When it comes to Sax sound, i have a checklist in this order

1 I never play my sax without brushing my teeth first – stops blowing food particles into the sax and sticking to the inside, causing the sax to sound dull, also clean teeth resonate better as the sound also reflects through teeth and bones in the skull, and improves hearing while you play

2 clean excess wax from my ears every day as it builds up very quickly – otherwise hearing is impaired. As an example, in my youth i hardly ever cleared out excess wax, went swimming one day, and went deaf in one ear, and discovered it was due to excess wax blocking my hearing.

3 if you play an hour every day for 3 or 4 yrs, i don’t care what anyone says, get your sax serviced (ie thoroughly cleaned) you will be surprised in noticing the difference in sound when you get it back.

4 detective work starts assuming you have no air leaks

5 Your Set up is now the main area to focus on.

6 Choose your favourite song, and don’t pick a depressing song, you need to be hearing something in a clear positive way, middle of the road, not too excitable and not funeral sounding. So as to listen over a normal range of sounds.

7 Go through all your reeds and try each one until you find the nicest one that sounds ok, when you play your favourite song. At this stage you are ruling out krappy reeds.

8 Using your best reed, and the same song (ie keeping everything constant), now go through testing each mouth piece playing the same song. This is the difficult bit, i would insist on someone joins you and get them to listen to each mouthpiece and get their feedback.
What you hear, and what someone else hears is completely different.
If you cant do that, then record each mouthpiece for a few minutes, and upload it for someone to listen to.

The reason why this is important, i went through this process with a pro, listening to each mouthpiece. Against my better judgement he picked a mouthpiece that i didn’t like the sound of, whereas i prefered the sound of a different mouthpiece. So i picked the mouthpiece he picked, and guess what within a couple of weeks the tonal sound improved and i stuck with that mouthpiece ever since. So that goes to prove that when trying out mouthpieces it may not be the best sounding one at that moment in time will develop into the perfect mouthpiece.

9. If you move to a new mouth piece, then stick with it for at least a month, and DONT mess about swapping mouthpieces around. It takes several weeks, for your embouchure to adjust to playing pitches perfectly with a new mouthpiece and getting your mouth used to slight variations in design – which is all related to slight differences in air pressure supply and lip pressure varying from mouthpiece to mouthpiece.

10. last but least, the ligature. You can try out various ligature now, and pick the one that enhances the mouthpiece tone the best.
Also bear in mind, how you position the reed on the ligature.
Is the reed too far forward or too far backward? All these positions will mess up your sound pitch wise.
I’m at the stage now, where i can hear, the reed is not positioned right on my mouth piece when i play, certain pitches sound offkey, and i’m not hearing the pitches clearly.

11 When you find the right setup, lockup all your mouthpieces and ligatures, sell them or if you keep them, then throw away the key.

messing about with lots of mouthpieces opens PANDORA’S BOX, and salesmen will rub their hands with glee

that my 2 pence worth

You beaut Gents! 🙂 Letz rock this joint.

Good show, spiffing, thanking you kindly @walley the Force is with you!
spin a chicken dinner, Rocket 88

somethang 4 everyone here ;

pardon me if i digress …
…..

It’s a fact, synthetic reeds have improved in the last few years, and traditional reeds will become obsolete as plant materials become scarcer.

Believe it or not, in 50 yrs time, electronic sax’s will play better than todays selmer’s and play perfectly every time, just like a keyboard, no problem reeds etc… and our sax’s will be historical pieces of junk abandoned by a more modern generation.

In fact electronic sax’s in the future will be able to read any music sheet and play just like the old masters, newer instruments will come into being, that can play what you imagine in your head perfectly.

The music genius’s of the future will be the ones with the best imagination, and we’ll be sitting around in a trance, controlling everything with our minds. Controlling robots with our brain waves to carry out manual work. Stone age man has no place in the future.

gaze into my crystal ball…..yawn

#WalleysBelieveItOrNot 🙂