A bad habit I have picked up, need help!

Whistle
1

I have been playing for about 5 or 6 months. I find that I will start to bite my lip, in a way… i cant explain it so I drew a picture :slight_smile:

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like that.
I find that i’m getting a groove in my upper lip, I dont think its a good thing, after I have been playing for a while my lip starts to really bug me. So I try to stop, but I find that in a few seconds, when I get back into the music, I am doing it again.
I am wondering if there is a trick to stop myself, short of slapping myself each time I do it, that is… :stuck_out_tongue:
It’s a silly post, I know, but what can I say? :blush:

2

Interesting…
Try putting only the very tip of the whistle in your mouth. It doesn’t really have to go in very far at all. This way, the end of the whistle won’t enter your mouth as far as your front teeth, so they won’t be able to bite down on your lip.
It sounds as if you are tensing up when you play. RELAX-- this is supposed to be fun… :wink:

3

I agree, the whistle does not have to go in that far. You park it against your lip and go in just far enough to produce a good seal.

It should never go far enough to pass the teeth, (this is not a reed instrument) but you should be able to barely touch a high whistle beak with the edge of your tongue. Although not all music requires tongueing, you won’t have to relearn your embouchure when it is needed.

By doing this, your mouth will not notice the whistle as a foreign object as much and you might experience less water clogging. If the whistle goes in too far, the salivary glands activate as if food is entering.

4

While you are learning not to put your whistle into your mouth farther than it has to go, you might have to slap yourself a few times :laughing: . I had to keep at myself to not push it in farther and farther. But it didn’t take very long to change the habit.

5

thanks guys, i play low whistle, i dont know if that changes anything with the tounge thing. thanks for the help, my face has been hurting a lot lately, and people are beginning to ask if my wife beats me… :laughing: :laughing:

6

Hmmm, when I read your post and the first responses, I figured everyone was right . . . that you were shoving the thing in your mouth too far. I even thought I had the solution for you . . . putting a rubberband around the beak so that you would become aware of this and thus able to stop shoving it in.

Pleased that I had solved your problem, I picked up a whistle, and . . . did exactly what you show in your picture.

It’s not that the whistle is in too far, but that the lip just seems to naturally curve under the teeth.

I think I am doing it in an attempt to keep the moist part of my lip off the whistle. By “rolling” the lip, the dry part comes in contact. I don’t think I can stop this, either. Or want to, because having wet lips all over the whistle seems somehow disgusting. Bleah.

There just isn’t enough lip here to do it any other way.

I can pucker up and pooch out my lips, but it’s bizarre. Do you people actually hold your whistles this way?

After several tunes, though, I realized that I was beginning to try to GRIP the whistle harder. Are you doing this? Trying to grip the whistle with your mouth? To hang onto it, as it were.

Perhaps being aware of that will help you. But I can’t think of a trick to make you stop, except perhaps wearing a bite guard while you play.

Sigh. This is probably why all those music teachers told me I didn’t have the right kind of lips.

I’ll just have to switch to pipes.

Or bodhran. Everyone knows they’re much easier to play. So few people play them, too, that you’re always welcome.

But you’ve probably got a lot invested in your whistle, eh? Don’t want to abandon it so soon. And you shouldn’t, not really.

I notice you say your face is hurting. If you’re just biting your lip, then your face won’t hurt because of it. So, that tells me that you are tensing up something else in your face, and causing muscular strain, and that is hurting.

My guess on this is that you are clamping your mouth shut and tensing up the muscles that you chew with.

Where’s the pain, exactly? Is it around your lips in a circle? Or, is it mostly from the corner of your eyes to the bottom of your lower jaw?

7

I could definitely see that rolling the lip inward to keep the wet part off the tip of the whistle would bring the lip in and under the teeth. It sounded as though HeronMark’s discomfort was from his teeth pressing on his lip. I thought his face was hurting was because he was slapping himself. :laughing:

I get the wet part of my lips on the tip of the whistle. I hold my lips perfectly normally but just slightly open, stick the whistle in just until the opening (I should really learn the proper terms) is covered, and very gently close my lips to prevent air escape. I don’t hold the whistle with my lips.

Lamby, it’s not icky to put the wet part of your lips on the whistle :laughing: . I mean it’s your whistle, you know where it’s been, right? I actually clean the inside and outside of mine when I finish, but it’s the inside that concerns me most. I am sure you have enough lip to rest gently on the whistle. There is certainly no puckering up or pooching out involved that I have observed. You need to have the wet part of your lips just barely on the whistle so you can change the shape of the area just behind the lips to improve the pitch or tone of the whistle. This was in my Grey Larsen book----it seems to be a valid point. I guess I might sort of pucker up or pooch out my lips sometimes while I am playing, but not when I am just holding my whistle in the ready position. The rubber band sounds like a good idea to remind one not to put the whistle too far in.

8

It’s not icky? Are you sure? I’m not sure.

I think it’s icky. It’s like kissing somebody or something! It’s wet!

I mean it’s your whistle, you know where it’s been, right? I actually clean the inside and outside of mine when I finish, but it’s the inside that concerns me most. I am sure you have enough lip to rest gently on the whistle. There is certainly no puckering up or pooching out involved that I have observed. You need to have the wet part of your lips just barely on the whistle so you can change the shape of the area just behind the lips to improve the pitch or tone of the whistle. This was in my Grey Larsen book----it seems to be a valid point.

I’m going to have to look that up. I can’t imagine he would advocate something like that. He seemed like a nice man to me.

Sigh. Oh, all right. I’ll try it. HeronMark, you try it, too, ok? Maybe there is something to this.

Is there something you can stick on the whistle to make it less slithery? Velcro? Something? Adhesive tape? Maybe that would help. It’s just so cold and slick. I don’t think I like that feeling.

Yes, I can see that pipes are in my future.

9

The question is - does it hurt to play that way? Does it feel awkward? Do you feel ok with it? The groove is not a problem. I have one of those on my bottom lip from playing clarinet (where you roll your lip over your teeth). It’s a callous on the inside of my lip from playing for so many years.

~Crysania

10

I think I have figured out the best way… its a combination of the pucker, or pooch styles, and the use of a rubber band… once again I dont know how to describe it, so i drew another picture.

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there we go… the rubber band would help to hold the pucker, as well as hold the whistle in… ok maybe not


really though. I think Cynth is correct in that I dont like the idea of slobbering all over my whistle. and yes the face hurting isnt me tensing up, playing usally relaxes me… its me slapping myself for biting my lip… not really.
I dont think getting the whistle cold would work, as its made of plastic. also it wont play when it is cold… so i would just stand there with a whistle hanging off my lip, and that does nobody any good.

11

:laughing: Hmmm. I think maybe we’d better stop and re-group here.

  1. Crysania, MarkHeron said in his first post that his lip started to bug him after he played for awhile. So I guess that’s why we were trying to give him advice. That is interesting that you have a callous inside your lip. I know nothing about other wind instruments. I know very little about the whistle, actually. :laughing:

You suck all the spit to the back of your mouth and swallow (to minimize spit going into the whistle) and then you put the whistle into your mouth only as far as necessary to just cover the opening—like 1/4 inch. It is a very small area that is wet. And it is hardly wet. It doesn’t really feel like kissing someone to me. The whistle is hard and inanimate.

I can’t quite imagine putting Velcro on the mouthpiece of my whistle to hold it in place. Would you then sew the matching Velcro to your lip? This seems like it would be very uncomfortable. If your whistle feels cold, warm it up between your hands. Yes, you can wash your hands first if you want to.

Pipes aren’t wet, but apparently there are other difficulties. :laughing:

  1. Dude! Your drafting skills are excellent. Your whistle seems to be way far into your mouth, although I must say it does appear to be securely held there :laughing: . Perhaps they will start including rubber bands with tutorial books.

I’m not sure I’m the one that talked about this. I think it was Lamby talking about why you might tend to roll your lip. I think she doesn’t like cold whistles either.

I think if your lip bugs you, the advice of brewerpaul and Daniel_Bingamon will solve the problem on any whistle. And it is just a matter of a little re-training. Just don’t put the whistle too far in.

12

OK, I think I see the problem. We’re going to need another whistlling forum for the orally fastidious. The rest of y’all can stay here and puddle up with each other all y’alls want.

LOVE the rubberband idea, Mark! Do you think a similar effect could be achieved with a baggie tie?

13

Wow.
What an amazingly in-depth thread for a preposterously obscure subject.
But then, I suppose that’s what we’re all here for?

An interesting anecdote concerning oral fastidiousness-- or at least, interesting to me–
I am, for years now, a flute player. Favoring a more traditional sound, I switched from concert to Irish about a year ago and never looked back.
And then I got my lip ring.

True, I had already bought my tinwhistle when I succumbed to the vanities of the piercing parlour-- but it is chiefly out of laziness (I have to remove the ring or put in a barbell in order to play the flute effectively) that I play whistle instead of flute nine times out of ten.

Being that the ring is in the center of my lower lip, I actually have to stick the whistle closer to the side of my mouth.
This would all seem completely inane, were in not for the fact that yesterday (spurred by this ever-interesting thread) I noticed that, with the whistle to the side, it is extremely difficult (nigh impossible!) to bite my lip as you illustrate so cunningly in your initial post. (Of course, individual physiology must also play a part- I happen to have a very thin Scottish upper lip. It’s kind of hard to chew on anyway.)

So perhaps this jaunty angle of playership would benefit you? I feel a little like a renaissance faun when playing, as well. :wink:

14

I would just like to add a description of how I play:

I played saxophone for years before taking up whistle, so my initial instinct (and what I do to this day) was to put my teeth on the whistle in the same fashion in which I play saxophone. Yes, my teeth touch the whistle.

I didn’t realize how strange this was until this thread.

15

But wait!

I think, if you leave the ring in, and play with the whistle in the center, then the rubberband could be cinched around the ring for a tighter seal.

:thumbsup:

16

Even better, I could take a zip-tie (of the plastic kind used for securing wiring and, on St. Paddy’s, ignoble drunks…) and connect my lip ring with my nosering! Winched down tightly enough, I could thus secure my mouth rather impossibly around the beak of my whistle!

And I’ve had entirely too much tea to be tolerated in a public setting. :boggle:

17

oh dang…



that would be, iteresting…

I have tried the side mouth thing, but i feel that it would give unfair treatment to whichever ear was closest, and I have lost enough hearing from my younger years at concerts, that I dont want to loose much more… anyway, as I need to go to class I will post more later… maybe with some more pics… u know perhaps the lipring-ziptie-nosering-whistle-etc-whateverelseicanputinthepicturestuff

18

Same here. For that reason, I never played Clarke originals. I eventually
had to wean myself from this when I was expecting a Burke, because
teeth + metal = shudder

I still have teeth marks in my first SweeTone.

19

Gee, I never thought of using those tie things to attach people to something. I’m not sure I’ll ever need to do it, but it’s a good idea to have heard about. I think I might start carrying a couple of those ties around—you never know.

The idea of “winching down” on anything connected to such tender parts as lips and noses just makes me shudder. :astonished:

20

it seems to me your trying to hold onto the whistle withyour mouth instead of your hands if you dont already do this try keeping your bottom hand pinky on the whistle to help hold onto it