................. I have experimented with the back of the tongue constantly elevated and other playing techniques espoused by Joe Allard such as keeping the corners relaxed and having all the pressure on the reed come from the "biting action" of the jaw, but have not experienced any success with those techniques. Of course I was taught in the Larry Teal, Eugene Rousseau style of playing and after playing as many years as I have (50 +) it is not easy to make substantial changes. It seems to me, if I want faster air, I can simply blow faster air which I can control quite well with the pressure exerted by the abdominal muscles.
I think this is a valid point. And if things work well why change them? The only reasons I can give are either because there are problems that can’t be surmounted or because of curiosity, but no one should feel compelled to change just because someone else does things differently. I would recommend the arched tongue for classical playing particularly, perhaps not for a conventional jazz tone.
To be honest I only know a little of what Allard espoused and I think perhaps the expansion of his pedagogy has moved outwards in a few slightly different directions with personal additions from the authors: David Liebman could hardly be more different from David Demsey as a player, yet there are certain basic things they all seem to agree upon.
I too have found the idea of using just the biting action to manipulate the reed a bit strange, but, I have not had the time or inclination to re-train myself to follow all of Allard's fundamentals - the walking around with just a reed on your lip for a week or so and the reed scraping etc.
encapsulated in this pdf that I posted above.
I caught on to Larry Teal and Rousseau's thoughts on embouchure in my 20s, and the ideas in the Teal book stayed with me until relatively recently. After joining Sax on the Web I started to hear more about Allard, who I had sort of rejected when 'The Master Speaks' video was released in the 80s. Particularly I took more notice because so many of the players that I was listening to seemed to have been either taught by Allard or one of his students. The mouthpiece maker Phil Barone has a good deal to say about embouchure and throat in relation to his mouthpieces and has posted some very valid exercises on SOTW. I don't entirely subscribe to his wider ideas which are fairly outspoken, but they definitely grew from Allard's teachings - that the player should allow the reed and mouthpiece to do the job they were designed to do and not get in the way of that, thus allowing the freest vibration and the true nature of the player’s expression to have full rein.
Having said all that, I think each size of sax needs a different approach, and within different disciplines this can change too.
For classical soprano and alto, I use a technique where my chin looks flat and the chin muscles do not bunch, but the bottom teeth are pressed mildly up into the bottom lip. The corners of my mouth are drawn in and down (the opposite of a smile) and the bottom lip is slightly turned inwards, only as much as the lip area really, so that the area of cushioning is quite thin. Upper teeth of course on the top of the mouthpiece. I do not move my jaw back and forward very much at all, only enough to accommodate the vibrational needs of low and high notes. The back of my tongue is gently up against the rear top molars (not pressing hard) forming an arch in the general area that the tongue touches in the ‘Kuh’ sound. Of course, people with shorter or longer tongues, wider or narrower jaws will find their own comfort zone. This approach gives me strength, stamina and lots of control and I use it exclusively on close tip mouthpieces like the Vandoren SL4 and AL4 or C* Selmers with 3.0 or 3.5 Blue Box Vandorens depending on mouthpiece and my own personal fitness. A little biting is sometimes unavoidable but inconsequential because my embouchure is pretty much in that position to start with. Some would say it’s clarinet-like, but in fact it is a little different purely because the resistance of a sax and a clarinet are different.
On classical Tenor and Bari I use an entirely different approach, basically because the necessary pressure of lip against reed is so much less on the bigger instruments (and this is probably why Bergonzi promotes the ‘no embouchure, embouchure’). This approach is closer to Larry Teal. Teeth on top of course. Lower lip is relaxed and is allowed to be fleshy by turning out in a slight pout. The pressure all around the mouthpiece comes gently and equally from the large circular muscle of the area just behind the lips – the wheel of muscle that Teal talks about. Tongue is very much the same as before, gently up against the rear top molars (not pressing hard). I will choose a set-up that I can play for long periods without biting. I have used S80 C** and D mouthpieces on the lower instruments with 2.5 or 3.0 Blue Box Vandoren reeds depending on the mouthpiece.
I used to play a lot of Funk and Rock music, so if I’m doing something that is not classical I will adjust my soprano & alto techniques to match my tenor and baritone approach. But on all sizes I will change mouthpiece to more open tipped Navarros or Select Jazz pieces and reed type to Select Jazz and I tend to put more lip out, a bigger pout if you like depending upon how much buzz and brightness I want in my sound. This can get tiring much more quickly especially on soprano.
Now to get to the nitty gritty of the arched tongue (finally!). During a protracted period of long-tone practice I discovered that to control of the upper reaches of the soprano I had not only to create extra airspeed but more importantly to change the resonant chamber in the mouth, very similar to the technique of playing altissimo. We’ve all experienced the soprano’s palm key notes cracking downwards at some time or another, and this happens when those two things are not in the right adjustment for those tones. Happily, the arched tongue controls both those things. I also discovered that if I retained an arched tongue for the whole instrument, that large leaps, movements between registers and retaining an even tone colour became straightforward. Very appropriate for classical music and effective on all sizes of sax.
The only drawback is that if I need to play sub-tone I must drop my tongue lower and make a more open shape in my mouth. Not such a problem but not consistent with the technique a lot of players use where the jaw moves back and forth a lot between registers.
Nowadays I find that if I try to play with a low tongue throughout I lack the compression of the air column that I am used to. So, in a way,
@jbtsax and I have diametrically opposite techniques because he finds retaining an arched tongue unusual. But I will admit that lately I have been wondering whether my arched tongue is so great for non-classical sounds. In a hard-bop type situation it seems to work fine, but in a situation where I would like to make a more conventional and flexible jazz sound the arched tongue can be a bit limiting. I get away with it on soprano and alto, but my tenor can sound a bit straight I think. (I probably need a Sequoia tenor rather than a Series 3
😉 ).
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