Pinching off high D#, E, E# on tenor

[tonal ambition]

Background:

I play a Buescher Big B with a Brilhart Ebolin opened up to 0.095" with a medium lay, using a Fibracell medium soft reed. I get a tone that I like very much. Also, I can jump octaves up and down with the speaker key without changing my embouchure, and have only a slight hesitation going down an octave so I think my embouchure is OK.

The problem:

The nice tone disappears when I go to the high palm keys. What comes out is buzzy and thin, and when I lip up to clean up the sound, I jend up strangling the reed entirely and nothing comes out.

Possible solutions I can think of:

1) stiffer reed
2) wider mouthpiece (0.120" or so)
3) play with my toungue position while keeping my embouchure the same

What do you people think?

[MS]

Reed sixe change may help. However, starting with A2 relax your jaw and blow a faster air stream to see if you can get more reed vibration (blowing faster air and voicing should help maintain your tuning when you relax your jaw). If this doesn't work, you may need to try a reed either slightly harder or another one of the same size. There may be enough difference in a fresh reed to help. Good luck.

[tonal ambition]

Reed size change may help. However, starting with A2 relax your jaw and blow a faster air stream to see if you can get more reed vibration (blowing faster air and voicing should help maintain your tuning when you relax your jaw). If this doesn't work, you may need to try a reed either slightly harder or another one of the same size. There may be enough difference in a fresh reed to help. Good luck.

What specifically to you mean by "voicing"?

[MS]

Voicing relates to poisition of the oral cavity, vocal tract, and tongue position. Often an exercise used to develop voicing is overtones. There are several books on this subject, notably Sigurd Rascher's 'Top Tones for the Saxophone" and Don Sinta's "Voicing, an approach to the third octave".

In the old forum (now archive) in the section "Altissimo and Multiphonice" are some threads relating to overtones and voicing. One that I recall that might be helpful is something like "it's all in the tongue position".

Voicing is often helpful in developing the Altissimo register, but can be very usefull in improving fullness of tone, especially in the palm keys.

Paul Coats has written articles for the beginner's corner on the old forum main page. In one article he describes playing a pitch on the mouthpiece alone (alto concert A=880, tenor concert G). This esercise may help with the response and fullness of the palm keys. Check it out. Good luck. :D