When it comes to producing a great saxophone sound, you want to keep in mind that there are three main components that have to work in balance in order for the whole machine to work, in order for the saxophone to work. And these are your ambusher, the diaphragm, and the throat. Today we're talking about the ambusher and the three most common mistakes that students take to make when it comes to sound and what you can do to have a better sound and more relaxed sound essentially sound better, without having to put that extra physical effort into it. So you ready? Let's get started. Hey Martino here at the London saxophone school bringing you new tutorials every week on how to improve your saxophone skills and become a better musician. I've run the London saxophone school in London where we do classes on samples, workshops, events, concerts. So if you're new to the channel and want to see more online content just consider subscribing and hit the little bell. I've talked thousands of students over the years out of which hundreds are beginner intermediate players. And I've noticed how these players tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over when it comes to ambusher and when it comes to producing a great sound and actually they struggle in recognizing when they are hitting that sweet spot. So today we're talking about these three main things that are the most common things. The first mistake that I see in students is related to the amount of mouthpiece that you have in your mouth. You want to know something. Depending where you put your mouth on the mouthpiece you're going to get a different sound. So the way I teach this is you want to be able to tell and to know what sound you get depending where you put the mouth. Let me explain it. Let's do it together. So we got to know the extremes. We got to know what happens what sound you get in the whole register of the mouthpiece. So let's do this together. Try playing at the very very tip of the mouthpiece and see what sound you get. You do it first and then I'll do it. So your turn. Okay and now I'll try it. I'm going to play the very tip. Very tip. Okay. So that's one extreme. Now let's go all the way in. So everything in your mouth, all the mouthpiece in your mouth. You do it first and then I'll do it. Your turn. Excellent. And now my turn. So everything in. Okay. So knowing this, we know that here at the tip we have no sound or very weak sound. And here we have a sound but it's pretty scratchy horrible. Hard to just doesn't work. Okay. So now that you know the extremes your brain will go like okay here doesn't work here doesn't work. Let's go. Let's go halfway between the two. So now go around. It's not halfway. It's more like two thirds in just and just play. Sorry. Your turn first. Excellent. And now I turn. And that works. Okay. So remember you want to know the extremes. You want to know what happens at the tip and you want to know what happens if you have the whole mouthpiece to your mouth because then the brain will process that in a different deeper way. And then when you go to the sweet spot you'll you just have to fine tune that and you get the perfect sound. Now the second thing that happens a lot with students is related to the amount of pressure from your lips to the mouthpiece. There's basically two things that can happen. You either are doing too much with your lips or you're doing too little. And the aim here is to find the right balance between the two things. Let's look at both. So if you're doing too much this is what happens. I'm going to play a long note and then I'm going to start to squeeze my muscles over here and see the sound that I get. Okay. So in this case I have my my beautiful note coming out and then as soon as I start squeezing with my muscles you know there's less air going through the horn so there's less sound coming out. Check this out. Pretend this is the mouthpiece and this is the reed. Okay. And this is my mouth. Can you see me? Okay. So when I produce a normal note I have the right amount of pressure from my lips so everything works and it flows. As soon as I start to start to put more pressure extra pressure from my lips here what happens I reduce the amount of space here right so the reed kind of goes up a little bit and I have less space for air to go through and that's when I get that weird strangled sound. It's like now don't love but what happens if you take your hand that you start pressing against your throat and then you try to talk. You get a different voice and it actually kind of hurts but it's the same principle you know if you apply pressure here there's less air going through so you have less voice. Here the same thing if you apply too much pressure from your lips you're gonna get less sound in your horn. Okay. On the other hand if your arm pressure is too loose let's see what happens. So you need some kind of tension some kind of pressure to put the reed in vibration. Okay. If there's no if there's no pressure on the reed then there's nothing nothing is gonna happen. So as soon as you drop this you start to have your pitch going down until you get nothing. Okay. So if your sound if your intonation is pretty wobbly and if your notes are sounding really weird then it might be because your ambush or it's not tensing enough. Now the third thing that we're gonna talk about is related to the chin. Chin pressure and chin position. If you take a look at these pictures from my students you can see that they actually do something like this. Okay they play like this. You know see how much I'm doing my chin over here okay. That is a common thing that happens with beginner some intermediate students as well and so we need to bring this down in order for the reed to vibrate. Everything we've seen so far is about letting the reed vibrate properly. If you put too much tension one way or the other either with here or too much pressure from the lips then the reed is gonna say you know what I don't like that and then a warm vibrate proper and we'll give you a good sound. Firstly I need to ask you something are you able to do this kind of movement here? Put it down in the comments if you want to so I can actually know and help you out. So if you are able to do that awesome next time you play be sure to bring this a little bit lower. Okay but what happens if you're not able to do that? There's two ways I teach this. Firstly bite your lip and then bring this up and down. Okay if that is too hard we can do this bite your lip then squeeze your chin and then with your finger pull it down. This is what I mean. As you pull it down with your finger you still try to resist the movement of the finger so this is basically still engaged and that is only to increase awareness of the brain so those are the two ways you can do that to learn that because once this is a little bit lower and a bit more relaxed the reed would have more space to vibrate. It's like asking a drummer check it out. If you ask the drummer go like Mr. drummer can you play can you crash that symbol? The drummer goes like yeah sure but there's a little trick you put a little blanket on top of that symbol and you ask the drummer to play it but because they had there's the blanket on the symbol the drummer won't be able to have a full sound. As soon as you take the blanket halfway out or halfway or halfway off or or all the way off then the symbol will actually be able to vibrate again. Same thing here if you do this you know it's like having it's like playing with a blanket on top of the symbol as soon as you take off the blanket and you bring this down then the reed will be able to vibrate properly. Now everything we talked about is all about letting the reed vibrate freely. If there's anything blocking the air going through the horn then you're basically going to be reducing the amount of pace between the reed and the and the mouthpiece so there's going to be less air going through which translates into having into you having less sound. Remember the embouchure is just a pure point of contact between you and the sax and this okay that's it okay so you just want to let the air that you're producing go into the horn freely without any kind of obstacle. If you want to see more videos on how to play with a great sound check out this video here on how to play with an open thrill which is a really important component of some production and also you can watch this video here on embouchure basics. Question of the day what is your main problem when it comes to embouchure what have you tried what how have you corrected it have you succeeded are you having any troubles with specific notes. Let me know in the comments below and I'll give you tips on how to fix that also you can join our private Facebook group called saxophone masters where I'll be there personally replying to to comments so you're free to post comments questions and also videos so for the community and for myself to help you out. If you're new to the channel consider subscribing and hit the little bell and I'll see you next week. Embouchure mistakes intro take one. Run that if what? Where is it?