There’s an effing manual or How to Play Wind Instruments

[Shooshie]

I have a lot of patience for students. The reason I quit teaching is that I would have been content teaching forever, and it was preventing me from moving on. I needed to be spending that time practicing extremely high-end stuff, but instead I was doing scales and arpeggios all day, or teaching them student-level etudes. Spending all day on basics was holding me back. By leaving behind my teaching, which I had been doing full-time at high schools and jr. highs around the city, I was able to keep my focus on more intensive stuff, which enabled me to "discover" the big secret to playing the sax. I was not the first to do it, but at least I didn't have to move to Boston and study with Joe Allard. That probably would have been a better way to do it, but I just couldn't afford it, then. Besides, figuring it out by myself gave me an edge, and I developed new aspects of it that were unique to me.

I'm best at teaching the things that interest me, the things that I'm working on. I think that's one reason I was often effective here: every time I used DP, I felt like I was learning something new. I never reached the kind of proficiency that I had on the sax, though it may have appeared that I had. I relied heavily on cheat sheets and notes to myself. Of course, some things, like MIDI, were 2nd nature to me. Audio mixing comes pretty naturally to me, because of my musical background and my grounding in sciences. But I relied on so many shortcuts that I had to review them often to remember them all. I'm not intentionally speaking in past-tense; I'm not done yet. But until I get moved, I won't be doing any more recording here in my former location, and at the rate I'm going, this move could take a long time yet.

Back to the point; quitting teaching was a difficult choice. It was just one I had to make, because I wanted to do some amazing things on my instrument, and I couldn't get there spending all day in a practice room with students, studying basics. When I got home, I was too burned out to practice. I just had to quit, so I did it — cold turkey. No more teaching. I did go back a few years later and teach again for 2 years as a grad student at North Texas. They gave me a full load of sax students, and those kids did well. One of them teaches at North Texas now! But by that time I had perfected a lot of techniques that enabled my students to leap forward dramatically. Quitting teaching a few years prior had been the right choice at the right time. After those last two years as a grad student at NT, I never taught sax again, except through postings on the internet, which also proved effective, but far less pressure!

Shooshie

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Dear Shooshie,

So what *is* the big secret to playing Sax? All reeds are beyond me as are most brass.

[mikehalloran]

Dear Shooshie,

So what *is* the big secret to playing Sax? All reeds are beyond me as are most brass.

Enquiring minds want to know!

[Shooshie]

What is the secret to playing the sax?

In a word, "voicing." But people have used that word for decades. It means one thing to one person and another thing to another person, and they nearly always misinterpreted it in actual practice. Historically, saxophone teachers were pretty much a huge obstacle to learning to play the sax. I'm not kidding. How can you find the ideal way to describe it, so that it cannot be misinterpreted? The answer was the part that Joe Allard would teach all his students, and that they protected vigorously from outsiders: play a scale on the mouthpiece.

Each size sax has a starting note. For Alto, it's about a concert A. For other saxes, choose a pitch, in tune, that is about a 3rd below the highest note you can easily play on the mouthpiece. It's usually around an A or G. Play that on the mouthpiece alone, without using your hand to stop the mouthpiece. Just hold it with two fingers and play it. That alone requires doing a lot of things right. From here on out, the exercise deviates from Allard's instruction, as far as I know.

Next, start going down a scale. Most people who can play the starting note can do the first 4 notes pretty easily. After that it gets a little harder. But you've got to do a full octave scale.

When you've mastered that, do it a little differently: start ppp and go ff, then back to ppp on each note. The pitch must be centered at all times. Can't lose the pitch as you play louder and softer. Once you master this, reverse it and do ff to ppp and back. You must do it on all the notes of the octave, never sounding strained, always in tune.

Once you get this down pretty easily, start memorizing phonetic tongue positions. Rather than using metaphors to describe your tongue positions, such as "fast air, slow air, warm air, cool air..." etc., which all are subjective and basically meaningless, instead use the thing we were taught as babies, at which our tongues are basically virtuosic acrobats: phonetics. Memorize the phonetic description of each position of your tongue as you play the notes on the mouthpiece.

Now, play your harmonic series on whole sax. (not just the mouthpiece) That's where you finger a low Bb, then play the octave, 5th above that, the next octave, then the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and so on as high as you can. Make each one sound as full and gorgeous as you can. Remember the phonetic voicing of each harmonic, using the mouthpiece voicings as your ideal goal. Using your head, meld these together to get the best pitch/tone combination for every note on the instrument. When you do difficult intervals in performance, they should not sound difficult, because you are actually voicing them as easily as saying a phrase such as "Any Ann" or "Any Any" where those phonetic positions correspond to notes in rapid leaps. If you find yourself "chewing" or moving a lot of muscles, you're way-overdoing it. This is literally as simple as saying "Any-Ann" as you are fingering the notes. (use your head to come up with the phonetics for any given examples of actual notes)

This method gives you the basics for all advanced techniques: circular breathing, double tonguing (which doesn't sound like double tonguing), speed, tone, timbre, intonation, vibrato, altissimo, multiphonics, and anything I've left out.

There's just one problem. Playing on the mouthpiece — at least until you can control the dynamics — can sound like a stable of screaming banshees. Not so good for the family or neighbors. But a guy in the Netherlands actually came up with a "mouthpiece silencer" for practicing "the Shooshie Mouthpiece Exercises" anywhere. His commercials can be found on YouTube, in which he actually mentions the exercises by that name. I can play the exercise quietly, so I don't need to do that. But people starting out may find that a very desirable way to go. (Though he uses my name in his advertising and instruction, I am not in any way involved with his business. I've never talked to him or met him.)

The phonetic positions of the tongue are:
gk—*—rl, where * is substituted by one of many vowel variations. The back of the tongue goes somewhere between G and K, the tip of the tongue is somewhere between R and L, and the middle of the tongue slides along and voices the appropriate vowel for any given note.

You begin practicing your scales slowly against the tonic pitch, played by a tuner, synthesizer, or even another player if you can get someone to do that. Listen for the combination pitches and difference pitches — you know, where it sounds like a 3rd pitch is sounding between the fixed note and your note. If you practice scales this way for 6 months, you'll have more sensitive ears and faster pitch adjustment — basically perfect pitch — and you'll be able to make anyone sound good when playing duos together. You'll be able to express absolutely with your pitch, knowing where your pitch is, and putting it exactly where you want it.

The vibrato is important, because it shows you where your pitch center is. Instead of "biting" the pitch upward, push your mouthpiece in until you can go as far UP on the vibrato as you go DOWN. In other words, make a perfect sine-wave of your vibrato, with your actual straight-tone pitch being in the very center of that sine wave: the zero crossing. You can modify your sine wave later and make it a sawtooth wave or whatever you want it to be, but the important thing is to learn to play your pitch so that it's in the MIDDLE of the vibrato, not at the very top of it, like most saxophonists. Starting at the top and "lipping down" is what causes nanny-goat vibrato that is so irritating. Listen to a violin or cello. There is your perfect model for vibrato.

There are many things to learn from here. Lots of advanced techniques that require a lot of practice to make them sound natural. But the most important thing at this point is to listen to great musicians and play things they play, striving to sound just as musical as they do, but with your own voice. (not literally your voice, but your interpretation of the music) Learn what makes them great. Never play etudes like clockwork, but play each etude as a little Prelude or something, giving it life and making it something that YOU would want to stop and listen to if you heard someone playing it in a subway. If you can't, either it's a lousy etude, or you have a lot to learn!

That's it, in a nutshell. Ok, it's a big nutshell, but remember, this replaces 10 years of private instruction and puts you ahead of the pack in about 3 days. Imagine where it puts you in 3 years. And you didn't pay a cent for it. I mean, that's pretty much the whole thing. There is much to elaborate on each of the above topics or sentences, but if you consider each sentence above to be the gospel truth, you can find your way to anything on the sax with just a little reasoning and effort.

Some people asked me to write this out for them in 1994. They posted it as the "SaxFAQ," which you can still find out there somewhere. It's been translated into several languages, some with my help. I've received thousands of emails thanking me for this. It's been over 20 years, and already I'm hearing a generation of new saxophonists who play fantastically. You never heard anyone playing this way 40 years ago except in jazz, where intellect dominated the horn. The sax was an embarrassment in the orchestra. Thin, buzzy tone, horrendous pitch, expressionless or naive expression, it just didn't fit in with the amazing playing of most orchestra members. There are many reasons for that, but the sax is kind of the kazoo of the single-reed instruments. Its range of timbre is almost infinite, so you never knew what you were going to get when the orchestra started playing Ravel's Bolero, Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije, or Gershwin, for instance. Usually it was pretty embarrassing. Now there are a lot of players who are exhibiting complete control of the instrument when playing classical music. Formerly, only the best jazz players actually controlled the instrument, with occasional classical players like Marcel Mule, Donald Sinta, Daniel Deffayet, and a handful of others being the exceptions who sounded like real musicians. These exercises have made it possible for anyone with genuine talent not to get stuck on the ambiguities of the instrument, and to know from the start that they are on the right track. It DOES take a lot of practice, especially the pitch part. But the mouthpiece exercise will give everyone the tools to be sure that every minute of your practice is actually effective.

You're welcome.

Shooshie

[mikehalloran]

Damn!

Makes me want to get my sax back were it not for that 2-handed thing.

Thank you!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That was phenomenal Shooshie! Thank you.

[buzzsmith]

That was phenomenal Shooshie! Thank you.

That was phenomenal!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Phil O]

Thanks Shoosh. I'm not a reed guy, but there's also good info there for any wind instrument and much of what you said about playing the mouthpiece also applies to brass.

Good stuff!!

Phil

[Shooshie]

Thanks Shoosh. I'm not a reed guy, but there's also good info there for any wind instrument and much of what you said about playing the mouthpiece also applies to brass.

Good stuff!!

Phil

You're right, Phil. The same principles apply to all wind instruments. In practice, they can be very different in the way you apply the principles, but no matter what, you'll find those same things at work under the hood. On Oboe, for example, the movements are very subtle. On the flute, the whole affair moves back in your mouth somewhat, because there is no mouthpiece; your mouth is the mouthpiece. Again, rather than spend pages of words trying to corral the mechanics into an explanation that works for all people, a far better approach is simply to play the overtone series on both the whole flute, and on just the head joint. There are also "whistle tones," which are faint whistles, played on the whole instrument with all keys down, that follow the overtone series, but an octave or two higher, and barely audible in the wind when you first start out. When you find a whistle tone and start working on "peeling away" the noise around it, you will form your mouth into an amplification/reinforcement chamber that is absolutely the correct way to play. Apply the whistle tone voicings to a real harmonic series, then to actual flute pitches, and your control will leap-frog ahead of the pack... at least until the rest of the pack do their whistle tones. Flute is a highly developed instrument, and the players are generally very high-level. The sax is just starting to get there, thanks to people embracing the mouthpiece exercises.

They say that Maurice Andre used to have a trumpet suspended from the ceiling by two wires, such that a student would put his/her mouthpiece on it and play their overtones without touching the instrument with their hands. This forced them to do all the work through voicing. I do not know if the story is true or apocryphal, but the principle is a sound one. (no pun intended)

Students of any wind instrument tend to chase the perfect mouthpiece or head-joint, often spending inordinate quantities of money and never really getting much better. A good mouthpiece does open up possibilities, but without a solid foundation in voicing technique, you can't possibly even know what your mouthpiece can or cannot do. Voicing carries you a lot further than any hardware change can do.

Glad you all liked it. I thought it might be boring to people not playing wind instruments. Somewhere out there in sax forums they still post the SaxFAQ, though parts of it have been corrupted with additions by other people of stuff that's mostly mythology. The version I wrote here for this thread is accurate, but lacking in detail — though an astute student can figure out the detail. Or you can find a copy of my original version from 1994 and follow it. I say this in case you are passing it along to a sax player who would benefit from it.

A thread about the MP exercise at Sax-on-the-web.

Shoosh

[Phil O]

Apocryphal...I had to look that one up.

[Phil O]

On the flute, the whole affair moves back in your mouth somewhat, because there is no mouthpiece; your mouth is the mouthpiece.

And your throat. A flautist I know told me about how an opera singer helped her with her sound by giving her exercises to properly position her larynx. She says the improvement in her tone was amazing.

Philippe

[terrybritton]

Love this stuff, Shooshie! I'm a flute player - not "only" a keyboardist! I discovered that "whistle" technique and have peeled away the noise factor enough to use it in recordings, but did not realize it may have been improving my tone if I practiced it more diligently! And yes, the vowel shapes you form with your mouth and throat make such a world of difference. I'm still discovering things about that. (Been playing flute since third grade.)

Awesome content - glad I read through this thread!!!!

Now, can someone please let MLC know (since he won't be likely to see this post) that I'll ask fewer really simple (AKA "stupid") questions from now on? Really - I promise!!!

[Like the one about hitting "Shift-Spacebar" - where I asked why would anyone actually WANT to move their spacebar???? I think that one may have been the one that pushed him over the edge.]

Terry

PS - And before anybody asks if I'd just gotten back from DRINKING at a spacebar, the answer is no, I haven't. Geesh.

[stubbsonic]

[edited for typos & clarity]

With a brass instrument, the embouchure I use to produce notes on a mouthpiece alone, is quite different from the embouchure I use to produce notes through the horn. It has to be, because the horn itself has a resonance that vibrates my lips-- as it should be. Buzzing a mouthpiece alone requires forcing the lips to vibrate without the resonance of the horn.

For me, the higher notes are perhaps a little more similar to the buzzed mouthpiece, but for the middle and lower notes on a horn, my lips vibrate naturally and clearly with almost no pressure of the lips against each other. In fact, if I sustain a pure sounding middle range note on my trombone, and then detach the mouthpiece from the trombone while trying to continue the note, my lips stop vibrating (as they SHOULD, because the horn's resonance was contributing significantly to the system). If I buzz that same note in my mouthpiece and attach the trombone, the sound is pinched, because I was having to force my lips together slightly to make them vibrate-- because of the absence of the resonance.

I attended a workshop with Jan Kagarice a few years ago, who was illustrating these things. She was describing why she didn't have young students buzz on their mouthpieces any more. While I think there is some value in having young students buzz their mouthpieces at the beginning, and perhaps to solve particular problems, however, I would never claim that the embouchure used is to buzz is "ideal". It isn't, it's actually not similar enough to playing the horn to be useful (IMHO).

I do expect that it is different with a reed, however, the horn (saxophone, in this case) is similarly contributing resonance which should (at least theoretically) change what is required from your embouchure, oral cavity, throat, vowel, what-have-you.

I'm playing devil's advocate, here, but am also just being a little skeptical.

I wonder what the test of playing the note on the sax, and removing the mouthpiece from the horn while continuing the note, and vice versa would reveal about this technique.

[Tritonemusic]

This all seems like a bunch of hot air to me.

[stubbsonic]

This all seems like a bunch of hot air to me.

If you think so, then I'm especially impressed with your willingness and ability to "breath it all in".