Sound

[RockinRobin]

My sound is no good. Sometimes/often the sound is stuffy. Hard to explain. I suppose I need a hands on teacher. I’m using fiber carbon reeds and onyx reeds, medium and medium soft, mouth pieces 7* and 8 and fat boy. I don’t get that sax sound lately

[Keith Davidson]

Some info would help, how long have you been playing, is your sax new, has it been checked by a tech?

Learning to play sax definitely requires a teacher.

Proper embrochure, air support (diaphragm), reed placement with a strength reed suited to your ability, and a suitable mouthpiece are necessary first steps.

Practice long tones and learn to play your major scales with good tone will help to get you started

[Anonymous]

When it comes to Sax sound, i have a checklist in this order

1 I never play my sax without brushing my teeth first – stops blowing food particles into the sax and sticking to the inside, causing the sax to sound dull, also clean teeth resonate better as the sound also reflects through teeth and bones in the skull, and improves hearing while you play

2 clean excess wax from my ears every day as it builds up very quickly – otherwise hearing is impaired. As an example, in my youth i hardly ever cleared out excess wax, went swimming one day, and went deaf in one ear, and discovered it was due to excess wax blocking my hearing.

3 if you play an hour every day for 3 or 4 yrs, i don’t care what anyone says, get your sax serviced (ie thoroughly cleaned) you will be surprised in noticing the difference in sound when you get it back.

4 detective work starts assuming you have no air leaks

5 Your Set up is now the main area to focus on.

6 Choose your favourite song, and don’t pick a depressing song, you need to be hearing something in a clear positive way, middle of the road, not too excitable and not funeral sounding. So as to listen over a normal range of sounds.

7 Go through all your reeds and try each one until you find the nicest one that sounds ok, when you play your favourite song. At this stage you are ruling out krappy reeds.

8 Using your best reed, and the same song (ie keeping everything constant), now go through testing each mouth piece playing the same song. This is the difficult bit, i would insist on someone joins you and get them to listen to each mouthpiece and get their feedback.
What you hear, and what someone else hears is completely different.
If you cant do that, then record each mouthpiece for a few minutes, and upload it for someone to listen to.

The reason why this is important, i went through this process with a pro, listening to each mouthpiece. Against my better judgement he picked a mouthpiece that i didn’t like the sound of, whereas i prefered the sound of a different mouthpiece. So i picked the mouthpiece he picked, and guess what within a couple of weeks the tonal sound improved and i stuck with that mouthpiece ever since. So that goes to prove that when trying out mouthpieces it may not be the best sounding one at that moment in time will develop into the perfect mouthpiece.

9. If you move to a new mouth piece, then stick with it for at least a month, and DONT mess about swapping mouthpieces around. It takes several weeks, for your embouchure to adjust to playing pitches perfectly with a new mouthpiece and getting your mouth used to slight variations in design – which is all related to slight differences in air pressure supply and lip pressure varying from mouthpiece to mouthpiece.

10. last but least, the ligature. You can try out various ligature now, and pick the one that enhances the mouthpiece tone the best.
Also bear in mind, how you position the reed on the ligature.
Is the reed too far forward or too far backward? All these positions will mess up your sound pitch wise.
I’m at the stage now, where i can hear, the reed is not positioned right on my mouth piece when i play, certain pitches sound offkey, and i’m not hearing the pitches clearly.

11 When you find the right setup, lockup all your mouthpieces and ligatures, sell them or if you keep them, then throw away the key.

messing about with lots of mouthpieces opens PANDORA’S BOX, and salesmen will rub their hands with glee

that my 2 pence worth

[Anonymous]

There is one other thing i can add.

Ligature position, there are 3 positions on a mouthpiece to site your ligature on your mouthpiece.

You can position the ligature closer to your mouth, or further away from your mouth or somewhere in the middle of these 2 positions,
trust me there is a difference. It depends on whether you want to play a classical Gig or a Rock gig – there is slight difference, and a lot pro’s do this if they forgot to pack both a classical sounding mouth piece and a Rock sounding mouthpiece.

But this shouldn’t be used as an indicator to which ever mouthpiece you settle on, as it applies to all mouthpieces.

If you want to sound nice, play in the bath room, if you want to record nice, record in a room with lots of furniture, beds, carpets.
Stay away from water when using electric equipment.

Regular Exercise – helps stamina in playing
…

the list goes on, join JF’s website, live long and prosper

[saxomonica]

You beaut Gents! 🙂 Letz rock this joint.

Good show, spiffing, thanking you kindly @walley the Force is with you!
spin a chicken dinner, Rocket 88

somethang 4 everyone here ;

pardon me if i digress …
…..

[saxomonica]

Ya @William check out comments at bottom of this vid being below pertaining to synthetic reeds

Gentleman was kind enough to share, wipe reed with coconut oil after playing

And tune your reed with emery paper – wipe once with sandpaper then to play and listen

i’m sure with @walleys insights you gonna be howling – let us know!
good stuff
cheers

adysaxman77
20 hours ago
Thanks Mark! I couldn’t ever go back to cane reeds, you maybe get 2 decent reeds out of a 10 pack, and they never seem to play the same. I’ve been blowing this BARI plastic reed for about 3 years now, and I tailor made it by rubbing a hard to medium reed on the finest wet & dry sanding paper, (1 rub, and try the reed each time after) and I can honestly say it’s the best reed I’ve ever blown! Altissimo to low Bb with ease, no wetting the reed, I can’t recommend it enough. All I do is clean it with a wipe of coconut oil and it brings it up like new every time!

[Anonymous]

It’s a fact, synthetic reeds have improved in the last few years, and traditional reeds will become obsolete as plant materials become scarcer.

Believe it or not, in 50 yrs time, electronic sax’s will play better than todays selmer’s and play perfectly every time, just like a keyboard, no problem reeds etc… and our sax’s will be historical pieces of junk abandoned by a more modern generation.

In fact electronic sax’s in the future will be able to read any music sheet and play just like the old masters, newer instruments will come into being, that can play what you imagine in your head perfectly.

The music genius’s of the future will be the ones with the best imagination, and we’ll be sitting around in a trance, controlling everything with our minds. Controlling robots with our brain waves to carry out manual work. Stone age man has no place in the future.

gaze into my crystal ball…..yawn

[RockinRobin]

Thanks for all the info guys. I solved my sound problem. I used a fiber carbon reed recommended by Johnny, and my mouthpiece today is a theo wanne slant sig 2, tip opening 7* and enlighten ligature. In the past I was using a carbon Onyx reed but today the carbon reed had a nice buzz https://www.howtoplaysaxophone.org/product/carbon-tenor/

[saxomonica]

#WalleysBelieveItOrNot 🙂

[Anonymous]

@saxomonica – and in a couple of hundred years from now, when you reach the age of 18, you’ll have the choice of having your brain removed and inserted in one of those robots – then you will live forever, and you will be able to space travel anywhere in the universe, and live in the most hostile radioactive planets.

There is no reason not to insert a human brain in a robots body, technology will advance to make this possible. In fact aliens probably already have the technology to do this, and have their brains attached to a space craft, which is the same principal as inserting it in a robots body. So visiting Alien space crafts only need to be large enough to accommodate their brains with life support machines.

In fact gazing further into my Crystal ball, you’ll be able to post your brain to another planet, and on arrival, have it inserted into the robot body of your choice, no problems if you want to change gender …. lol

[Author]

Posts