3 Embouchure Mistakes to Avoid on the Saxophone

when it comes to producing a great saxophone sound you want to keep in mind there are three main components that have to work in balance in order for the whole machine to work in order for the saxophone to work and these are your ambition the diaphragm and the throat today we're talking about the ambusher and the three most common mistakes that students take to make when it comes to sound and what you can do to have a better sound and more relaxed and essentially sound better without having to put that extra physical effort into it so you ready let's get started hey martino here at the london saxophone school bringing you new tutorials every week on how to improve your saxophone skills and become a better musician I run the London saxophone School in London where we do classes ensembles workshops events concerts so if you're new to the channel I wanna see more online content just consider subscribing and hit the little yeah I've taught thousands of students over the years out of which hundreds are beginner and intermediate players and I've noticed how these players tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over when it comes to ambusher and when it comes to producing a great sound and actually they're struggling recognizing when they are hitting that sweet spot so today we're talking about these three main things that are the most common things the first mistake that I've seen students is related to the amount of mouthpiece that you have in your mouth you want to know something depending on where you put your mouth on the mouthpiece you're gonna get a different sound so the way I teach this is you want to be able to tell and to know what sound you get depending on where you put the mouth let me explain it let's do it together so we gotta know the extremes we got a note what happens what sound you get in the whole register of the mouthpiece so let's do this together try playing at the very very tip of the mouthpiece and see what sound you get you do it first and then I'll do it so your turn okay and now I'll try I'm gonna play the very tip very tip okay so that's one that's one extreme now let's go all the way in so everything in your mouth all the mouthpiece in your mouth you do it first and then I'll do it your turn excellent and now my turn so everything in okay so knowing this we know that here at the tip we have no sound or very weak sound and here we have a sound but it's pretty scratchy horrible harsh this just doesn't work okay so now that you know the extremes your brain will go like okay here doesn't work here doesn't worry let's go let's go halfway between the two so now go rock it's it's not halfway it's more like two thirds in just and just play sorry your turn first excellent and now my turn and that works okay so remember you want to know the extremes you want to know what happens at the tip and you want to know what happens if you have the whole mouthpiece in your mouth because then the brain will process that and in a different deeper way and then when you go to the sweet spot you you just have to fine-tune that and you get the perfect sound now the second thing that happens a lot with students is related to the amount of pressure from your lips to the mouthpiece there's basically two things that can happen you either are doing too much with your lips or you're doing too little and the aim here is to find the right balance between the two things let's look at both so if you're doing too much this is what happens I'm gonna play a long note and then I'm gonna start to squeeze my muscles over here and see the sound that I get okay so in this case I have my beautiful note coming out and then as soon as it starts squeezing with my muscles you know there's less air going through the horn so there's less sound coming out check this out pretend this is the mouthpiece and this is the reed okay and this is my mouth can you see me okay so when I produce a normal note I have the right amount of pressure for my lips so everything works and it flows as soon as I started start to put more pressure extra pressure from my lips here what happens I reduced the amount of space here right so the reed kind of gas goes up a little bit and I have less space for air to go through and that's when I get that weird strangled sound it's like now don't laugh but what happens if you take your hands and you start pressing against your field and then just then you try to talk again a different voice and it actually kind of hurts but it's the same principle you know if you apply pressure here there's less air going through so you have less voice here the same thing if you apply too much pressure from your lips you're gonna get less sound in your horn okay on the other hand if you ambushers to lose let's see what happens so you need some kind of tension some kind of pressure to put the rediem vibration okay if there's not if there's no pressure on the reed then there's nothing nothing's gonna happen so as soon as you drop this you start to have your pitch going down don't you get nothing okay so if your sound if your intonation is pretty wobbly and if your notes are sounding really weird they it's might be because your ambusher is not tensing enough now the third thing that we're gonna talk about is related to the chin chin pressure in chin position if you take a look at these pictures from my students you can see that they actually do something like this okay they play like this you'll see how much I'm doing my chin over here okay that is a common thing that happens with the beginner is some intermediate students as well and so we need to bring this down in order for the reed to vibrate everything we've seen so far is about letting the reed vibrates if you put too much tension when we're one way or the other either with here or too much pressure from the lips then the reader is gonna say you know what I don't like that and then it won't bite great property and will give you a good sound firstly I need to ask you something are you able to do this kind of movement here put it down in the comments if you want to so I can actually actually know and help you out so if you are able to do that awesome next time you play be sure to bring this a little bit lower okay but what happens if you're not able to do that and there's two ways that I teach this firstly bite your lip and then bring this up and down okay if that is too hard we can do this bite your lip then squeeze your chin and then with your finger pull it down this is what I mean hmm as you pull it down with your finger you're still trying to resist the movement of the finger so this is basically still engaged and that is only to increase awareness of the brain so those are the two ways you can you can do that to to learn that because once you once this is a little bit lower and a bit more relaxed the reed would have more space to vibrate it's like asking a drummer check it out if you ask the drummer go like mr. drummer can you play can you crush the cymbal I mean the drummer goes like yeah sure but there's a little trick you put a little blanket on top of that symbol and and you you ask the drummer to play it but because they had there's the blanket on the cymbal the drummer won't be able to have a full sound as soon as you take the blanket half way out or half way or halfway off or all the way off then the cymbal will actually be able to vibrate again same thing here if you do this you know it's like having is like playing with a blanket on top of the simple as soon as you take off the blanket and you bring this down then the reed will be able to vibrate properly now everything we talked about it's all about letting the reed vibrate freely if there's anything blocking the air going through the horn then you're basically gonna be reducing the amount of space between the real and the and the mouthpiece so there's gonna be less air going through which translates into having into you having less sound remember the ambusher is just a pure point of contact between you and the sax and this okay that's it okay so you just want to let the air that you're producing go into the horn freely without any kind of obstacle if you want to see more videos on how to play with a great sound check out this video here on how to play with an open thrill which is a really important component of sound production and also you can watch this video here all on ambusher basics of the day what is your main problem when it comes to ambusher what have you tried what how have you corrected it have you succeeded are you having any troubles with specific notes let me know in the comments below and I'll give you tips on how to fix that also you can join our private Facebook group call saxophone masters what I'll be there personally replying to you to comment so you're free to post comments questions and also videos so for the community and for myself to help you out if you're new to the channel consider subscribing and hit the little bell and I'll see you next week amateur mistakes intro take 1 when the default buddies ok

Channel: London Saxophone School

Views: 39,620

Rating: 4.9441047 out of 5

Keywords: 3 embouchure mistakes avoid saxophone, common mistakes, embouchure, london saxophone school, students, music, saxophone reed, air flow, facial muscles saxophone, great tone, sound, embouchure mistakes, why do I squeak, amount of mouthpiece, amout of pressure lips, chin pressure, chin position, 3 embouchure mistakes avoid saxaphone, diaphragm, throat, JTs Body Beats, drums

Id: 7lMZ2wTWTJA

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020