Big Ol' Shoes - Kirk Whalum at 2. Algarve Smooth Jazz Festival (2017)

Album: Roundtrip (2006) / www.kirkwhalum.com / The Band: Mark Jaimes (Guitar), Westley Joseph (Drums), Orefo Orakwue (Bass), Ron Reinhardt (Keyboards) / www.smoothjazzfestival.de

[@evertonnascimento9878]

Kirk is Best for me, sax monster

[@johnwilly1068]

Love the sound

[@joeb1931]

Beautiful sax player

[@Ugo392]

He sounds amazing with a standart 120 euro vandoren mouthpiece meanwhile my ass is sweating when i'm trying to sound good on a 600 euro mouthpiece :)

[@dougmildram3032]

Seriously curious as a former music education degree holder and sax lover... What does the pricey mouthpiece give you, and doesn't the choice of reed matter a lot too? I remember an oboe genius spending an hour or so prepping his double reed, scraping it and massaging sort of with a blade or something. Double reed is obviously quite different and a lot smaller.

[@Ugo392]

@@dougmildram3032 Unfortunately quality craftmanship comes with a price. Usually the dimensions of a mouthpiece (baffle, chamber, facing curve etc.) define the characteristics of the sound. Expensive mouthpieces have exceptional quality control standarts and most of them are finished by hand (theo wanne, jody jazz etc.) so you can be sure that it has 100% flat table and even side rails on both sides of the mouthpiece which allows reed to seal perfectly. Legendary players like Kirk can sound amazing on a 30$ mouthpiece with uneven rails and a table which is not 100% flat. They can compensate it with their highly developed technique and experience. Usually they always sound like themselves with every mouthpiece, we amateurs usually sound like the mouthpiece itself :) Pro. players can even play a gig with a slightly leaking saxophone. To see the real difference about mouthpieces, you should listen an amateur playing a basic and an expensive mouthpiece. Reed is another story, a reed can change sound and playability a lot but i can say double reeds are a lot more responsive to smaller adjustments. Some sax players also adjust the reed by scraping etc. which is really time consuming. I myself just throw away if a reed is not playing well or sometimes i just put a synthetic (legere) reed on.

[@jonathanaragon795]

Muy bueno