How to get rid of squeeking

[Anonymous]

Ok – to cut a long story short, i started being taught the blues several weeks ago. And in my case
i have been using a classical mouthpiece, so last week my teacher suggested moving onto a brighter mouthpiece.
So i got the Theo wanne blue art Durga 3 mouthpiece size 7 back out and started using it all of last week.
Squeak squeak squeak etc…

So i had my usual Monday morning lesson, and said to him, well i’ve tried the mouthpiece for a week and
its squeaking all the time, so we spent a whole half hour lesson just on this problem.
He gave me some exercise and i made some notes to go with the exercise that i put in drop box.

The music sheet
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qjsf45zoghamxv6/Tuning%20Exercise%20-%20Sheet.pdf?dl=0
and the notes for the music sheet
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3jeahb368ehk4lb/Tuning%20Exercise%20-%20notes.pdf?dl=0

He’s told me this will clear up the sqeaking, and will get me playing in tune
for this type of mouthpiece and could possibly take me several weeks to
develop the correct embouchure. So I’m back to square learning a new embouchure
all over again . ( the joys or horrors of messing about with different mouthpieces)

enjoy

[Marc]

Hi… larger opening mouthpieces are prone to squeaking with soft reeds. A stronger reed could help you minimizing those glitches, at the cost of more lip pressure and a stronger breath support. My teacher does not recommeng going higher in MP/reed unless a firm, solid embouchure has been developed.

[Anonymous]

@Marc – i had a lesson with my teacher, and he shuwed me where i should have the mouthpiece on the neck – otherwise i will never be able to play the high notes in tune regardless of reed choice (the high notes will always be sharp) and the low notes will never be in tune, the only notes on tune will be in the middle register of the sax.

The common misconception is to move the mouthpiece in and out to
tune the sax – which does work but it means you’ll never have all 3 registers in tune – to get all 3 registers in tune see the dropbox.

So now that i have the mouthpiece in the correct place, i am now out of tune, so the exercises given to me will change my embouchure to work with this new mouth position.

This means when i get my embouchure sorted, all 3 registers will be in tune when i play the sax, and at the same time it will get rid of the squeeking which has nothing to do with the reed – according to my teacher.

I now understand why a lot of uploads on here are always playing too sharp on the high notes and squeeking.

[Author]

Posts