The Perfect Saxophone Embouchure: Lessons from Dave Liebman, Wayne Shorter + the Nutcracker Exercise

[@nickmartorano6766]

VERY USEFUL tips! Thank you for the great video!

[@ThomasHähnlein]

Glad it’s useful to you!

[@llm468]

Thanks dear friend

[@maf9314]

You have a beautiful rich sound !

[@ThomasHähnlein]

Thank you! :) Hope you enjoyed the video

[@maf9314]

@@ThomasHähnlein yes i did. Which mouthpiece are you using?

[@ThomasHähnlein]

@@maf9314 glad you did. I’m using a Matt Marantz NY legacy mouthpiece

[@Guy-Mor]

Hi Thomas, It looks like you just let the mouthpiece rest naturally on your bottom lip without pressing it onto your bottom teeth am I seeing that right? Do you focus more on keeping the bottom lip relaxed and using the muscles around your mouth to create the sound? I’ve seen some people say the bottom lip should go directly over the teeth, so I wanted to double-check your method. Thanks for the awesome video!

[@ThomasHähnlein]

Hi Guy, I'm glad you like the video! I'd also recommend that your bottom teeth are in contact with your lower lip. As for the use of muscles: Ideally you should use as little tension as possible (at least that's one approach, but one I believe in pretty strongly). Try to use the muscles of the lower jaw that you also use for chewing to put the small but necessary pressure on the reed. The muscles around your mouth are not much needed. Anyway I'd try to not focus too much on those things. I'd rather recommend doing a few of the exercises I show in my videos, that should already help point in the right direction (f.e. the ultimate embouchure challenge). Hope that helps!

[@balamor1]

¡Graciaaaaaas! :3

[@w2tty]

Thank you for all your videos. I am finding them very helpful. One question is, with the lip out, how much pressure (if any) to apply.

[@ThomasHähnlein]

Hi Paul, I'm glad the videos are helping you! The less pressure you're able to apply, the better. Less pressure leads to more relaxed playing which we should always strive for. Hope that helps!

[@Nestor_Fernandez]

Hi Thomas, thanks for the excellent video. I have a question on this. Joshua Redman changes his embouchure on the video taking more of the reed inside the mouth for higher notes and less for lower notes and opening his throat as he goes down. But this seems to contradict the advice on keeping the same embouchure for the whole range. Could you clarify what you would recommend?

[@ThomasHähnlein]

Hi Nestor, thanks for your comment! Glad you enjoyed the video. Yeah indeed this is a bit of a tricky one. Maybe I can explain it like this: in general the ideal is to have an embouchure that is moving as little as possible. so f.e. if you play a scale from c' to c''' you don't want to move your embouchure much. But for certain manipulations of the sound you need to move your embouchure more. In the clip Joshua Redman is playing up to the very, very high register. For this register to sound good he moves the embouchure (especially rolling out his lower lip) to make it sound better. It's important to keep in mind that this is all no law but rather a guideline. There's also a good exercise in octaves to practice a steady embouchure, maybe I'll get to upload a video about this at some point.

[@Nestor_Fernandez]

Thank you for the detailed reply!!

[@Bestofevermix]

Hi Thomas, thank you for your very useful tips in your videos. My beginner question is : when you push out the lower lip, do you still have a small part of your lip between the reed and your teeth or your are entirely supporting the reed with your lower lip ?

[@ThomasHähnlein]

Hi Stanislav, I'm glad you like the videos! The lower lip is definitely still in-between the teeth and the reed and the most support comes from the teeth, therefore there's no space in-between the lower lip and the lower teeth. I'd recommend to also discuss these topics in a face-to-face lesson with a teacher, especially when you're new to the saxophone. The whole thing is a little bit tricky and that can help you avoid any mistakes that could happen when you're trying it without instant feedback from a professional.

[@Bestofevermix]

Thank you for your kind reply

[@lawrenceda8877]

Work for me in auto bit tenor, i can't play G2, it overtones to d3, same with d2 overtones to something close to A3..

[@BsktImp]

Why does sax embouchure differ from clarinet, particularly the lower lip? Is it harder to get a sax to speak?

[@ThomasHähnlein]

Hi Silacai, the main difference is that the clarinet needs a firmer embouchure, especially when playing classical music since you want to have a very focused, clean sound without any noise from the air. Some people also put out their lower lip a bit more, some not at all. Having the lower lip further out can make it a bit more difficult to achieve the firm embouchure

[@vivianastridge2167]

There has been and is much said about a natural position for the mouthpiece. As all or most players use a teeth on top embouchure, it is totally impossible to position the mouthpiece in a supposedly natural position. One so called authority suggests that the mouthpiece be inserted as one would insert a drinking straw. This is as fine as it could get, but who in the world inserts a drinking straw so that it is supported by the lower lip and the top teeth? Drinking straws are inserted so that they are entirely supported by the lips and not merely that but the straws are supported entirely during the process of drinking by just the two lips.This is the natural position of the straw and this is the only position that may be referred to as a natural position. The natural position of the mouthpiece is that used by Adolph Sax himself and the hundreds of players after him till thee late thirties when this mad quest for a more powerful sound took hold of players. How about a word about Jerry Bergonzi’s No Embouchure Embouchure or the great Paul Desmond’s Fake Embouchure that this great player claimed to use. I am sure that millions of players and interested would like nothing more than an elucidation of these three enigmatic assertions, the Natural Embouchure, The No Embouchure, Embouchure and the Fake Embouchure.