Finding your own sound (voice)!

iceman said:

Hey wuz up folks? I have been playing the sax for about 9 yrs now. I am on a yanagisawa metal 7 mouthpiece with rico jazz selects 2m. I am trying to find my own personal sound. I notice that I have a pretty bright sound when I am playing. The thing is I have a feeling that I tend to sound like most other players around my skill level. I am trying to get my tone to the point where people can say hey that is Iceman (just using my username as an example). I am trying to get a sound between Dave Koz and Kirk Whalum. I have been playing along with people, but I don't know how much that is helping. People have told me I sound nice. I am just trying to get my personal sound to where I can be satisfied.

Click to expand...

I don't have the credentials of just about everyone in these boards, but my advice is to not over-spiritualize the concept of developing your own sound. Work on boring long tones every day and you will develop a good tone quality, then you can go from there. You have your own sound, whether you like it or not. It's pretty much just like talking or singing, you have your own voice. You take voice lessons and do vocal excercises to hone your skills, but your sound will always be yours. Of course, youcan be a sound-alike and come close to whoever you're trying to copy, but it will not be your own voice because there's always an extra process involved in producing the sound, and that is to check to make sure it sounds like whoever you're copying.