You’re pretty new to the saxophone, and your sound is…….a bit rubbish! You want a better saxophone sound.

Here’s how to fix your saxophone’s sound

It can be frustrating when you’re struggling to get the sort of saxophone sound that you want. You’re looking for a pro sound – a sound that you can be proud of. 

but I’ve got good news for you because you know what? There are five main things that I see people getting wrong with playing saxophone, and I can help you to fix them, to get a better saxophone sound. 

In Sax School, I’ve helped over 10,000 people learn saxophone in the last seven years. So I’ve seen these patterns occur a lot with new players that are coming in, who want a better saxophone sound and are struggling.

And in this lesson, I will show you the following:

• Five main things that I see happening over and over and over again, and how to fix them
• Tips to get a better saxophone sound
• Great resources to help you play your sax better.

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Contents

1 Here’s how to fix your saxophone’s sound

2 Tip#1: The Right Reed

2.1 A thin sound

2.2 An Airy Sound

3 Tip #2: Mouthpiece Placement

3.1 A Raucous Honky Sound

3.2 A Narrow, Closed Sound

4 Tip #3: Breathing

5 Tip #4: Mouthpiece Selection

6 Tip #5: Embouchure Development

Tip#1: The Right Reed

The first mistake that I see people make all the time is with their reeds, in particular, the strength of the reed. Now, if you’re brand new to the saxophone, reeds are kind of confusing.  How do you know what size reed you need?

Cane saxophone reeds generally come in half sizes. The softest that you would start with is probably a 1½, and they go up in half sizes. Most players would use a 2 or 2½. Some people go up to 3 or 3½ or even a 4 if you’ve got a strong embouchure. But for most players,  a 2 or 2½ is the optimum reed strength.

Now there are lots of things to think about with regard to the reed and how it matches your mouthpiece. But we’ll go into that in another video.

A thin sound

But if you have a sound that is thin and weak, and you’re struggling to get any of the high notes, and your mouthpiece feels like it’s closing up all the time. – that’s because your reed is too soft. Also, if you’ve been playing for longer than a few months and you’re still on a 1 ½ size reed, go up to a size 2 because it’s time to move up. Your embouchure has got stronger.

An Airy Sound

On the other end of the scale, if you’re getting an airy sound, and it’s hard to get a clear tone;  if you’re mouth aches when you’re playing, and it’s hard work, then your reed is too hard, and it’s time to move down a half step. 

Don’t be tempted with a harder reed. It’s not a macho thing to go onto a higher reed! If you want to get a clear, lovely sound, that’s flexible, stick to around a 2 ½. That’s going to be perfect.

Tip #2: Mouthpiece Placement

Now the second thing that I see people get wrong when they start at Sax School is their mouthpiece placement. And what I’m talking about here is how much mouthpiece you’ve got in your mouth.

When you look across your mouthpiece, there’s a point where the reed comes away from the mouthpiece. And that’s the point where you should have the mouthpiece in your mouth.

A Raucous Honky Sound

So if you’ve got too much mouthpiece in your mouth, then you’re going to get a raucous honky sound. It’s going to sound pretty awful because your reed is not being supported, and it’s vibrating too much.

A Narrow, Closed Sound

However, if you have got too little mouthpiece in your mouth, then you will get a very closed-off narrow sound. It’s not going to sound very expressive or big.

So the very first thing I would suggest you should do if you’re getting lots of squeaks or honks is to experiment with the mouthpiece. Try a little bit more mouthpiece in your mouth or a little bit less. And that’s probably going to solve most of the problems.

Tip #3: Breathing

Now, we all know how to breathe. We do it all the time. But breathing is super-important with saxophone. And if you get the breathing part wrong, then you’re not going to have a very full sound.

So, make sure that you breathe very deeply to the bottom of your lungs. You’ve got to use a lot of air when you’re playing saxophone. I like to picture my saxophone being filled with air. I’m trying to push the air out from the bottom of my abdomen, and I’m really breathing deeply. And I’m blowing as much air as I can into the saxophone, even if I’m playing quietly, to try and fill the saxophone with air all the time. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is making sure that I’m blowing my phrases all the way through, so we’re not playing a note, note, note, then a little breath in between. We want to be playing long flowing lines when we’re playing saxophone, and we do that by pushing the air out and keeping the saxophone full of air.

So, if you want to get a fuller, more flowing, more professional sound, then have a go at that. Think about breathing deeply, pushing lots of air into the saxophone, and filling out that sound.

Tip #4: Mouthpiece Selection

It’s so tempting when you get yourself a new, shiny new saxophone to go out and spend a load of money on a fancy mouthpiece as well. The problem is, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s easy to get tempted to buy something that’s probably inappropriate.

I have had quite a few students that have come to me with different mouthpieces that are just not right for the sort of music that they are playing. That can lead to a shrill, harsh sound that’s very difficult for you to control.

So it’s great to start if you’re a brand new player to start with a middle-of-the-road, safe mouthpiece. So something like a Yamaha 4C or a Selmer C* would be a good choice.

This is a Selmer D tenor saxophone mouthpiece. It’s made from hard rubber or plastic, and it’s going to be lovely. We’re not going to go into the shape of the mouthpiece and why it works better. I’ve got some other blogs about mouthpieces. You should check those out if you’re curious to find out more.

But something like this Selmer D is a great, solid, easy-to-control mouthpiece that lets you focus on your sound without having to battle against the mouthpiece. And then later on, when you’re ready to upgrade, it will be an easier process for you.

If you want a metal mouthpiece, an Otto Link Super Tone Master is a good choice for a beginner because it’s easy to control.

So there are plenty of metal mouthpieces and plastic or hard rubber mouthpieces that are great for beginners. But make sure you take some advice and get something that’s appropriate.

Tip #5: Embouchure Development

You really cannot overlook your embouchure development. Now it’s tempting when you’re starting on saxophone to skip over those parts of practicing where you have to play long tones or slow melodies. Because, frankly, it’s quite hard work at the start.

You want to be playing those fantastic solos, or pop, or jazz, and playing long tones is a little bit boring.

However, it’s a bit like going to the gym and sitting on the exercise bike. It’s necessary, and you can’t skip this part of the process. 

I’m talking about building up your embouchure muscles. We do this by playing slow melodies and by playing nice long tones.

Inside Sax School, I’ve got a ton of great resources to help you with this, from Five-Minute Warm-up Workouts to beautiful, slow melodies, to Monthly Challenges.

There’s tons of stuff that we focus on that’s fun to do, but will also build your muscles. If you build your embouchure strength, then you will have a better saxophone sound.  You will be able to play more on your soprano saxophone, with more expression too.  You’ll be able to play the higher ranges of the saxophone. All of these things come from building your embouchure.

Saxophone Tips

Everyone’s always looking for saxophone tips, especially because there are plenty of really hard things to do on the saxophone.

So here’s a list of hard, yet very useful and important things you will probably want to be able to do well at some point.

1. Play with a beautiful saxophone sound

Sound is really everything on the saxophone.

There’s the famous quote: The saxophone is really easy to play… badly

Your tone is what will make you or break you on the saxophone. I’ve made a bunch of more in depth videos about this and I cover it a lot more in some of my courses, but the gist,is that in order to have a beautiful tone, you need to be playing on a very regular basis, (like daily) for years and you need to be actively listening to great saxophone players to have an intimate concept of what a beautiful saxophone sound really is.

Oh yeah long tones… check out this video for a quick daily exercise and more saxophone tips.

2. Play with good time

This one is just as important as sound, if not more important, and it is even harder in my opinion.  It’s also notoriously overlooked since sax players aren’t normally thinking of themselves as time keepers in the same way as drummers, bass players and guitarists are.

Like sound, it’s something that you’ll be working on forever since there’s always room for improvement.

Some of the best things to do to improve your time feel include practicing with a metronome, and there are tons of ways to do this. I go over how to do this well in this video.

Also, practice along with great recordings of really tight bands.

My favorite hack for playing with better time, is to think about the drummer. If you’re playing with a drummer, you want all of your rhythms to sync up with what they are playing. So you gotta keep your ears open and lock in.

I know it might sound obvious, but this is something rhythm section players do actively, that sax players… not so much.

If there is no drummer, imagine one and play good time with your imaginary drummer friend.

The big picture is hold yourself accountable for the rhythm not just when practicing along with the metronome.

3. Playing Relaxed

Playing musical instruments tends to make us all tense up physically. On the saxophone we typically have tension in the shoulders, neck, hands and jaw. This tension wreaks havoc with the first 2 on the list, sound and time.

The best way to get in the habit of playing with less tension is to practice in front of a mirror as much as you can, and actively work on playing in a very relaxed way.

Biting down on the mouthpiece and raising up tense shoulders are very common issues with saxophone players and can take a while to correct.

When performing, it’s almost inevitable that tension is going to increase, so the more you are in the habit of practicing relaxed the better.

4. Play in Tune

This one shouldn’t be so hard, but it’s a challenge for everybody. The most obvious reason for this is the instrument design itself.

The saxophone has a wide range of expressive capabilities. One trade-off of all that sonic flexibility is the amount of control required.

The saxophone is also a very imperfect instrument when it comes to intonation. There are a lot of acoustic compromises that have to be made in order for this instrument to work the way it does. One of the consequences of these compromises, are what I’m calling “tuning variances.”

The most in-tune playing saxophone still requires the player to make significant adjustments in order to play in tune.

I’ve made a video about how I practice this, but what I found helps the most, is to do a lot of practicing with a pitch reference.

That could be drone tones or just recordings. We need to develop the ability to instantly react to the pitch of other sounds in our environment and adjust.

To do this well, requires a lot of strength and embouchure control here, which is only possible with daily practice to keep the chops up.

5. Play Chord Changes

I think saxophone players have a more difficult path towards improvisation mainly because as single note instruments we are rarely required to think about harmony the way guitar and piano players do. Bass players generally only play one note at a time, but they are laying down the harmony with those notes.

While there are endless resources for studying and practicing improvisation, the thing sax players usually need to work on the most is harmonic knowledge. Being able to play a bunch of patterns and licks doesn’t go very far without understanding the context.

One of the best things saxophone players can do to improve their ability to improvise over chord changes is learn to play the piano at a basic level.

Learning to comp over chord progressions will make such a huge difference in the quest to become a strong improvisor.

6. Make Money

All of the saxophone tips on this list so far require a lot of time, dedication and passion to pull off. Normally in life, when we apply those things in large quantities to an activity, there’s some kind of financial renumeration on the other side. However with music and a lot of artistic pursuits, the money can be elusive to say the least.

The fact is, musicians are very rarely rewarded solely on their musical abilities. Financially successful musicians are typically skilled in a number of different domains simultaneously. This is the case now more than ever so if you are young and starting out on the path to become a professional musician, I strongly recommend you develop some of these as they may make the difference between being able to sustain a career as a musician or having to give it up.