Mouth on the Mouthpiece

[john]

wow this post went in a weird direction!….
but getting back to Williams original question…

there’s a great experiment you should do regarding how far up to place your teeth.
this is really important cause the further we can go the bigger our sound can potentially be.
so the experiment, or practice exercise is to start where you normally do, then go up as much as you can until you don’t have any more control over your sound. at this point roll back just a tad until you do.
If you do this regularly you should eventually feel comfortable at a point that is higher than when you originally started, and then, you will have probably improved your sound. This doesn’t happen overnight so try doing it for a few weeks at least.
when I was young my great teacher taught me this and it really worked.

[Michael]

What Johnny is saying is the same thing my local Sax instructor had told me. For me, the ‘sweet spot’ was always where the curvature of the MP facing length comes in contact with the reed–it’s right at that point where I put my top teeth, use my bottom lip as a cushion and create a seal around the MP with the sides/corners of my lips. Any more than that, it felt like I had too much of the MP in my mouth. If I had less of the MP in my mouth, I couldn’t get enough air into it.

[Author]

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