I have taught privately for 5-6 yrs and just ran into a situation I don't know how to handle. I thought I'd run it by you all and see if we can come up with a few ideas. My student is in 8th grade. She has a pretty severe overbite and the 2 front upper teeth are large w/ the bottom edge of them significantly lower than the other top teeth. She plays with the horn tilted up and probably 2/3rds of the mpc is on the upper lip. She has terrible tone, mediocre range, good technique and a great desire to play the horn. Also, she has fairly large.full lips and plays on a Bach 3C.
My theory is that she can't play downstream as much as her overbite would require. I think she's placed the mouthpiece in a spot that the rim straddles the top and bottom of the top center teeth and then tries to tip the horn up to attempt to blow into the mpc. Unfortuneately I think she's blowing the airstream at the bottom edge of the cup causing her poor tone.
It's sad, because she's pretty decent player...1st chair in her 8th grade band. All you hear when she plays is her bad sound.I tried to get her play with the mpc lower...even alittle bit but she can't do it. Any opinions? Has anyone else dealt with this?
Thanks for any help you may be able to offer.
