The Way to a Beautiful Tone
This is the most important technique you can learn to start developing a big, beautiful sax sound, or even a mean and nasty one if that’s what you like! It’s the proper way to breathe air into your horn.
Some call it diaphragm breathing or something like that and singers use this same technique (yes, it will help you sing better to!) The change has to come from you. Literally from deep inside of you. The most important thing for getting a nice, big, full tone coming out of your sax starts from where your air is coming from… and that’s your diaphragm/upper stomach area
diaphram-for-sax-breathing
Think of it as pushing the air from your stomach… when you do this, put your hand on your upper stomach. You’ll feel it pushing out. This is the only part of you that should be moving while the air is being pushed out. Don’t worry, you won’t look like a robot every time you play your sax cause eventually this technique will be 2nd nature and you’ll do it properly AND move around at the same time… I do!
Getting a good saxophone sound depends entirely on mastering this breathing technique. Practice while playing your sax and also try it without the sax until it comes naturally.
Beginners always do the exact opposite of what is the proper way…
When someone is asked to blow into a sax they automatically blow air from their upper chest/throat area and it sounds week and wavers. The air supply from here is not strong enough to properly fill the sax with the right amount of air. So, practice by putting your hand on the upper part of your stomach and blow long, slow and hard breathes.
You can feel this with your hand, and you can push your hand down against your stomach to really feel how this works. No air should be coming from your throat. Your throat is merely a tube or channel for this strong, deep down diaphragm air to pass through.
As your technique for doing this improves, so will your tone. Don’t worry, if you work on it a little each day it won’t take very long and before you know it you’ll be doing the technique %100 right and not even thinking about it anymore and your tone will be nice and more in tune than ever!
This stuff seems like a lot of work and you gotta hit it a bit each day, but when you start to notice and feel a difference and then other people tell you “hey, you sound better than last time I heard you”… well, then it’s all worth it!