embouchure

[john]

Hi Johnny , as an absolute beginner i’ve been practising for 2 months now, and finally got the embouchure sorted out so i’m not biting down etc.. how long does it take for the muscles around the mouth to get strong enough so you can play for several hours?
I’ve been playing acoustic guitar for over 40 years & if i stop playing for several weeks, finger technique goes downhill & muscles become flabby – does this happen to you if put the sax down for long periods ie the embouchure?

[Michael]

I think everyone is different and we really can’t put a set time on how long this may take. One thing to remember is that quality practices and consistent practices are far more important than quantity. I”ve been playing for 8 months and even now, when going through a warm up routine, the muscles in my mouth are a little tight at first. In the beginning, when I first started learning Johnny’s ebook, I wanted to play for hours on end, just because I was having so much fun LOL But these longs practices can wear you down and then the next day we’re too tired to pick up our saxphones. And when we do it’s not there mentally, this actually just happened to me recently–having fun and loosing track of time 🙂 For me, I keep practices at about 1 hour-to-1 1/2 hour and that’s about right for me.; but I’m practicing 5-6 days a week.
The muscles in our mouth are like any other muscle in our bodies. There’s a fine line between too much and too little. You bet the same thing will happen to your embouchure like you talk about here (what would happen to a jogger if he stopped jogging for a couple of weeks?) It’s all part of the learning process.

[john]

Also, at first, and after playing for too long we can experience cuts or sores on the inside bottom lip. This comes from excessive friction from the bottom teeth, much like guitarists wearing down their fingers after too much playing and developing a callus. Two months is nothing, keep at it and be patient.

[john]

Thanks Johnny – i spend about 1 hour a day doing the scales, triplets, quarter notes in your 1st book – Thanks for finding the time to create it!! Then i spend the next hour working on stuff that my tutor has set. When i was in my teens i used to find scales on the piano the most boring thing to do, mainly because with the piano, you play perfect notes everytime, whereas with the Sax it is more challenging because some notes are perfect and some are too flat or too sharp. So you need a good ear and a tuner to help with pitch variations. The alternative is recording and playing back and listening. One thing that amazes me is that although i find timing with the guitar is easy even at very fast speeds on the sax i can only get up to between 74 & 84 on the metronome which to me is half as slow as on the guitar – still thats to do with experience

[john]

thanks for your feedback baboon! i have experienced similar things that you have commented on! At my age my aim is just to be able to enjoy having a go at playing some of the pieces johnny has created backing tracks for. but i’m not quite ready for them yet!! lol

[john]

The sax is a beast that needs to be tamed! While it’s true that anyone can play a scale on a piano and all the notes will sound nice and even and in tune, a saxophone has the ability to be loud and raunchy to soft and sexy unlike any other instrument. To be able to do this requires a lot of work to be able to control these things that you are talking about. We all know that’s it’s worth it though so just keep at it. Those simple exercises in my book are very important and so are scales and long tones and octave exercises. It’s these simple things that will give you the biggest bank for your time in developing a nice tone.

[john]

thanks Johnny!

[john]

Hi Johnny – i remember back in early January asking how long it would take before i could play for longer periods. Back in Jan my lower lip used to turn to jelly after half an hour. Now i can play for several hours so the muscles must be firming up now! I’m still using your e-book scales exercises and find them very helpful!! I’ve also started doing overtones exercises from low Bb to Low D and can play up to 2 octaves above for each one, these really seem to improve the overall playing tone or i could just be imaging it? The best thing is i can remember the first few weeks of Sax playing i couldn’t play 2 bars without being completely out of breath (taking into account i am 56 and not a young whipper snapper lol) now i can do loads more on one breath – so the Sax must have some extra benifits!!

[john]

yes, absolutely! When played with strong air support there is a lot of physical benefits from it. As for the overtones, yes, this is very beneficial to improve overall tone because you’re using different muscles and are blowing differently. This is one of the key parts involved in mastering the altissimo register which is the course I am actually working on now.

[john]

excellent! Thanks for your feed back! Look forward to your Altissimo output!

[Author]

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