dental problem and how to solve it with Stolzel method practice adaptor

[graeme]

Hi Johan, I hope all is going well with your healing process. Now that I have found that the Adaptor is adjustable I have set it to enable me to play up to F on the stave (treble clef) the Idea being that I can warm up with hymn tunes thus giving a little variation from the long tones, it is still sensitive enough (for me) that it still requires conscience effort to keep the pressure off. Very early days yet but I am hoping after a few months I might get some muscle memory if that is the right term to maintain any progress.

[johan]

Breaking news (): my new teeth have arrived finally last week! After 10 months eating like a baby I finally am able again to eat and smile like a normal human being of my age!
Needless to say that the first thing i tried when i got home was to blow a few notes on my euphonium.
To my great surprise it worked out perfectly from the start. The sound i'm producing is more than ok, now it's only a matter of persistant training to catch up the lost time. Of course after 10 months embuchure and range are very limited right now, but i can play without having to force, so that gives me good hope.
The Adaptor is working fine to learn how to play with as little pressure as possible, which will absolutely be favourable to my endurance in the long term. I'll try to make a short film and post it on Youtube so you can all hear how i sound with false teeth!

[John Morgan]

I just read through this entire thread. Good for you!! I am really happy for you and you must be really happy to have teeth back. I hope all goes well, and that you are able to play euphonium for a long, long time.

[davewerden]

That's great news, johan! I'm glad to hear it is going so well as you start to get used to everything.

[Duran]

Good advice, but not always practical. The technology is astonishing nowadays (e.g., implants in the bone of the jaw), but with a high price and a lot of time involved. You can easily expect to spend tens of thousands of dollars.

My son just spent over $10,000 (and most of a year) getting his wife's teeth fixed after a lifetime of neglect (and she's only 30). All out of pocket, of course, and nothing like total tooth replacement.

I feel for people in this situation. My father had all his teeth removed in his early 30s (by an army dentist) and suffered with dentures for the rest of his life. The technology is much better now, even if you don't go with the state of the art stuff. With a presumably long life ahead, whatever investment that can be managed would be a wise choice.

Ooh, people don't realize how important it is to look after their teeth until they start getting problems with them. These days I brush after every meal and floss before bed and also rinse my mouth out with salt water to kill bacteria.

I do this because I recently had an abscess that almost spread to my brain from a tooth infection. Gotta look after your teeth.

[RickF]

Johan, for some reason I missed your follow-up earlier. Congratulations on your new teeth.

[davewerden]

Taking care of your teeth... this is a great sub-topic!

I feel especially strongly about it because it is part of my life now. I went for most of my public school days and half of my college life taking virtually no care of my teeth until I had a pain or problem. By mid-way through college I had already lost 2 teeth completely and had some rather impressive-sized fillings in several places. Let's say that was around age 21 (not sure exactly). Then I got a lecture from the dental school and started to take better care of things. But early in my Coast Guard career I had a little more work done and realized even more how important this all is. I've been a daily flosser since then, and I brush a couple times a day.

But alas, that was too little too late. Huge fillings mean that there is not much tooth left around them. So now and then a side would sheer off, which usually meant getting a crown. Then I bit into a piece of bone in a hot dog and broke another tooth, which affected the root. And so it went.

At this point I have 2 implants, a few bridges, crowns, and other artificial parts and several natural parts, all combined to make up my "teeth." It is a certainty that I'll need at least one more implant and a new crown to replace one of the more creative bridge structures.

As a musician, I am very aware of how critical that structure is. So far, knock on wood, the serious issues have been contained within the teeth outside my embouchure area, so I've not had to make any adjustments to my playing. And for a couple decades or so I've been nearly obsessed with maintaining what I have (which has still be somewhat a losing battle). My nightly routine for dental care is:

1. Floss carefully
2. Brush carefully, paying specific attention to areas my hygienist says have deeper pockets in the gums.
3. WaterPic everything. This has been a boon! First, my hygienist says overall my gums are looking much better and I have less tartar buildup. And, even after steps 1 & 2, I will often flush out a little particle of food that somehow avoided the flossing and brushing.
4. Use a fluoride rinse.

If I had gotten smarter sooner, I would have been doing this all along.

So for our younger members, please learn from my experience!

[davewerden]

One more point about dental care. If at any point your dentist takes full impressions of your top & bottom teeth (like "wax" impressions from which they make a plaster model of your teeth), be sure to keep the model when they are through with it. If you are serious about playing, some would advise you to ask your dentist to do this if it is not already part of some procedure (it will cost you some money, of course). But I hear that such a model can be invaluable if you are in an accident that causes serious damage to your mouth. If they have to rebuild your tooth structure, having a model will give them a better target, and the end result will be more compatible with how you play your horn.

[iiipopes]

WOW! Here's hoping for the best in your getting back to playing.

When I was a teenager, I had to have braces. I had to lay off trumpet for awhile and play souzy/tuba in marching band and concert band. Needless to say, when I went back to trumpet, I used too much pressure and my lips were always a bloody mess with the old-style wired braces. I eventually sorted it out, but with my overbite, including getting the correct geometry and alignment of the mouthpiece to embouchure has always been an ongoing discipline, even including the adjusting of the receiver up 10° on both the euph and tuba to get the optimal alignment to my embouchure.

OH! I wish this sort of thing - the practice adaptor - was available when I was a teenager!!! You know, now playing trumpet in one ensemble, euph in another, and tuba in another, I am tempted to get one of each of these when I practice just to make sure I don't fall into bad habits, even at my age. but the €60-70 price tag, plus shipping, is quite an investment for one horn, to say nothing of three.

But I understand the OP's position, and I would get one immediately. When I had some issues playing bass guitar with mini-blood clots causing mini-strokes and losing my left hand for awhile some years ago, I had a custom bass guitar built with a variant of the fanned fret system so I could continue to play. In that regard, in the final analysis, nothing is too expensive if it helps a musician continue to be a musician on his/her chosen instrument.

Best of luck in getting back to playing euph.

[John Morgan]

Yep, I know exactly where Dave is coming from. I, too, had an insatiable sweet tooth growing up and into my adulthood and a not so attentive approach to oral hygiene. I have an interesting mouthful of things to include a couple implants (these are absolutely great inventions) and a bridge over two teeth with a false one in between. Plus numerous fillings, mostly on the sides, top and bottom. The fillings tend to wear out, fall out, break off, etc. over time, so I also have several crowns. I chuckle when I go to the dentist for some work and they ask me when I had this or this done, and I look at them in amazement, and say you expect me to remember each of my gazillion trips to the dentist over many, many years!!?? Living in many places, I have had too many dentists over the years to even remember.

One thing my wife and I both do because of our love and frequency in going to the dentist is we both have two dental insurance policies. I am retired military, so I have a dental insurance policy based on that, and my wife is retired civil service, so she has a dental insurance policy based on that. And each of us is on the other's policy, ergo, we each have two insurers. Most regular policies cover cleanings, 80% or so of the cost of fillings, but for all the major, heavy duty stuff, they typically cover only half. That is where it gets real expensive. Having two policies, each pays about a half for the major things like crowns, implants, etc., so we usually are not on the hook to pay much of anything, and most of the time nothing. It does amount to paying for two policies, but we did the math, and with our fondness for and frequency of visiting our dentist, it is way more economical to have two policies.

So far, with me getting close to 70, my teeth (and assorted other hardware) are working fine with playing my horns. I do dread the day that the situation changes (hopefully it won't).

Along these lines, I remember a little "tooth" episode when I was living in Spokane, WA and playing in a Big Band (trombone) based in Coeur d'Alene, ID. This group was not particularly good, but it was "fun". On one of our gigs, one of the trumpet players, who was closer to 100 years old than he was 70, and also not a very good player (I am being charitable here, he was beyond terrible), was sounding even worse than usual (he played right behind my head, ouch). We met in the restroom at break, at which point he made a statement to the effect that he just realized he had been playing without his teeth (he wore a full set of dentures). At which point he whipped them out from his pocket and put them in!! It was at this moment I realized I was not playing in Glenn Miller's Band.

[johan]

to be honest: lack of dental care was not my problem. I had no fillings in any of my teeth. They just grew out of my gums and were all loose. Apparently something heritable, since my father and brother have the same problem. Pricewise: the whole operation set me back about 15.000 € (no refunding...) and i lost 10 months.
But all's well that ends well.
Yesterday in course, my teacher gave me my first concert piece for this schoolyear. After only tree weeks of playing again, he estimates that "twilight serenade" by Schoonenbeek should be possible. I'm a little bit proud and very happy with this outcome.
I found a recording of the piece by Dave Werden on youtube and allthough that level will be out of my league, it's certainly my ambition to make the most of it!
I will try to post a recording of my sound shortly, but recording with my phone does not seem representative for the actual sound i produce.

thx for all the support and good wishes here, it is certainly stimulating!

grts
Johan

[johan]

here is a try (and error..) of a recording. far from perfectly executed, i will have to practice a lot. Slurring is not always on the correct note, taking intervals is also hesitant but it's gradually improving..I posted it mostly to give you an idea of the sound i'm producing right now with my new teeth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95dr...ature=youtu.be

[John Morgan]

I listened. Way to go Johan!! Sounding good on those new teeth!! Keep up the great work!!

[adrian_quince]

Hi Johan, you're off to a great start! I've worked with a couple of brass players who've had major dental work done. Their biggest hurdle to coming back was finding the feel of the partials in the embouchure. From what I heard in the video, you're doing really well with that. Keep up the good work!