The Essential Saxophone Cleaning Routine Everyone Must Do

hey better sax players Jay Metcalf here in today's video I'm gonna take you through my saxophone maintenance routine it sound boring guess again what I'm about to tell you could save your life just kidding about to save your life thing Wow not entirely every year of saxophone lung it's a real thing google it now let's go through all the things you should be doing after every single playing session to avoid rare respiratory disorders keep your saxophone playing its best for decades save yourself money on repairs and not to mention keep your instrument and case from smelling like Grandpa's socks oh and before I forget there's a giveaway contest running into August 27th more on that later if you're a teacher please share this video with all of your students if you're a parent and you've bought a saxophone for your child make them watch this video and if you're an adult saxophone player follow my instructions here the world will be a better place now if you've got anything you'd like to share about your saxophone maintenance routine please tell us about it in the comment section below step 1 after you're finished playing you swap out your horn your neck and your mouthpiece when we blow warm air into our colder metal saxophone water droplets appear in the form of condensation this moisture that accumulates inside your instrument is not spit but it does contain bacteria and little bits of whatever was in your mouth if you do not remove this moisture after playing it will dry out and leave a residue behind inside your saxophone over time this residue will build up and become a sort of nasty sludge that gets reactivated every time you play and it gets wet again anyone who hasn't been swabbing out their instrument knows what I'm talking about just look inside your saxophone this sludge will be more concentrated nearer to the source so that's why it's even more important to swap out your neck and the mouthpiece so you're gonna need a separate swab for the body and another one for the neck and the mouthpiece now there's a lot of products available for this when I was a freshman in college I made my first saxophone swab out of an old t-shirt it didn't work that well nowadays I use these swabs from a company called BG France this is the one I use to pass through the neck and the mouthpiece and then this one here is the one I use to go through the body I put links to these products and everything else I'm gonna talk about in the description below I've got one of these swabs that I bought more than ten years ago I've passed it through my saxophone thousands of times and it's still going strong if I were to have to replace it today I'd be very happy to do so but I'm sure I've got thousands more pull through x' left in it I like to pass the swab through the horn three times make sure you're putting the weighted end into the Bell everyone get it to come out the top and then pull it through when swabbing out the neck again put the weighted end through the larger hole and pull it through a couple of times I also wipe down the tenon of the neck and make sure it is completely free of dirt that I swap out the mouthpiece a couple of times and wipe off the exterior this is variable now once you've finished swabbing out the entire instrument you might want to take the cloth and wipe down the exterior depending on how slobbery you are when you play I know this is necessary after I've been playing for a while another benefit of having a dry saxophone inside and out is that your case he's not going to get moldy and stinky now if you ever want to sell your saxophone they come out how much more you're gonna get for it if it doesn't smell bad and if it's clean now my generous acts case is hermetically sealed when it's closed so if I take a damp swab and leave it inside the case it's not ideal so you may want to store your swabs in an outside pocket if you can now level 2 of my saxophone maintenance routine is new to me I'll admit it's this thing called key leaves that you can see here I had seen these things around and remember thinking I swap out my horn after every playing session I've been preaching to people for decades about proper saxophone maintenance I don't need some gimmicky gadget to keep my keys from sticking my saxophone keys don't stick once I've pried them open however one day I got an email from the good folks at key leaves asking me if I'd like to try out their product and I said sure Who am I to refuse free stuff so a package arrived with a bunch of these things and I said how many sacks of bones do you guys think I have well I do have a bunch and I'm glad they sent me a bunch because now I use these not all my saxophones let me tell you why so full of skepticism I put these things on my brand-new yannick a sour saxophone that had a sticky g-sharp and a sticky C sharp key even though it's brand new or maybe I should say because it's brand new well I quickly realized that these key leaves do exactly what they say they're supposed to do you see most keys on a saxophone are open all the time and when you press them down they close but there is a couple keys that are closed all the time and when you press them they open namely your low c-sharp key your low E flat key and your G sharp key now what the key leaves do is they prop those keys open so that when you're not playing those pads can dry out just like all the other pants on your saxophone this prevents those keys from sticking entirely and significantly increases the life of those pants incidentally if you follow my advice on daily horn maintenance your pads should last for decades if not a lifetime this alto saxophone I bought brand-new in 2005 and it has been played a lot all of the pads with the exception of the palm key pads are original and I have no plans on changing any of them speaking of the palm key pads I've recently added another level to my daily saxophone maintenance it's very simple I take this little microfiber cloth again from BG France and I put it in all of these palm key pads and just wipe off the extra moisture that stays inside there you know the body swab does not get all of that moisture out that stays in the chimneys of these tone holes and that's why I've always had to replace these pads every five years or so since I've been doing this these pads are really clean and I see no reason why they're not gonna last for decades like the rest of the pants once again I put links in the description below to all this stuff however I know many of you are probably saying to yourself I can use household items to do all of these things I can make my own swab out of an old t-shirt I can put anything under my keys to prop them open and yes of course you can I don't know take a wine bottle corked or something and cut it into pieces for this and if you don't want to spend more money on stuff then don't just make sure you're doing the proper maintenance on your instrument another big excuse I hear from people is time I don't have time to clean out my saxophone after band rehearsal or after my performance that's a bunch of nonsense let's find out exactly how much more time it takes to clean your saxophone compared to just throwing it in the case so it's gonna take you a little bit more time but that's not an excuse for not doing it that's like saying I don't have time to brush my teeth this is the minimum required maintenance for any saxophone player so I got together with the good folks over at key leaves and we're doing a giveaway ten winners will receive one of these sets of key props that will work on any saxophone it's super easy to enter you go to the link in the description below and you just have to do stuff like visit better sax on instagram or facebook or visit key leaves profile on instagram and facebook while you're there be sure to follow those pages throw down some likes and a few comments it's not necessary to be eligible to win but we love hearing from you guys if you want to share any of your own thoughts about saxophone maintenance put them in the comments section below if you got some value out of this video be sure to click the thumbs up button and get yourself subscribe to the channel we're almost at 100,000 subscribers and I'm going to be giving away some other really cool stuff when that happens to celebrate thank you so much for watching and see you again very soon in the next better sax video

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 143,905

Rating: 4.9504972 out of 5

Keywords: jay metcalf, saxophone, better sax, bettersax, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, sax, saxophone lung, saxophone maintenance, how to clean a saxophone, saxophone swab, sax cleaning, sax cleaning kit, saxophone care, how to take care of a saxophone, saxophone hygeine, sticky saxophone pads, sticky G# key, key leaves, giveaway, how to play saxophone, saxophone lessons

Id: ySOTzXFGuGY

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 20 2019