Disassembly of an Alto Saxophone

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Leslie Burnick and I’m speaking on behalf of Expertvillage.com. Today I’m going to talk about how to disassemble the saxophone. When you have finished practicing, of course you had your neck strap on, make sure you unhook that, the most important thing to do is to take the reed off first. Again you are going to just lightly unscrew that, take the reed off, you can just wipe it off a little bit in your mouth, put it back in whatever reed case that you have. Then you are just going to gently twist back and forth to take the mouthpiece off. You may have some kind of a swab such as this to dry off the inside of that. Then your saxophone should come with a mouthpiece cap that just helps protect the mouthpiece. Then you are going to loosen the neck, take that off, again you can swab the inside of that as well and there is a place in your case for that. Then with the body itself you will drop the weighted end generally into the top, it seems to work better this way. Then the weight comes out of this end, you pull the swab through, so that dries out the body of the saxophone. Your sax should have come with a little end cap, make sure you put that back on, and you put that in your case. And then you always want to remember to take your neck strap off. Which many people forget and like a student you leave and you’ll be walking down the hall to your next class and realize you still have your neck strap on. So make sure you take that off and put that in your case as well. "