Can't get a stable embouchure

[Anonymous]

Hi William. Try holding the MP with your teeth touching the reed. Then drop your lower jaw a little to form a gap and roll your lip back to have your lip between your teeth and reed. I found I had to play for many months before the correct position became ‘normal and automatic’ to me. You may also be pressing with your lip too hard. Make sure you don’t have the weight of your sax pressing down on your mouth, because it is too low on your strap. They say that the MP should touch your upper lip as it moves into your mouth. I try to just seal the MP with my lips, too much lip pressure on the reed kills the volume and character of your tone.

[William Baldwin]

Hi guys, thanks for your suggestions.
It’s alto sax, not tenor. I want to believe that a mouthpiece will solve my problems, but it’s not that I can’t get the sound I want, it’s the fact that I can’t get it reliably, because my embouchure changes while I’m playing.

[brother cavefish]

you would be surprised what different MPs and reeds do, anyway good luck

[William Baldwin]

As I mentioned earlier, I already tried a lot of different mouthpieces and reeds, without success. But I’d be prepared to give it another go, if I knew what I was looking for.

My understanding is that MPs vary in several different respects: the tip opening, the facing curve, the baffle and chamber, and the external shape all play a part. If someone was able to tell me, OK sounds like you need a shorter facing combined with a more bulbous external shape, then I could go looking for that. But at the moment I have no idea where to start.

[Anonymous]

Visit a Sax Teacher, it’ll take you less than 15 mins to establish a correct embouchure, then revisit your sax teacher a month later, to recheck your embouchure, it is so easy to slip back into the wrong embouchure weeks later (been there got the tea shirt).

Just start out with a basic mouthpiece (yamaha 4c will do), and any soft reed size 1 etc..

Embouchure is embouchure it has nothing to do with mouthpieces, it’s to do with muscles around your mouth, lips. Run your finger round your mouth now, if you haven’t played a wind instrument before, all the muscles around your mouth you can feel, need to be strengthened. The only way to develop those muscles around your lips is by PRACTICING every day.

The reason for using a yamaha 4c or similar mouthpiece, is not to get a great sounding tone (because it wont), it’s to strengthen those mouth muscles, as well as play in tune. When those muscles have strengthened months later, then start looking at a better mouthpiece just to improve the intonation using roughly the same reed strength.

If you play for over an hour, your lip muscles will get tired (if you don’t believe me see how long you can smile at someone before your mouth gets tired), STOP playing and start the next day. OTHERWISE you will resort to using your bottom teeth to support your lips to get the same sound out of the mouthpiece, and this will only give you SORE lips. It’s a complete and total waste of time exercising tired muscles, they need time to recover.

If you have the correct embouchure, then test this out – relax your mouth, just breathe out like you normally breath out, but breath out into the mouthpiece (don’t blow air into the mouthpiece, just breathe out instead ), you should hear the loud sound of air going evenly down and out through the sax, if that’s not the case, your embouchure is completely wrong. See a sax teacher now, as you are stuffed.

That relaxed way, is how you should be playing the sax, when those mouth muscles get stronger, Then you get more control of playing the mouthpiece consistently. So that every next day you play the mouthpiece, it doesn’t sound different on different days.

if you have to play with some material in your mouth to protect your lips, a sax teacher will tell you straight away you have the wrong embouchure, the embouchure in that case is preventing you from developing those muscles around your lips.

If you have to play for hours and hours, lip muscles (ie your embouchure) will get tired, then you will start using those bottom teeth to keep the bottom lip firm, only resulting in a sore bottom lip. However the more you practice, the stronger those lip muscles will get over time, and eventually you should rarely be getting sore lips

have fun, welcome to the sore lip club

[saxomonica]

Yo @sxpoet – thanking you most kindly on all accounts for your usual diligent insight & exemplary clarification for us, cheers 🙂
To lovely!

Dos moi pou sto kai ten gen kineso (Gr.), give me where to stand and i will move the earth [attributed to Archimedes].

[john]

yes some good advice from sxpoet!

[William Baldwin]

OK, thanks very much everyone. I think I will follow sxpoet’s advice and see how it works out.

[brother cavefish]

well all advice is profitable, but i would still study how MP,s are made, what baffles do or dont do, how scooped rails work, open /closed throats , how long and short tables work—–in this case it will help one learn how certain music is produced,,, for me i am mechanical so i studied the aspects, of things that interested me, when it came time to buy something or make something ,i had a working knowledge of things, in this case -airflow, redirection/restriction and freedom…
for example i used to make NAF flutes , i studied how they work –made my own, —–most anything in life works this way, for me

[William Baldwin]

If the tutor tells me I need a different mouthpiece or reed, I will definitely listen. But I don’t think I’m going to try to become an expert in that area. Thanks for your help, anyway.

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