Soft Palette collapse??

[Rusty]

Brass teachers please help!

I teach a very musical student who’s main instrument is French horn, and she also plays piano and violin to a high level. She’s in Year 11 in high school and picked up Trombone to play in the bigband. She’s been playing Trombone around 3 years and has a nice sound, although stuggles with range past high F.

I’ve encountered something I’d never heard of before: her horn teacher (who plays professionally) has said her soft palette is collapsing, probably caused by fatigue, and it is now sometimes appearing only 10-15 minutes into her horn practice causing her embouchure to struggle to hold together and triggering what she described as her gag reflex, or the feeling of needing to throw up.

And while she said it had only been isolated to horn, it was starting to happen in her trombone practice too.

Has anyone encountered anything like this before? My first thought is some sort of accumulated fatigue or tension of the throat, perhaps exacerbated by switching between horn and trombone?

Thanks for your help in advance!

[Doug Elliott]

Yes I have heard of it but I would check out all the other mechanics first.

[Vegasbound]

Get her to have a lesson with Doug

[Posaunus]

The soft palate collapse is well known to professionals. Let's say that it's unusual, but not really rare.

Vocalists can also suffer from this. My wife, an oboist, is occasionally afflicted (unfortunately more frequently recently), and it causes her to "snort" while playing. Very distracting! She consulted with a speech therapist (actually another oboist) who gave it a long name. There are apparently some exercises that can be prescribed to improve the muscle tone and ameliorate the condition.

[Rusty]

Yes I have heard of it but I would check out all the other mechanics first.

She’s a pretty switched on student and is aware of the general basic mechanics, and we often talk about it during lessons.

Do you have any basic exercises or things to focus on to stop the soft palette collapse happening?

[Rusty]

The soft palate collapse is well known to professionals. Let's say that it's unusual, but not really rare.

Vocalists can also suffer from this. My wife, an oboist, is occasionally afflicted (unfortunately more frequently recently), and it causes her to "snort" while playing. Very distracting! She consulted with a speech therapist (actually another oboist) who gave it a long name. There are apparently some exercises that can be prescribed to improve the muscle tone and ameliorate the condition.

Ah the occasional ‘snort’ I have actually experienced myself, where it felt my throat was closed or too tense. I’ll suggest the speech therapist idea too, that’s very helpful, thank you.

[LanceHandsome]

Get her to have a lesson with Doug

I've known men to bite their own heads off rather than talk to Doug. #monty_python

[baBposaune]

I have touched on this subject with a couple of colleagues and with the original poster directly. Since I had this happen to me a few times and trying a variety of things and stumbling upon what might cause it, I came up with an approach that worked for me which I will get to shortly.

First, I was directed to speech therapists and singing coaches. I reached out to a couple of instrumentalists who have had success in dealing with the nasal air leak from the soft palate, but, they were woodwind teachers and the "fix" was not practical on a brass instrument. Long story short, I found the following to help and in my case the leak as not returned:

Open throat with "AAAHHH" is good combined with a slight increase in air speed. When singers get an air leak through the soft palate they can develop a nasal tone. A singing coach on the interwebs suggested testing this by going from an "NG" sound to the "AH" to feel and hear the difference while singing a sustained pitch.

The "lightbulb over the head" moment for me was when I was playing on my mouthpiece at the piano. I use quite a bit of Jimmy Stamp's routines for mouthpiece and practicing on my instrument. Jimmy would remind students to let the buzz be loose, even incorporating air into the sound. While doing my mouthpiece practice I suddenly got a case of the dreaded air leak! I immediately let my aperture get looser and the nasal leak stopped. My theory is that when the aperture is too tight the air has to go somewhere, so ergo it goes up and out the soft palate.

Just a thought.

Matt Varho

[tbdana]

Brass teachers please help!

I teach a very musical student who’s main instrument is French horn, and she also plays piano and violin to a high level. She’s in Year 11 in high school and picked up Trombone to play in the bigband. She’s been playing Trombone around 3 years and has a nice sound, although stuggles with range past high F.

I’ve encountered something I’d never heard of before: her horn teacher (who plays professionally) has said her soft palette is collapsing, probably caused by fatigue, and it is now sometimes appearing only 10-15 minutes into her horn practice causing her embouchure to struggle to hold together and triggering what she described as her gag reflex, or the feeling of needing to throw up.

And while she said it had only been isolated to horn, it was starting to happen in her trombone practice too.

Has anyone encountered anything like this before? My first thought is some sort of accumulated fatigue or tension of the throat, perhaps exacerbated by switching between horn and trombone?

Thanks for your help in advance!

From your description, I'd be concerned with Task Specific Focal Dystonia, specifically embouchure dystonia. Here's a video from a world renowned expert. It is quite academic, but very comprehensive and delivered by an afflicted French horn player and neuroscientist. It might be helpful.

[2bobone]

I've played in an ensemble with someone with the soft palate collapse problem. The problem was apparently relieved with a very complicated dental gizmo that would have to be inserted orally to keep air pressure from entering the nasal passage. A dentist built the device and it seemed to solve the annoyance. If I had the problem I most likely would have switched to be a percussionist !