Student Sax’s are designed for kids under the age of 11 years old to be able to play, as their lungs aren’t as large as a full grown adult, so they are a lot lot easier to blow.

The problem with wind instruments if you want to play very high notes, you need to get the air moving very fast through the instrument, this involves blowing faster and also running out of air a lot quicker.

The opposite is true for very low notes you need to get the air moving a lot slower through the instrument, this also involves running out of air a lot quicker and needs more stomach control and playing more relaxed.

That’s why the mid range on wind instruments is easier to play in terms of blowing power and not running out of air very quickly, which are usually the first notes you learn to master.

it’s down to physics, the larger the diameter of a pipe, means you you have to put a larger volume of air or water through the pipe, combine that with higher frequency notes need a faster flow of air whereas lower frequency notes need a slower flow of air. So the size of your lungs and mouth cavity determines how much air you can provide and how longer before you run out of air and also how much air pressure you can keep up.

Circular breathing is very bad for your lungs, as you are not emptying your lungs properly and refilling it with fresh air, you end up starving your blood supply of fresh oxygen which it takes from the lungs. With circular breathing a larger volume of stale air is sitting in your lungs for longer periods.

the student sax is harder to play altissimo notes and harder to get a good strong sound not because of the materials its made out of but because of the way the Sax is designed to work with less air.

Similarly a Pro sax is designed to use a lot more air, and the change in design makes it easier to play altissimo and get really fuller sounds, but this makes it harder for young kids to start blowing.

Because you cant change the diameter of the sax when blowing to alter the air speeds and volume of air going through the sax, this is where difference in mouthpiece designs come into play. A low numbered mouthpiece is easier to blow through compared to a higher numbered mouthpiece, again the difference in mouthpiece will make a difference in air speed and volume of air going through the sax, this will make it easier or harder to play altissimo notes and get a fuller sound.

Another example, is if you take in more mouthpiece, this opens your mouth more and provides a larger cavity of air in your mouth to force through the sax, this will give a lot stronger sound compared to a thinner sound.

My mistake was i bought an intermediate sax to learn on, which is identical to a pro sax in terms of blowing power, because of the sax design, so i couldn’t blow a note for a count of 4 beats when i started out, However 6 months later i could start hitting altissimo G because of the sax design and my lungs had got used to blowing, now i can blow four bars/measures in one breath.

Mouthpieces are crazy, the main thing is when your lungs, embouchure and stomach control changes and improves with practice then you definitely need to move up a mouthpiece size. This is the disadvantage of not practicing every day.

The problem with changing the mouthpiece design instead of going up a mouthpiece size opens a different can of worms as you don’t know what air speed and air volume they work with so you could end up going either up or down a mouthpiece size, can be costly.

The most import thing from the start is decide whether you want to play classical music or rock music as this determines the mouthpiece design. A professional classical sax player wont be able to play a non classical mouthpiece as well as a professional rock player straight away.

then the problem gets even more complicated – Reeds vary from soft to hard, they control the vibrations in the air movement, the harder the reed the easier it gets to play altissimo. The harder the reed, makes it harder to blow and turns your lips into jelly a lot faster. the harder the reed gives you a stronger sound. You can only go so far up in reed sizes, but as you improve, you definitely need to move up a reed size.

Ligatures, in my opinion make a slight difference to the timbre sound, i might be wrong but i think they can dampen a tone or make a difference in how clear or how mellow or how punchy the sound is. ligatures alter how loose the reed hugs the mouth piece, a metallic ligature will sound tonally different to leather reed as they affect how the reed vibrates.

This is the reason where a poor setup (you cant blame the sax) will make you sound awful. This is the reason why when i listened to various sax students some sounded awful and some sounded great (nothing to do with long tones practice) – and believe it or not, each student was playing in tune with a tuner (the bad sound was not due to playing out of tune ).

Some people argue, because the sax doesn’t play any note in tune which is true, that you need a good tonal ear otherwise you’ll never play properly in tune? There is some truth in that, because if you play a recorder, all the notes are in tune as its not a conical pipe shape.

dont we just love controlling the sax beast?