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Choosing a Mouthpiece for a Tenor Saxophone

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Part of the video series: How to Play Tenor Saxophone

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Summary: Pick the right mouthpiece for a tenor saxophone by understanding what it does and other parts involved, like baffles; learn how with tips from our expert tenor sax player in this free sax video music lesson.

Views: 8,220 | Tags: beginner, jazz, classical, instruction, playing, learn, saxophone, sax, tenor, mouthpiece, musical instruments

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About the Expert

Dave Birkin Dave Birkin has been a sought after saxophonist in the New England area for over thirty years. He presently performs regularly with the Calypso Hurricane, a ... read more

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by davedmg

I can't see or hear any of your videos! Cab you tell me what to do to allow the videos to play on my Windows XP?

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Video Transcript

Choosing a Mouthpiece for a Tenor Saxophone

Hi! This is Dave Birkin and on behalf of Expert Village, I am going to be telling you a little bit about the saxophone and in this particular clip mouthpieces and reeds. There is so many mouthpieces out here, you know, you have to try a lot of them to find out which suits you personally. Many variables in a mouthpiece. One of the most important variables is the tip opening of the mouthpiece, of course what the mouthpiece is made out is also an important consideration as well, but the tip opening will determine the strength of reed that you need to use in order to get your best sound. There is also inside here what they called the baffle and that has to do with how close the inside of the mouthpiece is to the front of the reed there. You have like what they call a high baffle which means actually a small distance between the reed and the mouthpiece inside makes a bright, focussed kind of sound, which is what the most modern players are going for these days as opposed to more diffuse, darker sound, which is more classically oriented. Now you have this thing here, it is called the ligature and that is what holds the reed onto the mouthpiece. Now we do it this way, most people have a tendency, they think it is great to put the reed on and then put the ligature over, but you are on the risk of wrecking your reed. So what I always do, put the ligature on first and slip the reed in like this, just like that and tighten it up, not too tight, just enough to hold that in there firmly, put it on your neck piece and the cork and you are ready to go.

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