5 ESSENTIAL Tips to Get A Better Saxophone Sound!

hey what's going on y'all it's patrick here and i'm bringing you a very special video today that a lot of y'all have been asking about over the years not even just here and something i've also been kind of thinking about a lot for myself and how i can get better and then explain to you how to get better but this video is about sound today we're going to be talking all about sound now as we all know or in case you don't know sound is the absolute most important thing when it comes to your instrument no matter what you want to do no matter what kind of style of music no matter if it's going to be popular or just purely art music your sound needs to be clear focused and recognizable and most importantly it needs to sound good now over the past nearly 20 years since i've started playing saxophone i've been thinking a lot of course about my sound but more recently i've been really thinking what what is the bridge that takes someone from having more of a beginner type of sound to what we would think is a more professional clear good sound for lack of a better word and in that amount of time that i've been spending that time thinking i realize that there's actually a few crucial almost basic but not exactly easy things that you can do in practice to take your sound from whatever level that you feel that you are now to the ideal level of the sound that you actually want well stick around and don't click off of this video because today i'm giving you five tips that you can apply and practice today to get you a better sound on the saxophone but before we jump into the video i actually want to give a very special shout out to my beloved sponsors legophone now a couple of things you should know about me of course if you spend any time around me either in the discord online join the discord or anywhere else in person you know i am not the biggest gearhead at all but you probably also heard me talk about this company legophone and let me tell you something y'all they're the real deal for the past five years i have been exclusively playing legophone ligatures and reeds because i believe they give me the absolute best possible balance for my sound these ligatures in particular allow me to have supreme power and projection without sacrificing the core and warmth of my natural sound the ligaphone clas and universal ligatures come in a variety of colors i believe the black silver isn't available right now but you can still grab my personal favorites the vintage finish and my current main driver the beautiful and powerful rose gold plated clas ligature for every range of saxophone and clarinet now the most special thing i've found about these ligatures in particular is not just the build quality but the little material right here in the middle of the ligature this mesh-like material not only creates a slight bit of distance between the reed and the ligature which allows it to vibrate more but it also changes the color and response of the reed when you're playing on it the material inside comes in two thicknesses thin and thick the thin pad allows for more overtones to ring out and just the shimmering and brighter projection that i love for most of my performing situations whereas the thick pad kind of laser focuses the sound to be more centered and warm which i find perfect for my clarinet setup and it even comes in handy when i need to record in the studio and maybe match others more in a section either way you cannot go wrong with any of these excellent gear pieces that are reasonably priced without breaking your bank and will definitely give you that extra boost in your performance that you're looking for in any style of music if you want to give these ligatures their wonderful double profile reads and any of the other products to try go head over to legophoneparis.com today alright with all that out of the way let's go ahead and get right into these five tips that can get you a better sound on the saxophone now the first tip that we're going to talk about today is something that might be a little deceptively simple you might be like why are you talking about this but you'd be surprised at how much a simple adjustment to this can actually change a lot about your sound we're talking about your neck strap position now the reason this is so important is because when you take your saxophone out of the case the first thing you do is you put the neck strap on and then you put the neck strap on the saxophone so you're probably thinking okay pat what the heck are you talking about and why are you talking about this right now i already know this now while that may be true you might already know this stuff the two things you need to keep in mind the most in addition to everything else you need to keep in mind with an extra position is that whenever you put your saxophone to your mouth you need to have a direct airflow to the horn and nose zero tension zero tension in your upper body now this is actually something i learned from a combination of music lessons and alexander technique classes and when you put your socks onto your mouth for example if you take the neck strap off your natural position should be this now what i'm doing when i do that is i'm allowing the air to go directly to the reed directly to the reed just like this and whenever you do that that should be your starting position that means that every time you put your neck strap to your saxophone it needs to line up exactly like that all the time so do a little check with yourself every time you put your saxophone together you got your neck strap and you're getting ready to play where is your saxophone in relation to your body and how is the weight being held up a really easy thing you can do to check this is just set your saxophone up either stand or sit with good posture however comfortable you are and put the neck strap on the saxophone let the saxophone go to the end of the neck strap relax it down and just tilt the saxophone like this straight the thing you're gonna check for is does the saxophone go directly to your mouth when you play it's just that simple so basically if you put your saxophone to your mouth and it's like this there's something wrong it's too low conversely if you put your saxophone to your mouth and like this well it's it's not happening now all y'all cool cats that want to you know play super low to the ground like sonny rollins or play super up like this and get your shoulders up why is that a problem the reason why that's a problem is because you are now expending so much extra energy that could be used to play in the saxophone now remember every time you play the air needs to go directly to the reed that is where it has to go because that's what's vibrating so whenever you play just make sure your saxophone is in a natural position so that there's no weight on your shoulders you know any extra weight on your on your thumb on your arms on your back anything you were just ready to sit up and play and of course you might end up adjusting it during your play session that's okay that's natural you're never gonna put your saxophone neck strap in one position and that's the way the whole time i've just found that my normal natural position every time i set up it's about right here because when i take my saxophone and i put it up look at that it's right down my mouth and it's extended to the end so just do that little checklist and that is the first tip that you can do in order to get a better sound now this next tip might get me in trouble with some of y'all because i know a lot of y'all love to play on the tougher side of things but today i'm talking about a very special tip i learned from joe timberly which is to simply just try softer wreaths now this one might seem obvious however i understand that for some mouthpieces harder reads work better for that situation or for some mouthpieces soft degrees work better but why is this such a big deal now the science behind this one should be pretty easy to understand harder reads harder to vibrate soft 3's easier to vibrate but in terms of sound creation and the conception of your sound it's not exactly that cut and dry for classical clarinet i actually play harder reads i play a strength 4. and the reason why i do that is because harder reads allow you to have an easier straight sound it just allows the sound to just go straight out you don't have to worry about it too much the sound you get is the sound you get the only issue with playing those hard reads is that because it's a very straight and centered and narrow sound i'm not able to have a lot of flexibility to manipulate my sound in the way that i want it if i so choose to so just speaking on flexibility a bit when i was studying with joe temperley the great joe chamberlain which everyone should know and recognize he played with duke ellington thad jones big man everyone when i was studying with joe temperley i was playing on harder reads sometimes i was playing on three and a halfs for alto which is crazy but the reason why i was doing that is because i wanted to get a more kind of straight tone a lot of music i was playing demanded more of like a straight tone thing but when i started studying with him he said man you're playing too loud i was like huh and then he immediately said you should play softer reeds and in my head i'm like i feel like i'll play louder if i play softer reads but then i realized aha this is the thing he's trying to teach me playing softer reads allows you the opportunity to learn how to control your sound with the flexibility again i totally understand that some setups work better with harder reads however i also understand that back in the day in joe's time they were actually playing softer reads sometime in the future i'm going to make another video going in depth about all the things i learned from joe temperley but i do want to take a quick aside to let you know that he was friends with john coltrane with eric dolphy ben webster harry carney all these different people and most of those people that he played with play softer reads again doesn't work for everybody but what i learned from him is when i switch from the harder to the softer reads it was a lot harder to play a lot of the more modern stuff i wanted to play but the amount of sound that i got out of it now i started to realize okay even if i go back to playing threes this is the type of sound i'm looking for i want this sound because i'm having more vibration in my sound i'm having more projection in my sound i can pull it back if i want to and it's a lot easier for me to learn how to control that sound to do something else that i want than to make the harder reads more flexible so i say just try it out again this is not a thing that works for every single person but if you're having trouble and you're wondering why you sound so stiff well it might be because literally your read is stiff so just try playing some solve the reason it might help you out ah yes this next topic we're going into is something that i think most of you should be familiar because it is the core of the instrument we're talking about your air support and your control again this might seem obvious you're probably like pat why are you telling me all this obvious stuff ever this is a clickbait video blah blah blah well listen here of course the number one thing that all saxophone players need to work on if you haven't heard already is long tones yes we all need to do long tones we all hate them our mouth gets tired when we do them however there's some really important lessons you can learn from doing these things and also you have to check if you're doing them right at all for those y'all who may be more on the beginning side are still moving along in the saxophone process doing long tones properly basically just consists of you putting the saxophone to your mouth picking a note usually g is usually easier when you can pick on any other instrument and just see how long you can play while keeping your air consistent for example just a little demonstration [Music] you can hold it up for any count you want eight counts 16 whatever you can stand make sure you build up that control but most importantly because again pat that's basic i'm about to click off the video well check this out i know a lot of y'all do this because some of y'all have taken lessons with me and some of y'all have been playing with me i'm talking about the dizzy gillespie now this is not a call-out video i know don't tell me i'm thinking why you calling me out it's not a call-out video this is just to tell you if you puff your cheeks when you play it kind of like this [Music] if you puff your cheeks like that that's like 50 percent more power you could be putting directly into the saxophone and not only that but you are also limiting your flexibility in order to control the sound that you want to get out by having all this air in your cheeks so make sure that when you play all of this your embouchure your cheeks all this stuff around here is a stone wall you want to make sure because that way you can transform that cheek in the air in your cheek sound into a more powerful projecting and solid sound like this [Music] now again you might notice that there are a lot of saxophone players that make a living and they poke their cheeks out but you probably also notice that they only kind of sound one way not just like original sound but they kind of just have this one thing that they do and flexibility is something that i value highly especially in this highly competitive world where you're going to be playing a bunch of different gigs you're going to be playing this gig over here like salsa gig big band jazz early jazz modern jazz funk fusion all that kind of stuff and all of those different styles of music require very very very specific amounts of control and stylistic changes but there's a little more than just letting go of the area cheeks that can help you achieve that and that's going into this next topic that we're about to talk about right now which is the thing that mystifies all of us and i'm really excited to be talking about this today we're talking about the dreaded the infamous voicing now full disclaimer most of the stuff that i'm talking about right now mostly applies to the alto but these concepts also can work on tanner soprano all the whole range of the instrument in their own way in case you don't know what it is voicing is very simply the shapes and the adjustments that you make inside your mouth and your throat that change the way the note comes out in your saxophone i'm actually going to be doing a whole nother video on specific voicing exercises that you can do to get better at voicing and getting a more personal sound saxophone but stay tuned for that it's going to come a little later the reason why voicing is so important on the saxophone is because this is the actual reason why the cliche that we all hear are aunties and uncles everybody kind of say like wow the saxophone is the closest instrument to the human voice well they're not lying there's a very specific reason for that the saxophone particularly the alto saxophone is a very finicky instrument that requires very specific voicings shapes of the throat and the mouth to make the note speak the way that it's supposed to speak believe it or not every win instrument has some element of voicing required in order to play the note but on the saxophone it is an absolute necessity that you have to voice for example you may have heard of something called overtones which is basically holding every single note down on the saxophone because if you're if you removed all the keys you'd be left with low b flat he's holding down every key on low b flat and seeing how high you can go into the range of the saxophone with just that one note i'm unfortunately not going to demonstrate in this video again i can do that another video but i just wanted to give you an understanding of what overtones are supposed to do when you do an overtone like a sample one kind of like this you kind of go up to that note what you're doing is it's training your throat and your mouth to have the position to play that one note now i know a lot of y'all again about to click off this video because you're like i know about overtones why you saying that of course we know about overtones but there's very specific voicing things you can do without overtones that even might help you play overtones better the simplest thing you can do to check if your voicing is efficient on the saxophone is to check your vowels when i say check your vowels i mean that in every part of the saxophone there's a certain type of vowel sound that you want to reference when playing that note for example if i want to play g right if i want to play that note g there's a very specific vowel sound that i'm thinking of when i'm playing it i'm actually thinking ah so when you sing make sure you figure out what that shape what that feeling is everywhere mouth and throat make sure what that shape is and you literally go straight to the saxophone and act like you're about to sing but you don't actually sing you actually are about to sing that note and you play the note with that vowel sound in mind now if you don't do that you're most likely going to get one of the two most common errors that beginning saxophone players make which is this first one or the second one you're probably looking at me like he's calling me i was like no again it's not a call out what i'm doing is i'm trying to say that i understand the issues that people are having and a lot of it comes down to voicing now i can do a voicing exercise right now i'm just going to do a voice act just on g for both of those sounds that'll either open up or narrow up the vowel so that i'm able to get that exact sound that i'm talking about right now [Music] [Music] ah [Music] now if you noticed not only did the sound change in those exercises but the intonation changed in the first one you can hear me going real flat and then the second one you hear me getting really sharp because i'm pinching i'm pinching my throat and pinching my embouchure you want to let go all of that you want to be extremely relaxed here remember keep the brick wall here we're going to be extremely relaxed in your embouchure so that you're able to just voice the note and that goes for all registers i'll do a couple of exercises in all the registers just so you can see a little bit more i'm talking about [Music] [Music] as you can see every register including the lower register and the high register have their own unique voicings and vocalizations you have to do in order to get that good reference for what the sound's supposed to sound like remember what people say they say this is the closest instrument to the human voice that means we always have to be singing no matter what type of music you play if you want to get that consistent sound even without vibrato try that voicing technique so that you can get towards that sound you're looking for all right so at this point you're probably wondering alright pat is this some nice tips but uh i still don't sound the way i want to sound what's going on like you made me stay this long into this video however long it is and uh i still don't sound the way i want to sound i still don't sound like this person this person ah well now we've come to the fifth and final tip of the video which is simply to imitate other sounds including the masters this tip is probably the most important tip on this list and one of the reasons why it's so important is because it actually can give you a multivitamin supplement for everything that i just talked about in this video basically the thing i'm trying to say with this point is you can't sound good unless you know what sounds good now of course good is subjected to the listener but in the context of the music that we're playing which is jazz there have been so many different musicians from all different walks of life all generations all styles of music that have all been heralded to some of the greatest players of all time and that's why we call them the masters but the reason why they're so recognized is not just because of their technique but it's because of their sound for example if you want to imitate somebody right what's the first thing you think to do you think of their sound you think of their inflections you think of their accent every musician has an accent that's another thing i want to talk about in different video but everybody has an accent you think of the different things they say the most identifiable things about their like any quotes you might think about quotes or something something they say anything like that that you can kind of grasp onto in order to get out the impression of the person you're trying to imitate and it honestly is no different for jazz it's no different for any type of music that you're trying to get to the next level with the sound at you have to have a reference for what sounds good in order to play good that's that's that's uh that's how it is just to give you another example actually of how this can kind of be a multivitamin to getting you to the next level if i want to sing something and i want to sing the blues for example there's a couple of things that i might have to do in order to get to that if i want this sound right that kind of sound like there's two different sounds if i want then i'm going to play closed d on the saxophone [Music] right that's that ooh sound but one of the sounds i've actually been enamored with is the sounds of for example the great mississippi fred mcdowell or the incredible mahalia jackson incredible bessie smith a lot of them were able to go ah that's that we associated is that kind of that that gospel church lady singer right he's like ah that kind of thing so how do you get that sound well you might have to explore some other concepts off the beaten path in order to get to that sound so if i want that ha sound i'm going to play open d [Applause] it's just that simple you have to use your imagination to get outside of the beaten path all the things your teachers might have taught you everything you think is the correct way to play this instrument i was going to keep going but little assad what the heck is the correct way to play this instrument this is a freaking clarinet mouthpiece on a tuba that's essentially what the thing is so this is already kind of a a weird combination of things that we're trying to navigate and we're still trying to figure this out the instrument's only like 150 something years old we're still trying to figure it out and one thing that has been tried and true from every other musician even right before recordings to now we want to imitate the human voice and we're trying to imitate those who have come before us that sound great so that means that in order to get the supreme flexibility on this instrument you got to spend some time with your favorite musicians from any era spend some time pick one person pick three people narrow in hone in what makes them sound the way they do how do i get to that essence that is how you get to your own sound because now those techniques that you've learned from being flexible how to expand and do those little things playing that open d instead of close d you already opened up a whole new avenue of sounds you never even thought was possible i know i keep saying oh make another video make it but i actually really am going to make another video talking about imitating sounds and how you can get closer to your own sound by imitating other sounds but that's basically what you want to do i will be doing that i'm getting on the content grind but like i said that's basically what you want to do in order to get to that next level because that alone is a multivitamin for everything it teaches you about eric support it teaches you about voicing teaches about control teaches you everything and if you're not doing those things you can't get to that and if you're not getting to the imitating well all those other techniques are for nothing and also another thing i want to say um i probably should have put this in another video but i just feel like if you're watching this video and you got this far that means you are very serious about getting better on your instrument and i commend you for that first of all thank you for watching this but also want to talk about something very important that i feel like a lot of people need to understand that remember when we're practicing we're not practicing to be perfect perfect is is impossible do not practice for perfection practice for consistency and that's because you're going to make some mistakes it's going to happen i make mistakes all the time i can point you some videos where i didn't like what i played at all however i can always do certain things consistent i can consistently be confident in my expression i can be consistent that i can project a note all that kind of stuff but i'm never going to play perfectly i'm never going to play the perfect lines i'm always going to strive for it you want to strive to be as good as you possibly can but remember consistency is key y'all and that goes for any type of profession do you want to pick somebody that's perfect once or would you rather someone be really really good all the time i want you to think about that for a second that's just something i think about a lot and i feel like it's something that maybe some people maybe some of y'all watching the video need to hear to understand that it's all right you know what i'm saying if you can't get that note perfect all the time that's all right but if you can pop it out and it comes out all the time it might not be the best sounding but hey you popped it out that means you got consistent perfect practice for that work on that to get that better and i guarantee you even all the other stuff that i talk about in this video will get better so just keep that in mind for your journey all right y'all that's it for these five tips to help you get a better sound on the saxophone what did you think was it uh stuff you already knew stuff that was completely new or am i just completely bs either way let me know in the comments below if this stuff was helpful to you or anything i just wanna i wanna get the feedback from y'all cause all the stuff that y'all put in the comments in this video i might make a video of it i'm very serious as always be sure to like this video and subscribe if you want to keep up with me on all platforms go ahead and join the discord the links for all that kind of stuff is is down below all my social media all that kind of stuff like that you can keep up with me in real time i would love to talk to you and uh to continue doing stuff like this all right y'all i'm out i'm gonna go get some food i'm actually recording this video pretty late but i just want to say thank you again for watching and i'll catch y'all in another video

Channel: Patrick Bartley

Views: 35,349

Keywords: patrick bartley, patrick bartley sax, pat bartley, pat bartley sax, patbartmusic, emmet cohen, after you've gone, patrick bartley after you've gone, after you've gone solo, patrick bartley after you've gone solo, after you gone, j-music ensemble, j-music persona, jmusicband, how to, how to play jazz, jazz how to, top 5, top 10, top 10s, sax lessons, how to play saxophone, how to play sax, how to practice, how to get a better sound, how to sound good

Id: 5Y5dtevHRus

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2022