rowuk

Its clear, with anchor tonguing you have built a direct path to the mouthpiece for the spit to flow. When the tongue isn't anchored, the saliva collects at the bottom of the oral cavity and can be swallowed at convenience.

Take a glass of water. A sip works for me.

The angle of the trumpet should be determined by your jaw and teeth positions, nothing else. You need to keep pressure off of the top lip! Changing the position of your tongue should not change the angle of the trumpet!

Maybe PRACTICING the following could be useful:
in the circle of breath that I often post about we modify the following-swallow, inhale, exhale, and repeat. Once we have this down, we replace exhale with play. Build swallow into the breathing cycle - but placed at the correct time (the bottom of the circle), not in the middle of an inhale or immediately before playing.

__________________
Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

commakozzi

Yeah rowuk, I kind of stumbled onto that on my own and it's working pretty well. Didn't try the water, but building the swallow into the breathing cycle has helped tremendously. I'm also taking time before an exercise to clear my mouth out with not just swallowing normally, but actually swallowing in a way that I can only describe as creating a "vacuum" in my mouth. In other words, when I swallow this way I'm trying as hard as I can to be sure that there are no air pockets in my mouth whatsoever and therefore no spit. Then I wet my lips and prepare to play the excercise. This may not be practical when you're playing long articulated passages in a performance, however. I seem to only have this problem when doing Clarkes.

rowuk

If you are in fact playing Clarke as intended (ppp) the explanation is clear. The air velocity is slower and that does not turn the saliva into an aerosol, hence the drips! When playing louder, the spit is blown into small particles and transported farther into the horn before recondensing.

__________________
Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

commakozzi

Hmm... very interesting. I was unaware of the physics involved, but I was annoyed that I could play louder to fix the problem. Anyway, the swallowing is helping a lot with that. I forgot to mention, too, that I have the problem when doing range and endurance exercises. And that too is happening because I'm playing them at pp to p. Thanks for your help rowuk!

veery715

depends on whose you're referring to!

Are you sure you benefit from wetting your lips? That moisture may contribute to the problem. I play with dry lips, but I know there are two schools of thought on this issue.

__________________
Never play it the same way once.

Trumpets:
Lawler Bb / Stage 1 Calif Bb Special / Conn 12B / Yamaha 8310Z / Getzen 990S / Hunter-Diamond II /
Stage 1 California C / Mannheim (Chinese) / Benetone / 1934 Cleveland (HN White) 603 Silver Plate w/ Gold Bell / Jaeger NY
PUJE!!
Kanstul ZKT 1525 Flugelhorn
Cornets:
'77 B&H 921 Sovereign / '41 Conn 36A / King Super 20 Master / '68 Olds Ambassador / Conn 18A /
Easyplay (??) / King HN White 1904 Bb/A

bilboinsa

Tonguing moves more spit closer to its exit point. Period. More tounging leads to more spit, for some of us, that is.

__________________
Doug Walsdorf
Schilke B2
Kanstul 1525
1927 Conn 22B New York Symphony
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
http://www.myspace.com/schilkeB2
Member: http://xeml.buglesacrossamerica.org/index.xeml