Embouchure for Beginning Saxophone Players

Video Transcript

"Another really, really important part of playing the saxophone is how you carry the saxophone. How you play it in your mouth. It is called the embouchure. You want to have a real tight embouchure. If you are in a band class or any kind of beginning lessons or anything, it is real easy to puff your cheeks when you are playing the saxophone which is incorrect. Like this. You don't have any control over anything that comes out of your saxophone when you do that. It looks really bad. There are a million reasons not to puff your cheeks. Basically the embouchure goes like this: Your bottom lip curls over your bottom teeth like this and the saxophone sits on the bottom lip. Your top teeth come down onto the top of the mouth-piece and you close your mouth over that. So you are basically holding it in your mouth like this. And the corners of your mouth need to be real tight so no air escapes out of there. When you are blowing through, you don't want any air leaking out of the sides, it makes a funny noise and nobody likes that. And also, it affects your pitch if you are not tightened enough. If you have a loose embouchure you are going to get a really flat sound. You know, if you tightened up you'd get a good clear sound. So your embouchure is the heart of all the stuff that comes out of your saxophone. If you have got a bad embouchure you are going to have a bad sound from the sax. So make sure you tighten up and don't puff your cheeks."