Rob Buckland Saxophone Workshop

[Linky Lee]

As some of you may know I've been asked to read 2nd Baritone in the re-emerging Reading Jazz Orchestra.

This weekend there is a workshop run by our conductor and Rob Buckland who is currently a teacher in Manchester at a conservatoire teaching jazz. He is an Alto player and went through the Berkshire Young Musician scheme like I am currently doing as a child.

12 of the top 'youth' saxophonists of the county were chosen to attend today. I was included (Yay!) we had an advanced session on sight reading and some techniques Rob has found useful to bring out the human aspect of tone and control in the tone of our playing. Funnily enough many of the things he said I had recently discovered through the DVD Tris has been mentioning in various threads.

Rob had some great advice on posture that I found took affect immediately and combined with the knowledge I'm gaining from the DVD my saxophone playing has progressed as much in the last 2 days as it has in the whole 2 years I've been playing! Without exaggeration.

A notable point he mentioned was that the mouthpiece should be pointing upwards slightly as it enters your mouth, not down how many players have it, especially soprano players. this allows more control over the reed and therefore more available variation in tone.

We have a bigger session all day tomorrow with around 30 saxophonists and some more detailed work once we are divided into groups.

I'll make another post with some of the info I've found the most useful after tomorrow when we've covered everything in depth.

from the few hours I've spent with him, he seems like a very knowledgeable player and a very good teacher because he is realistic, clear, and generally funny which always helps when making a prat out of yourself.

 

[Bobby G]

I'd like to hear more about this, Lee. Combining the Alexander technique, which seems to open everything, with the correct angle of the mouthpiece as it enters the mouth appears to be crucial to producing a good airflow and tone; it's almost as if the basic crook design could use a few changes.

I'm going to try improving my posture once I get out of this horrible twisted position the bad back has put me into :cry: >.<

Painfully, and non-playingly yours, Bob

 

[Linky Lee]

The posture advice I was briefly given today for alto:

Feet should be shoulder width apart. Knees should be locked back but loose. You should be standing so that you are not on your toes or your heel and your toes should be free to waggle. apparently some people clench their toes to the ground like they are going to fall over.

The most important thing is to have your bum muscles relaxed as these contract around the lower back where your tone is produced.
Your back should be straight. Your head should be upright allowing your throat to be as open as possible.

To position the saxophone lean forward and let it dangle freely, place your hands around it and without turning it stand up straight and let the strap take the weight. Then move the crook until it points towards the centre of your mouth, adjust the angle of the mouthpiece as necessary. Do not push the saxophone out with your bottom hand as this causes undue stress and makes the angle in your mouth less. It should naturally come into your mouth pointing upwards without any body movements.

On a point about embouchure, you shouldn't need to change your embouchure if it all, the air needs to be fast at all time to make a saxophone work, dynamics are controlled via the diaphragm and similar muscles.

In regards to tonguing, really it is un-tonguing as the reed is either allowed to vibrate or not. It is the release that gets the saxophone working. It is impossible to tongue harder, the reed is either immobile or not. The articulation is controlled via diaphragm.

You can get the same sound through diaphragm as through tonguing but it's very hard work, 30% diaphragm 70% tongue is a good average balance.

When the mouthpiece is pointing downwards in your mouth it only allows air to flow onto the top of the reed because of the shape of our mouths, this gives an either on or off approach and sounds mechanical and the tone ends up sounding like a clarinet on a bad day. To make the saxophone sound lyrical and expressive you need to have the mouthpiece pointing down slightly and use a certain phonetic tonguing sound.

Try 'Ta' the sound is produced from behind the teeth. and your throat is rather closed. not so good. then try 'da' the sound is produced near the back of the mouth and the articulation is better as only the tip of the tongue is on the reed as the tongue arches. With 'ta' the tongue almost preforms a mini tongue slap. try 'la' great for legato tonguing as it's less obtrusive.
'Ha', 'Ga' are great for double tonguing. They are towards the bottom of the throat and 'da ga' makes a good double tongue with an big saxophone sound. 'ah' is the biggest as it starts at the diaphragm (especially noticeable when done loudly).

For the darkest sand biggest sounds use the phonetics that start the air stream furthest back, beware that you still need to be able to articulate and the further back it is the more air support it needs.

I'll put some more of his ideas up when we've covered them in more detail. I've found these things pretty useful though.

 

[Linky Lee]

I meant to say back problems are normally caused from bad posture on the alto from the hand positioning.

raise the shoulders as much as you can, breath in then drop the shoulders as you exhale, do at least three times, they should be level now. Drop your hands to your sides and shake them for a while. You;ll find that they make a nice relaxed curve.
Keep the head up, the shoulders down and transfer the weight to your elbows. bring your hands up to the sax and keep them in this relaxed state, you'll find you want to press the keys more towards you and that you can't feel your tendons moving like when you have flat fingers and are tense. This stops you raising one shoulder or twisting causing a strain on your neck/back which will manifest itself later.

When you sit down sit on the front of the chair with a nice upright back.

Bob recommends not using a neo-tech or elasticated sling. Not sure why though, I'll ask tomorrow. Hope that helps. Remember to breath from the diaphragm and the bottom of your lungs before the chest.

 

[phil_edwards]

Sounds like you're having a great time Lee. Enjoying and learning. keep us posted with any more tips you get.

BTW - did your Martin get over to SH yet?

regards, Phil

 

[Bobby G]

That's very good advice on posture, does Rob have any tips for those of us who have a need to groove around a bit while we're playing? After watching that rather excitable chap on Youtube recently, I'm surprised he doesn't sound crap or hurt himself a lot.

Cheers, Bob

 

[Dylan]

Linky_Lee wrote:
For the darkest sand biggest sounds use the phonetics that start the air stream furthest back, beware that you still need to be able to articulate and the further back it is the more air support it needs.

Sounds a great workshop Lee. I'm off to try the above suggestion immediately - it has bever occurred to me before.

D

 

[Linky Lee]

Yes, lots of his points were based on the fact that saxophone teaching in England is flawed.

If you were in South America you would do 2 years of clave, two years of bongo drum or something, and if you excelled rhythmically they might put something that changes pitches around your neck and in your throat.
We tend to buy a sax and a book.... Get an instrument and stop using our ears and use our eyes instead.

It's well known that we are very sight dominant, which is why tuners are so awful to use. The same applies to reading music. Memorising it is much much better, and allows you to hear yourself and play better.

He spoke about a few things I found interesting but there was much more playing involved today as we held a bit of a concert which went fantastically well and I'm now playing sole baritone for my county band instead of 2nd alto. Much more fun!

A big thing I learnt was about the diaphragm. when breathing in we shouldn't raise our shoulders and breath in deeply from the bottom of your lungs and your stomach will come out first, then your chest and finally your lower back. - This I knew. He then went on to say that the diaphragm is relaxed normally, when we exhale it contracts flat drawing in air. Ok I knew this as well. But the thing that I'd never twigged was that we can't push with our diaphragm! we push with our bum and lower back muscles combined with our stomach muscles. - This I hadn't known and neither had no one else in the room. 32 young saxophonists (and a few teachers who were equally surprised!).

He showed us a few multiphonics and some 'tricks' like using the F and E keys when playing a scoop to A to make sure you start off at a lower pitch and an typical R'n'B trill that is the A fingering with F E D and Eb key and moving your jaw back and down then back to position to perform a really strange trill.

The other thing he tried to do was to make 'vibrato' less of a thing that seems huge and really hard to master.
He got one person as a guinea pig who couldn't play vibrato. Then he made them play a straight C as consistent as they could. He then got them to do it again and pressed in and released on their chin to make them perform a vibrato., He then got the guy to do it with his own hand. And then with his muscles. and in 30 seconds the guy could perform a passable 1 speed 1 depth embouchure. Not bad.
His reccomended practise for this was to play through a scale, and have 1 note for measure. on the first beat have 1 'down - up' or 'up - down - up' if you are playing jazz. then on the second do two cycles on the third, three and so on. Then move on to the next note.
He then said write your mobile number out and do the amount of cycles in a beat for each number. This seems to practise the awkward 5, 7 and 9's.

Hope you find some more of that useful. I've certainly picked up a lot and had some decent playing time this weekend. Needless to say I'm quite tired and plan on sleeping very soundly tonight.

 

[Bobby G]

This is good stuff Lee, especially having the breathing technique put so concisely. Does the amount you use the bum muscles mean that sitting down to play is not really a very good idea?

In some ways I must be doing ok as I don't use a tuner or written music. It's ears and memory for me 😉

Have fun with that bari - the state I'm in at the moment I can just about manage a soprano 🙁

Cheers, Bob

 

[Linky Lee]

The bum is supposed to be completely relaxed. I think it may cause some problem sitting down as the muscles have to curve, whereas when standing they are straight. It shouldn't cause a big problem or anything but you will probably find your sound is fuller when you are standing upright and can use your body physically to it's potential.

I think moving around is fine, though everything technique wise is related to classical music, there is no technique for jazz except the general put saxophone in mouth and blow air down it while remembering to breath concept.

He went through the differences in mouthpieces as well.

A pupil was very good and performed a jazz piece on a 4c and it was good. The Rob got him playing as jazz-like as he could on his set-up and he was never going to get any further. He was doing all the right things and bending all the notes in the right place the right amount etc. It's just the mouthpiece was suppressing him.

A classical and beginners mouthpiece is designed to make the saxophone play as evenly as possible in tone across the whole range so that it blends in with the piano, flutes etc. That naturally do this a lot better than a saxophone. He was trying to get all these jazz inflections out and the mouthpiece was basically saying no. I don't do that.
He gave him a link 5* and a softer reed and immediately the inflections came alive and it sounded more like a jazz man playing jazz, not a classical person playing jazz.

music is like a language, you communicate with it. Jazz and classical are like accents, classical is Royal Berkshire, jazz is Manchester, If someone from Manchester opens their mouth to speak in Berkshire they immediately stand out. The same goes for music. If a classical player or classical set-up goes to play jazz it is very distinguishable from a jazz player or jazz set-up. And the obviously you have sub-accents for dixieland and swing etc.

We actually ran out of time and never done anything on improvisation. Though we did cover some saxophone quartet stuff that was intended. The structure was very free, we knew what we had to get done and that it would only take 2 hours, but we had 5 today so we filled it in with whatever felt best.

One of his best points that stuck with me was that everything is made inside of us before our embouchure, the saxophone is a lump of metal that changes the pitch. That's it.

He said that jazz players tend to have less bottom lip than classical players, which was interesting as when you have enough bottom lip all the muscle is on the inside and you can apply a lot more varied amount of pressure than with very little lip as it's either supporting or not. I'm personally still applying all the tension from the sides and keeping the bottom lip constant throughout the different registers with no embouchure changes, until I hit the altissimo which we again didn't have time for.

 

[Linky Lee]

Another few mad points I just remembered is that all Selmer, Yanigasawa, Yamaha and most modern horns are made to A=442.

Most of the world play with A=442 though we in the UK use A=440.

A problem with tuning on the saxophone is that concert A is our F# on alto a note nearly always sharp on every saxophone, so we tune that in and then the middle range of the sax is all completely out! F is a very stable note as it is the first harmonic of Bb so tuning to concert Ab would be much better, and this suits the Bb instruments such as the tenor sax well.

When tuning two instruments together, don't tune primarily to the same note, you can be quite a lot out of tune for it to register in your brain, if you tune in fifths you notice it a lot more and there is a finer line of accuracy.

 

[tris]

Linky while there is no new information for me per say... I have to add the following points.

Relaxation.. requires balance. Keeping toes relaxed keeps tension out of bum.

If you have not got good posture all the time you will not have it with the horn... you have to work on it 24/7

Same goes for total relaxation.

BTW I do not advocate the tapping of feet for timing purposes either

Less lip on the reed the better. You turn it down via the diagram. less lip on the reed does not mean more control.. you should not be pushing on the reed anyway?

Ornett Coleman does not just any tongue articulation I belive.

PS if you are doing any "Pop" sound drills you should not be tonguing!

Next time the American idol auditions are on TV listen to what happens when they "misuse" their bodies.

 

[Linky Lee]

Sorry I didn't understand "you turn it down via the diaphragm". turn what down? The diaphragm only controls the air intake I can't see how it could turn anything down?

You have to apply pressure via the bottom lip to be able to raise and flatten the pitch without changing the tone. When I play I have as little pressure on the reed as possible, it is a support to channel the air into the mouthpiece. I never apply more pressure than this until I get into the altissimo range. Though I apply less pressure and lower the jaw to flatten the pitch.

 

[tris]

Hi Linky..

Read back what I wrote: confused me as well.. sorry about that!

I was in a bad mood at the time and I have come over sounding a bit arsy which was not my intention. Apologies!

I was saying that I have achieved the best results by using as little lip as possible in order to allow the reed to vibrate as freely as possible. (Jazz VS classical amounts of lip.)

With the Open embouchure as I understand the bottom lip is supported by the sides of the mouth. Thus you would not need a lot of lip over the teeth / on the reed as you are not using it it'self to expert the pressure... it has a passive role.

I do not agree with your statement about applying pressure with the bottom lip not effecting the tone.

"You have to apply pressure via the bottom lip to be able to raise and flatten the pitch without changing the tone. "

More pressure makes for a thinner tone, in tune or not. More pressure on the reed results in a smaller opening into the sax and less air getting in.

Now the key to that tonal uniformity as I understand it and I could be wrong is manipulation of the tone / dynamics of each note via the direction and speed of the airflow? Ie Diaphragm control and Oral cavity shape?

Thus if you have to "lip" a sax with dodgey intonation you have to even up tone and dynamics each note that you have to bring to pitch. This is done via oral cavity shape and breath support / air speed.

Am I right or are my wires crossed?

PS I am debating I hope you do not think I was arguing. Being self taught is difficult in that I worry that I am making massive mistakes!

This kind of thing sets things straight for me so i can focus and move on if you follow. :?

 

[Linky Lee]

Hey no worries, We're all learning as we go and playing and listening is the best way to learn. Most of the stuff I've written in this thread is very new to me and as such I probably only really understand the points that I have been able to explain clearly. I've spent the last three days doing nothing much but playing around with these ideas and seeing what really works and understanding the physical aspects behind them.

The tone is controlled as you say via the oral cavities but most definatly not by the diaphragm.

The diaphragm is oval shaped in an arch kind of manner when it is relaxed. As you know a muscles can only push or pull. The diaphragm pulls, when it tenses it flattens out. This allows you to breath in lots of air in short amounts. It doesn't help in the slightest with pushing air out of your lungs.

more pressure makes for a thinner tone: I don't strictly agree with this. First we need to know how a reed is made, the job it does and how it produces a sound.

all reeds by one manufacturer are cut on the same machine. They are all shaped exactly the same, because of the inconsistencies they are then tested for amount of flexibility and graded.
The job a reed does is to create the sound produced by the airflow within yourself. It does this not by vibrating, but by hitting against the mouthpiece. If a reed were to vibrate in the air it doesn't make a sound.

If there is more pressure on a reed it is vibrating faster as it won't be vibrating over the same length as without pressure. This is what increase the pitch. Releasing pressure enables the reed to vibrate at it's slowest speed giving it's flattest sound. We all play somewhere in the middle, generally on the higher side.

To play a saxophone in tune, the pressure your bottom lip exerts must be constant for every note. The air support and throat controls the evenness of tone. The saxophone then changes the pitch by the set amount depending upon which keys are pressed, nothing more.

F# is nearly always sharp on a sax so you should slacken off a wee bit for this note, but there really shouldn't be any embouchure adjustments. You can also raise and lower pitch by using your throat and tongue, though this can change the tone quite drastically.

 

[tris]

Linky_Lee wrote:

The job a reed does is to create the sound produced by the airflow within yourself. It does this not by vibrating, but by hitting against the mouthpiece. If a reed were to vibrate in the air it doesn't make a sound.

Hi Linky,

Yes, I agree with all the aspects of from the "playing" angle but ...

A reed vibrating in mid air moves air molecules and thus creates a sound. Whether we can hear it or not is a different matter.

The vibrating reed acts as a door that opens and shuts the MP window allowing pulses of air to enter the sax a a frequency that corresponds to that of the reeds.

In terms of the open embouchure this is an important concept as sound and tone production is all about controlling the air that enters the horn.

A tighter lip increases the frequency of vibration and thus the frequency of the pulsating air entering the sax. Higher frequency vibrations sound thinner to the human ear....... thus at "sax entry" you are automatically starting off with something thinner.

Can you see where I am going with this? I think it makes sense :S

Which makes me wonder why on Alto are they made to A442Hz and MP still work at 880 not 884? or do they? HMMMMM

 

[Linky Lee]

Yes, I can see you your point, and understand it. I was kind of half there in my previous post "Releasing pressure enables the reed to vibrate at it's slowest speed giving it's fattest sound"

I don't know about why the mouthpieces work all over the frequencies, I think we just adapt as necessary. You'll of noticed when you play the mouthpiece on it's own you can get huge ranges from it. It is supposed to sound at concert G, now I know I can't hit that bang on every time, first time.

 

[tengu01]

This is a really interesting thread. Congratulations Linky on being selected for the course. Some of the stuff you've posted has given me much food for thought. However, on the reed and pressure thing, I am more inclined to agree with tris' observations.

The reed vibrates against the mouthpiece. If you apply more pressure with your bottom lip, doesn't this restrict the distance the reed can vibrate across?

I think there are two kinds of pressure which need to be distinguished

1. Air Pressure, which is what starts/keeps the reed vibrating and helps keeps a solid tone. Push from the lungs/stomach/diaphram to maintain a constant fast airstream.

2. Pressure exerted against the reed by the lower lip. A certain amount of pressure is required to seal the mouthpiece in your gob. However, beyond a certain point the pressure exerted pushes the reed closer to the mouthpiece itself, restricting the amount of vibration and space to vibrate.

This is why biting thins out the tone because too much pressure is being put on the reed, restricting its ability to vibrate. As the pressure increases, it eventually shuts off the sound by forcing the reed to remain fully against the mouthpiece.

What does everyone think?

 

[tris]

More pressure on the reed pushes it up against the mouthpiece facing.

The result of this will be a shortening of the reed. It is easier to see with a MP in your hand. (Like fretting a note on a guitar producing a higher pitch as opposed to the open string.)

In simple terms: more air = sound; so if the reed is shorter the amount of the "MP window" in use is smaller and thus, less air is able to enter. (Plus greater resistance!)

Now we are all told that play an A880 for the alto on the MP alone for our starting point.

Saxes are made to play at A442 from a MP input of A880????

A884 makes more sense.

It is a sax, not MP design issue or are Selmer's etc designed for an A884 and most people are making adjustments via MP position on the crook? :cry:

It is not that I have any intonation or tone issue here it is purely for curiosity!

 

[Linky Lee]

most of the world play at A442.

It's only really in the UK where we play at A440.

We are all making alterations in pitching when we play so that we can play with other people in the UK. If you were playing in France you would be tuning to A442. And your saxophone would stand a better chance of being bang in tune.