Tone Flattening top notes on soprano

[Mack]

An issue I have never successfully dealt with on soprano is the top notes being sharp - above high C. I know that sopranos are prone to this because of their size, but can anyone explain how I meant to dealing with this? 'Lipping down' on a soprano is hard because the embouchure needs to be pretty firmed up to get those notes to sound at all. I have tried lowering the tongue position but the note just fails if I drop the tongue lower.

(By the way, whistling and being aware of how your tongue position changes to lower and raise the note is very informative - once you become aware of your tongue position, try changing a note without moving it. See...?)

 

[Pete Effamy]

How sharp are they, and are they - C# through F - fairly consistent in their amount of sharpness?

Are you talking 2-3 cents or pretty horribly sharp? What horn is it? (not proof of anything either way but the Yams, Yanis and Selmers etc are going to be more trustworthy of being 'within a tolerance').

I think that you should determine (if you haven't already) that the mouthpiece is pushed onto the sax in the optimum place for tuning in general. I think most of us, me included, find that the mouthpiece should be pretty high on the cork for soprano - depending upon the width of the cork!

If the rest of the horn has consistency and these high notes are the exception then there are only three possible answers:

1) they really are sharper than the rest of the horn;
2) you're subconsciously tightening up the embouchure and/or the throat/tongue position;
3) that you're playing the rest of the horn under pitch but not these high notes.

Let's start with 3). Yep, unlikely. Your ear should tell you if the note is centered. Depending on how experienced you are you'll be able to tell if a note is not played with the right integrity, not centered. Hearing a note that is strangled by over-biting or not having a large oral cavity is probably easier. Let's assume unlikely...

2) If you play a top F, how far can you lower the pitch with tongue position/throat/lip? You should easily be able to take up the slack, and then some. So, the correction from you should be easily possible, but if the sharpness is in the region of 5 cents or more, I'd want to know if life could be made easier.

1) Do the keys open excessively and vent too much? Extra cork under the key stop will take the venting lower and there may well be some small gain here. Probably not a fix, but definitely some help.

I've just looked at your profile to see that we're talking about a Yani 991. I've had two Yani sopranos - a 991 curved back in the 1990's and a straight 901 recently. I can't get on with curved sopranos, wrong shape for me in the way it hangs from the body. Great horn though. The 901 I found to be thin and a bit small. I never had intonation problems that couldn't be conquered.

As a first experiment try mouthpiece positions to see if one position produces a decent tuning between the three E's. If there is some success, where is the horn with regard A=440?

Flatness is the true enemy, as there is very little affectation we can have towards sharpness as long as we are blowing properly etc. Sharpness is fairly easy over most of the horn, but big local differences are nasty.

Let us know the outcome of your experiment - better still, post an audio file of the problem area and the other registers as a comparison.

Cheers

P

 

[Mack]

My profile is out of date - I am having to fund my decision to have four children (don't say anything!) so now I have an Antigua soprano. Sound good though - I hear they are a good copy of a Yani.

I will have a play with your advice in mind.

I have a Jazzlab silencer somewhere - I will dig it out, but I never knew quite what I was doing with it - I don't want to learn bad habits. I play just classical music, and I have been told that the desired sound should not be achieved with movement of the jaw, so it is about internal mouthshape and tongue position I think.

Thanks for your helpful reply.

 

[Pete Effamy]

My profile is out of date - I am having to fund my decision to have four children (don't say anything!) so now I have an Antigua soprano. Sound good though - I hear they are a good copy of a Yani.

I will have a play with your advice in mind.

I have a Jazzlab silencer somewhere - I will dig it out, but I never knew quite what I was doing with it - I don't want to learn bad habits. I play just classical music, and I have been told that the desired sound should not be achieved with movement of the jaw, so it is about internal mouthshape and tongue position I think.

Thanks for your helpful reply.

Ok Mack, that does shine a bit of a light towards the horn, but experimentation is all part of playing anyway. You have to know whether it's you or the horn - or a bit of both.

 

[Pete Effamy]

I forgot to mention two other things about embouchure that play a part, especially with the soprano when all things are amplified due to its smaller size.

1) Angle of mouthpiece in mouth;

If you are 'clarinetty' and play with a 45 degree angle, the crowbar effect could have some effect, especially if the mouthpiece position on the sax is incorrect.

2) Placement of mouthpiece in mouth;

More people might disagree with me here, but I think that this is more technically correct, which usually = the most likely way of achieving the best results with ease. So: look at the mouthpiece side on, and note where the reed and mouthpiece start to part and therefore create the tip opening. Your lower lip should be just mouthpiece tip-side of this point. Some players play further back - depending on facing length, reed strength and how good their technique is. The danger of being too tip-side is that it just sounds really weedy and unfocussed.

You probably know this stuff anyway.

 

[Colin the Bear]

Try playing tunes on just the mouthpiece to educate your oral cavity.

Mouthpiece position is critical on sop. 1mm can make a vast difference.

 

[Mack]

I have often heard that mouthpiece position is critical, but I have never really understood quite what is meant by that. I push it on far enough to get low A in tune - and the other notes up and down then seem to be correct (-ish). However high C,D and E are then noticeably sharp - and they are sharp relative to their lower note (middle C - High C), not just sharp generally. Surely altering the position of the mouthpiece will do nothing to alter the tuning of the notes relative to each other...?

 

[Pete Effamy]

I have often heard that mouthpiece position is critical, but I have never really understood quite what is meant by that. I push it on far enough to get low A in tune - and the other notes up and down then seem to be correct (-ish). However high C,D and E are then noticeably sharp - and they are sharp relative to their lower note (middle C - High C), not just sharp generally. Surely altering the position of the mouthpiece will do nothing to alter the tuning of the notes relative to each other...?

I’m afraid it does. And it shows up more in the soprano, which is just one example of many that make the soprano more of a swine than the others. Presumably the low A is a typo. 😉

 

[Mack]

I have clearly never given enough thought to this - just how do you approach mouthpiece positioning then? I have always just tuned to my wife's piano - she plays a G and I play an A (no octave key, hence 'low A'). Educate me!

 

[jbtsax]

Here is a set of numbered statements that gives everything I know about soprano saxophone intonation and more. 🙂

1. The pitch of palm key notes can be lowered by lowering the height of the key opening. Too low and the tone becomes stuffy.
2. The pitch of palm key notes (and others) can be also be lowered by putting a crescent in the upper side of the tonehole to "lower" it.
3. Moving the mouthpiece on or off the cork affects the "short tube" notes the most. You can pull the mouthpiece out to bring the palm key notes in tune, and compensate by tightening the embouchure a bit on all the other notes.
4. The more conical the shape the narrower the octaves, the more cylindrical shape the wider the octaves. For this reason some sopranos (and oboes) are made with a "necked in" design where the upper bore is narrower than a perfect cone to bring the pitch of the higher notes down.

Some saxes are tuned by putting a liner in the upper part of the neck to create a narrower bore replicating a "necked in" instrument. A few techs like Curt Altarac and Mark Aaronson are even cutting a narrow "V" out of the end of the neck, squeezing the sections together and brazing them.

 

[Pete Effamy]

I don't know if this passes muster with others but I tend to tune to the open note on the horn - the C#, as it seems to be a note that affords little doctoring. I've had many students on alto that are playing with an embouchure too tight but are 'in tune', until they play the open C# which is horribly flat and will take no sharpening. The solution to this also eventually solves the tight embouchure - tune to the C# and learn to play the rest of the horn flatter - opening throat/lessening embouchure etc etc.

I also tune to the open G on the clarinet. I reference other notes too of course, but on clarinet for example, tuning to concert A (bell B) is useless as it's one of only two notes that solely vent from the bell and it most certainly is not in tune. Concert A on the oboe is apparently rubbish too, ironically. The true answer is that you eventually know your instrument and reference the points you always reference.

 

[Pete Effamy]

I looked at half of this video, and agree with most of what he says so try these things...

View: https://youtu.be/z3uxsG3Wno4

 

[Colin the Bear]

And put the tuner away innit. 😉

 

[Jazzaferri]

Interesting. Agree with tuning on B and its octave Will have to try the others