscle tension interferes with good vibration in some way. But these are just my suppositions; I’m not an exercise physiologist.
Any further thoughts about the what of what’s happening rather than the why would be interesting.
Dave