Saxophone Mouthpiece Exercise Tutorial by Saxophonist, performer and teacher Amonn AL-Mahrouq

The objective of this exercise is to put you in contact with the muscles that control your air stream and teach you the coordinated movements of them enabling absolute pitch and control at any volume. Along with the muscular coordination and control, we need to find a way to remember positions of those muscles as to enable their recall when practising.

This exercise is important for developing your sound, pitch and dynamic range.

Exercise

• Set up your mouthpiece, as if you are ready to play, without attaching it to your horn
• Blow into your mouthpiece, producing a whistling sound.
• Keep your hands away from the back of your mouthpiece.
• Find a pitch which is comfortable for you and begin to reproducing that pitch. Try different pressures on the reed until you are able to successfully copy the pitch.
• The lower pitches are achieved by loosening the pressure of your bottom lip, thus pitch is controlled by your bottom lip.
• Then glissando (using the mouthpiece only) from the highest note you can to the lowest and back again.

Repeat this exercise until you feel your tongue and throat move into different positions for the different pitches. Remember always support your sound with diaphram pressure and muscles

Try playing scales and pieces on your mouthpiece, then you can try playing pieces on just your Saxophone Mouthpiece!