Mouthpieces Mouthpieces, Temperature & Expansion

Something occurred to me this evening.

We all know that no matter how long you've played an instrument for, you will still have good and bad days. It is, quite simply, the way it is.

Just before the flu kicked in I had a great day of playing. My tone was lovely (for me), there were almost no squeaks at all, I was able to relax and enjoy. Tonight, it felt like I was having to work a lot harder to achieve far less.

Obviously, as a beginner consistency won't be what it should be but this felt like I was playing a completely different instrument. Then something dawned on me - during my previous practise session the room I was in was a lot cooler than it was tonight. My mouthpiece is the standard Bari that comes with the Trevor James Classic, which is, as I'm sure you all know, made of plastic with a reasonably small tip opening, although I have no idea precisely what opening it actually is.

What you may or may not know, however, is that plastic expands more than other materials when heated. Given that the tip opening on my Bari is already quite small, the slightest change in temperature is going to noticeably affect the plastic mouthpiece's tip opening - isn't it?

My (limited) experience certainly seems to confirm this. Last weekend, when the heating wasn't on and this room was much cooler, the sax felt free flowing. Tonight, it's a lot warmer and the sax feels strangled.

Given that everything else is equal, am I right?
 
Never thought of that before. I've experienced it because of mood, different reeds, a reed collapsing, taking in a different amount of mouthpiece, neck strap adjustmentioned (probably the biggest variable after reeds).

What's a given is that as the sax warms up it plays sharper.

My guess is that it's reed related, or the angle of your mouth/mouthpiece.
 
I used the online calculator on the link I posted above - depending on the type of plastic, a ten degree change in temperature would result in the mouthpiece changing in length by less that a ten thousandth of an inch
 
In my experience, the best way to achieve consistency as a developing player is to get a "fixed length" neck strap like the old leather style with holes and a buckle and a mouthpiece patch on top of the mouthpiece with a groove for where the top teeth should go. These factors along with good posture will insure the same amount of mouthpiece in the mouth and the same mouthpiece angle.

If sometimes your sax has a lot more resistance than at other times using the same reed, it may be because of a small leak in one of the palm key, high E, or high F# pads that comes and goes depending upon how the key closes. Or it may be due to a leak in the neck tenon that comes and goes depending upon the position of the neck.
There is no physical or acoustical reason I have found that would cause a "cold" instrument to play more freely than a warmed up one.
 
Being a little OCD I try to keep the sax absolutely identical every time I play it - strap at the same height, lig in the exact same place etc. - so that if I change something, I know what effect that single change has had. So when an otherwise identical sax was suddenly harder to play I started to look for what could have changed and the physical temperature of the sax was the most obvious thing as the room it's kept in was now around 10C warmer than the previous practise session.

But then I thought, players in steaming hot venues, under the ferocious heat of a full lighting rig would barely be able to get a note out. To which I argued that they won't be using plastic mouthpieces and will have far larger tip openings.

In short, proof that a little knowledge can be a bad thing. I have since worked out the amount the mouthpiece would expand and it's 0.16% (I think), which equates to a narrowing of the tip opening on a plastic 3C mouthpiece of 0.0019mm. I don't think that's going to produce the problem I described above. 😉

Ah, which is the same conclusion @altissimo has come to, too.

@jbtsax, I think you may have nailed it! My left hand, which is partly paralysed, does occasionally rest on the palm keys accidentally. When I first started, this was what was causing most of the squeaks. I thought I'd cured the problem but I guess it's just far more subtle now.
 
@jbtsax, I think you may have nailed it! My left hand, which is partly paralysed, does occasionally rest on the palm keys accidentally. When I first started, this was what was causing most of the squeaks. I thought I'd cured the problem but I guess it's just far more subtle now.
FWIW, my hand is fine but I have a tendency to do the same thing. It's easy to forget.
 
I've been playing for about 20 years and my sax plays slightly differently every time I pick it up
It's just one of the delights of playing an acoustic instrument - if I wanted boring consistency, I'd play a digital electronic keyboard instead
 
In short, proof that a little knowledge can be a bad thing. I have since worked out the amount the mouthpiece would expand and it's 0.16% (I think), which equates to a narrowing of the tip opening on a plastic 3C mouthpiece of 0.0019mm. I don't think that's going to produce the problem I described above. 😉

The tip opening shouldn't narrow if the mouthpiece expands, it should increase. When it expands, the dimensions get bigger, including the distance from the plane defined by the table to the tip some distance away from it. It increases because the plastic at the sides (the walls at the sides of the lay, ending in the rails) expands, causing the tip to move up if the table was lying face downwards on a flat surface.
 

Similar threads... or are they? Maybe not but they could be worth reading anyway 😀

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