What are Saxophone Reeds?

Video Transcript

Hi! My name is Leslie Burnick and I’m speaking on behalf of Expertvillage.com. Today I’m going to talk about reeds and how to put them on the saxophone. Again using a # 2½ to possibly # 3 reed is going to give you a better tone especially in the extreme ranges of the saxophone, the lowest notes and the highest notes. As a beginner just using just an inexpensive reed is fine. When you take the reed out of the case you want it to get wet in your mouth. You want to make sure that you don’t chew on it or anything because the tip of the reed is very very thin, so it’s very fragile. Reeds will tend to break a lot, as a beginner just be prepared, saxophone reeds generally are about $2 each. So you want to be careful as you are doing this. Again when you have your mouthpiece on the neck, what you want to do is if you were to lineup the reed all exact and then go to take the ligature, which holds the reed on and put that on, you are very likely to chip the edge of the reed. So you want to put the ligature on first, this ligature happens to be designed backwards. But your’s will come with the screws probably in the front. So you are going to lift up the ligature, slide the reed in and you are going to adjust the reed. Make it nice and straight, tighten up the ligature, you don’t have to over tighten. The tip of the reed should be even with the tip in the mouthpiece. So you want to make sure again without the reed you are not going to get any sound on the saxophone.So this little tiny piece of wood is very important and that’s the assembly of the reed.

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