8 Things You Can Do Today to Instantly Pump Up Your Saxophone Sound

You know the saying, you can never be too thin or have too big a saxophone sound Ok, well maybe thats not really a saying, and maybe there is such a thing as being too thin (hey, I live in L.A., I know these things). But seriously, just about every single set of eyeballs reading this article is attached to the body of a saxophonist eager to supersize their tone. Of course, we all want to sound pretty, but that prettiness needs to have some hefty (yet precisely controlled!) sonic mass behind it. Aside from having an attractive tonal color, a great saxophone sound should effortlessly fill up a room without the need for the saxophonist to be popping a vein in her neck, blasting the horn with hurricane-force air blasts. We all aspire to be that saxophone stylist whose tone is flush with the entire harmonic spectrum, low lows to high highs, the frequencies delicately balanced to form a sublimely enrapturing sonic ambrosia. Yeah thatbut with BALLS! With all of that said,, here is, as advertised, my list of 8 things you can do, today, that will leave you walking out of the practice room able to boast of a sound bigger and stronger than you had when you walked in.

1. Overtones
For those of you new to the concept, overtones are basically alternate fingerings for notes that generate a louder and more resonant, albeit harsher, sound on the horn (newbies can get themselves up to speed with this article). But once you start moving up through the range of the horn, some of these overtones become quite difficult to play consistently. Truly mastering the overtone series forces you to develop control of the muscles in the mouth and larynx that allow you to enlarge and focus your sound in a MAJOR way. The trick is to keep working towards matching the size of the sound of the normallyfingered notes to that of the overtone-fingered notes. Of course, that will be like a dog chasing its tail, since the bigger your normally-fingered sound is, the bigger your overtone sound will be, so your normally-fingered notes will never match the volume and resonance of the overtone fingerings. But theres a ton of growth available in the chase. You can find some great overtone exercises with sheet music and audio examples here. Exercise #1: Octave Drop Downs Heres how this one works:

1. Finger a low F (the one at the bottom of the staff with no octave key). 2. With your thumb still off of the octave key, begin playing, but start right in on the note one octave higher, so that youre hearing the same pitch youd hear if you were playing the middle F (the one with the octave key). 3. Hold that middle F for a few seconds, and then drop back down to the low F. 4. Repeat the same exercise moving down in half steps until you reach the low Bb.

Here are some specific things you can do to make these octave jumps:

When moving between octaves, make sure that you can hear the next note before you play it. No matter what you do, do not drop your jaw between notes. Do not change the amount of air pressure. Try experimenting with the position of your tongue. Move the tongue to the back of the mouth and have the tongue make contact with the upper part of your mouth as though you were making a K sound. With the saxophone out of your mouth, try singing an octave jump and notice the changes in your throat as you do so. Now apply changes in the throat to your overtone octave jumps. Also try closing the back of your throat to see if that helps.

Every sax players throat and embouchure are different, so in the end its really a matter of trying different things and memorizing the feeling of each interval jump. One of the goals here is not be reliant on the octave key. In fact, theres an unsubstantiated rumor that Joe Henderson never used his octave key which would be a pretty amazing feat! At any rate A sample of what the exercise should sound like (played by Ricky via Skype)

Variation for Those Having Trouble with The Exercise

If youre unable to make the octave jump in step 2 of the exercise, try doing this instead:
1. Play the middle F (the one that would normally be player with the octave key pressed down). 2. Remove your thumb from the octave key while maintaining that same high F so youre fingering the low F, but playing the middle F.

Exercise #2: Tone Matching by Voicing the First Overtone

1. Finger a middle Bb using the bis key (the small key that sits between the B and A keys) fingering. 2. Finger the low Bb beneath the middle Bb while keeping the middle Bb pitch. The only difference you should hear should be a difference in tonal characteristics, but the pitch should remain the same regardless of which octave Bb youre fingering. 3. Go back and forth between that middle Bb and low Bb fingerings keeping the middle Bb fingering going the whole time. As you increase the rapidity of the octave jumps, youll hear a sound effect often used by folks such as Michael Brecker and Lester Young. 4. Repeat the exercise going chromatically up the horn all the way to F. IMPORTANT NOTE: Once you get to the middle D, rather than using the normal middle D fingering, you must finger that middle D with the palm key D and no octave key. Eb, E, and F are also to be fingered using the palm keys minus the octave key.

Audio Sample for this exercise Exercise #3: Tone Matching by Voicing the Second Overtone This time were going to start on second overtone which is the fifth above the first octave. So for the Bb overtone series, that would be the middle F, an octave above the middle Bb. Heres what ya do:
1. Play the middle F without the octave key. So youre basically fingering the low F but the middle F is the octave thats sounding. 2. Next, finger a low Bb while still holding out the middle F. 3. Repeat the exercise going chromatically up the horn all the way to the point where youre alternating between the palm key F (no octave key) and the bis middle Bb fingerings. IMPORTANT NOTE: The octave key is not to be used at any point in this exercise.

2. Practicing on the Mouthpiece Alone

As much as it may torment those sharing a home with you (not to mention your neighbors three blocks away) playing on the mouthpiece while its detached from your horn is another killer workout for your chops, and really, for your sound-producing capabilities in general. Its basically another way of exercising the same muscles that you exercise when you practice your overtones, since you dont have the convenience of those pearly keys to control which note youre actually shooting for. Try playing some scales or arpeggios on the mouthpiece, but dont cheat and use your lower jaw to change pitch. Instead, use what Joe Allard refers to as your inner embouchure to make these notes happen, and youll find that your powers of tonal production have been officially supersized! More details on this hideously-sounding-yet-massively-beneficial practice can be found here. Want some more mouthpiece-only exercises as taught by Joe Allard, himself? Then hop on over here.

3. Roll the Lower Lip Out

There are two basic schools of embouchure. One, espoused by many classical players and teachers (most notably, Larry Teal) involves playing with the bottom lip tucked into the mouth The other approach involves playing with the bottom lip rolled out or ideally, laying naturally under the reed, positioned the same way it would be if you were simply speaking. This method is most popular with jazz players, although it was taught by sax teaching legend, Joe Allard, who taught both jazz and classical saxophonists. In my experience, the lip out method produces a noticeably bigger sound.

A good rule of thumb is to make contact with the reed using the fleshiest part of your lower lip. This way, the reed can vibrate as much as possible while you use the least amount of pressure necessary to hold the mouthpiece in place. If youre used to playing with the lip rolled in, playing with the lip out will take some getting used to, as the sound will be harder to control at first. But hang in there, it will definitely be worth the temporary awkwardness. More on this topic here.

4. Practice Your Long Tones (duh!)

I dont really need to go into too much detail on this one. In fact, youre probably all sick of hearing teachers telling you to do these, but long tones are crucial for tonal control. To get the most out of these, practice fading in from silence all the way up to fortissimo and then back down to silence. For bonus points, practice doing this breathing only out of your nose, as this will really work your embouchure muscles as you go through your long tones without a break. Still dreading the boredom of long tone practice? Here are some approaches to long tone practice that will make playing them a heck of a lot more fun.

5. Play Using the EEE Sound

Coming back to our man Joe Allard again here is a method he taught which is counter to what many of us have been taught. Most of us have been instructed to blow through the horn keeping in mind the AAH sound. But as I explain in this article, the AAH sound causes you to lift the tongue, which blocks off the passage of air from the throat and out of the mouth. The EEE sound, on the other hand, forces your tongue down towards the bottom of your mouth, leaving a much larger passage for the air to travel through, thus making your sound that much heftier.

6. Avoid Tension While Breathing

For this tip, Im going to be lazy and simply rip off a few paragraphs from my instructional program, Bulletproof Saxophone Playing (sorry for the somewhat shameless plug, but bear with me, this is good stuff). Here is a great snippet on the topic of breathing, as shared by one of the programs teachers, Alexander Technique master, Bill Plake. If you watch the people who breathe beautifully, what youll notice is what they dont do. You wont see them tighten their heads down on their spine and throwing their heads back. You wont see them tighten across their shoulders, you wont see them holdi ng across their

chest trying to force their stomachs out. What you will see is you see the whole torso expanding in all dimensions. Its a three dimensional movement as we breathe in, our torso gets longer, it gets wider, and it gets thicker from front to back. The whole torso, not just the tummy, everything; let the entire torso move. One person who had extraordinarily good breathing was Michael Brecker. If you watch videos of him playing, youll notice that when he takes that in breath you dont see him bearing down on himself, you dont see him losing his stature. You see him maintaining his stature and the same thing when the air is coming out, you dont see him launching down into his gut to push the air out. You see him maintaining his stature. Another saxophonist with masterful breathing was Charlie Parker. In fact, watch Charlie Parker in general if you want to see someone who leaves himself alone when playing the saxophone.

7. Practice Proper Articulation

Most of us think that mastering articulation equals having superb control of the way individual notes begin. But solid articulation has the added benefit of bolstering your sound in a major way. For example, if youre tightening your jaw every time your tongue attacks a note, that means youre cutting off precious air. To make matters worse, many of us have a habit of moving our throats when we articulate, which cuts off the air as well. To delve deeper into what Im talking about, check out this article here.

8. Forget About Finding Better Gear

Its funny since Im not really a saxophone gear head (as anyone whos emailed me asking about a specific brand of vintage horn or mouthpiece can tell you), but even I love trying out new gear to hear how it affects my sound. If you listen to me trying out a bunch of horns and mouthpieces at NAMM 2013 in this video, youll see that while there are differences from horn to horn and mouthpiece to mouthpiece, those differences are not totally radical. At the end of the day, youre going to sound like you. Maybe you with a slightly brighter or darker or softer or louder or whatever sound, but to the average listener, youre almost certainly going to sound like the same sax player. The point of having the right saxophone gear is to help get you to the inevitable sound of YOU as effortlessly as possible. So lets all just agree now, theres no substitute for putting in the time necessary to get that big and beautiful sound, regardless of which horn or mouthpiece youre playing on. No magical horn, mouthpiece, or reed is going to swoop in and transform a frog into a prince.

Whats important is that you have in your minds ear the precise sound that youd like to produce, and learn to shape your sound until you reach your sonic target. You can read more on this hot topic here.