a tip to play louder

[Anonymous]

I recently discovered this by accident.

Have a look at this photo of an alto guardala mouthpiece,
similar to mine.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/dave_guardala_alto_sax_king_si_mouthpiece.htm

look closely at this mouthpiece and you will see it comes with a thick hard plastic patch, which is sunk in the mouthpiece surface. So unlike other mouthpieces, there is no need to buy mouthpiece patches.

recently my hard plastic patch fell out of the socket on my mouthpiece. So i ended up with a mouthpiece with a sunken rectangle, unable to get hold of a replacement hard plastic patch to fit exactly in the sunken rectangle socket.

I decided to cut a rectangle out of one of my old reeds, with a razor blade, in the same shape as the old hard rubber patch, and use that as a replacement patch.

The trouble is i couldn’t cut the reed replacement patch as thin as the old hard rubber patch, so it was twice as thick.

As it was a temporary patch made out of an old reed, to use before getting a replacement, i didn’t want to glue it into the mouthpiece socket, as you would have to get a knife to dig it out of the mouthpiece socket, and end up scratching the mouthpiece.

So what i did was put the reed patch in the mouthpiece socket, and then i put a normal sticky clear patch on top of it to hold it in place.

This is the discovery i made, i started playing louder!!! clearer and more responsive .

I showed it to my teacher and the first thing he said when he looked at it, was that the overall patch surface was too high above the mouthpiece surface, i’d actually raised the height by a millimetre.

Normal sticky patches are very thin.

So what i’ve done by accident, is forced myself to play with my mouth more open than normal at least a millimetre more open than before , resulting in a larger volume of air hitting the reed than normal
Result – louder playing, even louder altissimo as more air is going into the mouthpiece.

So rather than taking in more mouthpiece, just stick five or six sticky patches one on top of each other, will force you to play with your mouth open more, and allow more air to hit the reed.

[Anonymous]

or in my case, place an old cut down reed on top of the mouthpiece and hold it in place with a clear sticky patch. This will allow you to play with a more open mouth.

[john]

awesome discovery Walley! makes sense. people are always saying to open up your embouchure and throat cavity but it’s not always an easy thing to do and keep up.

as for the filling in the hole, that happened to me as well. many years ago I lost the filling there and phoned Dave Guardala to see if I could get something to replace it. He told me to get some denture powder and do it myself cause that’s what he used! Said it was the hardest material he found that he could work with…also why his original mp’s are that pinky denture color there.

I went to my dentist and he gave me a small bottle of it and I’ve been replacing it with that for over 20 years (yes I always wear it down every year or so)

[saxomonica]

aha! ya that’s very interestin’ guys ‘n well worth a swing, thanking you @Walley

Sings Mental As Anything, “The Nips are Getting Bigger”.
🙂

Hot stuff …

Hot Cha / flip side of Shotgun :

[RockinRobin]

Sound was a dud today. I went through all my mouthpieces and reeds and ligatures. Still a dud. I put my teeth on the mouthpieces etc just like Johnny shows in his educational video. I finally ended with a Van Gogh lig and carbon fat boy mouthpiece and medium soft oxycarbon and all the wind I could muster. Every three notes I had to take in more air. Not a good day for horn blowing.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you need oxygen! I’d get it checked out. Either that, or your horns had a knock and is leaking somewhere.

[saxomonica]

Crikey mate i hope you’re ok? Hoping it’s just a flu or cold or as @walley says a bad sax leak.
Let us know if you’re feeling better soon, William..
Don’t stop the music.

[Author]

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