What's the Big Deal With the Lips of Brass Players?

One of the first and most important things one (hopefully) learns as orchestrator is to avoid writing too many loud, high and long passages on brass instruments. This is especially relevant in scoring sessions as you basically only have a certain amount of "brass power" before the lips of the players will get tired and their playing quality will decrease or they will need to quit playing all together.

A few years ago, I arrived early at the scoring stage to deliver score sheets and pro tools files for a session later that day. However there was still a session going on with another composer who was there. So I sneaked into the booth and waited for his session to end. Supposedly he had planned to record fortissimo brass music for the entire four hour session and the players constantly said that they wouldn't be able to play anymore as their lips were pretty much "gone" but he insisted in doing more takes and complained about them being too sensitive and lazy. Only with the calm persuation by the fixer he could be convinced to trust the players that there's no more useful take to get out of them.

But this incident of course shows that the understanding of why brass players need to be specifically cared for in recording situationsis essential. So why is it so important to be mindful about their playing while string and woodwind players can play an entire session without much fatigue?

The answer lies in the physiology of our body. Practically every movement we make involves several muscles that often share the load of the work but also can compensate for each other.

Imagine the bow movement of the string players right hand. The arm is a hyper complex device with countless muscles. And even the relatively specific movement of the bow involves several muscles. So moving the bow back and forth can be executed with several muscles. Small movements can be executed with the motion of the wrist, medium ones with the elbow and really large ones with the shoulder. All muscles are always involved but depending on what kind of bowing is needed, one or the other takes the main part. If one muscle gets tired, we automatically start to compensate with another. This might not necessarily result in good form but gets the job done. But simply the fact that there's a constant back and forth between different sets of muscles allows a lot of stamina with the execution of these movements.

Similar effects happen with different fingers on different keys of woodwinds, stretching in different ways or the alternation between the thorax muscles and the diaphragm to provide a stream of air.

With brass however, the entire embochoure is reduced to one tiny ring muscle. And in order to play such an instrument, that muscle has to be under relatively high tension. There is no alternative for that muscle and no matter how much you train it, as with all muscles there is a physical limit of how strong a muscle can become. The higher and the louder you need to play, the more tension needs to be put on that small muscle, draining it from energy. Small rests do definitely help to regain some stamina but as with every other muscle, there is a daily limit of how much you can use it before it needs a night of sleep to recover.

There is however another factor at play here that is more important. With the embochoure of the brass it is not like "Let's do one more take to see whether maybe we can squeeze something good out of the players whose lips are already tired." As with every overexhausted muscle, the danger of injury raises tremendously. So if the players play past their physical limits and are unlucky they risk an injury of the muscle. However, this is not like "No problem, wait a few days for it to heal and you're good to go again." In bad cases an injury of muscle tissue can lead to cicatrization of that tissue when it heals. With the brass embochoure being an extremely delicate matter as it needs years and years of practice to control the minute differences of lip tension to trigger exactly the right harmonic, an injured muscle that doesn't heal to exactly the state that it was before the injury means a complete ruining of the player's embochoure to a point where in worst cases, the player will never be able to play again.

That said, these are really worst case scenarios of players going way beyond their physical limit and being extremely unlucky but unfortunately there are enough cases where such things have happened. So any self aware brass player will need to put their own health and future way above the desire or request to "do one more". Players usually have a very clear feeling of when they reach a point where they should stop playing and you should never ever as a composer, orchestrator or client request to push beyond this limit. If your players say that they are done for the day, you need to accept that, even if there is still some session time left. Players will do everything they can to give you the best result they are capable of doing but when the point has come and they say that they are not able to continue playing on that day, you should take this serious and let them go.

Besides, there is no point in pushing them. One of the worst session days I ever had was a 2.5 Session day. Due to a last minute increase in music to record and the studio being booked the following days already, we ended up recording the same musicians for 10 hours that day (9am-1pm, 2pm-6pm, 8pm-10pm). We moved all the unimportant cues towards the very last session and I kept asking whether the brass players were still good to go and they all said that they would make it to the end but the last few takes were literally unusable from the brass players. So I'm not sure whether they pushed beyond their limit to not dissapoint or whether this was still "within limits". But really, the last 2 hours were mostly a waste of time from the brass point of view.

Having said that, it is also physically draining for the players to create the necessary air pressure from the diaphragm but in most cases, the lips get tired first.

So it is essential to be aware of these limitations and think for your musicians when you write music and plan a scoring session. It also shows understanding and will earn you some respect by the players if you display understanding for their situation. Asking "Brass, are you good to do one more take?" after a brass heavy take will show them that you understand the physical strain that they are under and eventually motivate them to deliver even better results.