Do you play flute? can't even bring a flute? Why not shove a mouthpiece in your pack?? There's really nothing else that's going to even come close to actual playing, even if it's like 20 minutes a day.

 

To paraphrase an old favorite: Dump your day job.

 

Bring a mouthpiece with you and some music. While holding the mouthpiece in your mouth read through the music. It's not as good as actually playing, but it will keep your chops up.

 

58tenor - ha ha
JSaxMiller - interesting, I'll give it a try this week. thanks

Anyone else?

 

Frank, you know the smile and pucker exercises in the Larry Teal book? those are good, (if not, go from a "whistle" pucker to a wide smile about 50 times) another is to push your lower lip against your upper for a count of ten, do several sets.... yeah it looks weird. )

 

What looks even weirder is pushing your thumb into your mouth untill you have roughly the same shape as your mouthpiece and repeating similar excersises. Also good for theraputic regressing.

 

Harmonica lessons

What i did when i couldn't play for five weeks was use just the mouthpiece and reed but i placed my hand over the open end of the mouthpiece to vary the resistance required,Varying the size of the opening it looks like your playing an harmonica, but it's just like playing up and down the horn. worked great and if anything actually improved my tone and intonation

 

Try the Teal,(Art of Saxophone Playing) exercises. It could help you a lot!

 

There's too many weeks where I didn't play my horn at all and I never had the embouchure tiring problem you have. I wonder if your tip opening is too large? I do get that feeling on a gig when I go over .115 on a tip for tenor.

 

What looks even weirder is pushing your thumb into your mouth untill you have roughly the same shape as your mouthpiece and repeating similar excersises. Also good for theraputic regressing.

I do this on long car trips. I try and remember to take my thumb out of my mouth if I'm in traffic, though. Don't want to get strange looks.

Another thing I've used in the past is a lighter. They seem to be about the right size. I put some air pressure behind it and hold it in with my embouchure.

 

Thanks all, a lot of great ideas, I'll start giving them a try.

Nefertiti, I hear what you're saying, and have thought the same thing, although I've been playing these pieces for over 20 years now. My Link STM has been opened to about .110, and the DG Studio is around .120, I'm not exactly sure. I've tried switching to softer reeds, but the sound and control issues make that impractical. I'm not going to start mouthpiece roulette at this point that's for sure. I'll try some of the exercises above and see how they work out.

Thanks again, everybody.

 

58tenor - ha ha
JSaxMiller - interesting, I'll give it a try this week. thanks

Razzy - Ignore'd!!

 

Razzy, I'm a buisness guy, I travel with a carry on suitcase and a computer. I stay in hotels with relatively thin walls and lots of other guys like myself. For those reasons, I said taking a horn was not an option. I can't carry one, and if I could, I can't make that much noise.

Your suggestions involved taking a horn and making noise, which I cannot do. That is why I didn't respond direcly to you.

 

In that case, use softer reeds, do the Teal embouchure exercises, and pray.

My point was that nothing can substitute for quality time with the horn, to keep up your endurance. So I'd have to agree mostly with 58Tenor!!

Bring a mouthpiece with you and some music. While holding the mouthpiece in your mouth read through the music. It's not as good as actually playing, but it will keep your chops up.

I don't think this is really going to help with fatigue issues, though it will help to keep the mind on the music, perhaps. In order to keep your actual muscle tone strong, it's necessary to support a vibrating reed. Thus, again, why it's important to be able to actually PLAY during the week, even if it's in some contorted form of actual playing.

Your best bet is to take the mouthpiece into the bathroom and spend an hour playing softly on it (surely you can fit a mouthpiece and a reed or two into that little briefcase somewhere). Or into the hotel basement. Basically, bother the hell out of everybody without the possibility of the culprit being identified, in order to keep up your endurance.

Put a (capped, for god's sake) pen in your mouth and raise it using the lower lip, from a horizontal position to a vertical one, very slowly. Then lower it back down just as slow. Supposedly this helps keep your muscle tone. I've never done it but I know some veterans who have attested to it.

There was a time a few summers ago when I spent two weeks down the shore with a friend's family in a condo, without the possibility of bringing a horn. I brought a mouthpiece and some reeds, would set my alarm for 5am (thus waking up a few hours before everyone else), go out to the beach, and blow on the mouthpiece for an hour, every morning.

If you really WANT to, you WILL find a way.

 

I play scales and long tones on the mouthpiece when I'm away from the horn for several days in a row, which for me, fortunately, is rare. Razzy's right, the best thing is time on the horn, and second would be the mouthpiece exercises.........

 

While I've got nothing original to add, I can at least attest to the fact that several of the prior suggestions have been working for me. I've been using the mouthpiece in the car (long road trips in addition to my one-hour-each-way daily commute). Obviously, it's not as good as time on the horn, but it does seem to be keeping me from tiring when I get back to playing. The 'whistle to wide smile' exercise seems to help too. On road trips, I've taken the horn in the car and played...but that seemed to alarm more than one person (parked at the edge of a mall parking lot).

I've got to travel again this week and next. One of the hotels I'll be staying in told me that they've got a small conference room / hospitality suite next to the manager's office that I can use for practice. It's apparently away from guest rooms. I'm going to give it a try.

 

Razzy, I'm a buisness guy, I travel with a carry on suitcase and a computer. I stay in hotels with relatively thin walls and lots of other guys like myself. For those reasons, I said taking a horn was not an option. I can't carry one, and if I could, I can't make that much noise.

Your suggestions involved taking a horn and making noise, which I cannot do. That is why I didn't respond direcly to you.

If you ever see such a suitcase/computer/three-piece suit businessguy playing in the basement or on the parking lot of a hotel, pass by and say hello

 

the trick is to find a lounge that has live music and try and sit in...always bring your horn..parking lots, overpasses, empty churches...are all good places to practice and also a good way to relieve the stress of the day...
also..you can play into the closet where your clothes are hanging...

 

Keep 'em coming guys, some good ideas here.

t-duck, you are one lucky duck!

Jolle, I'll keep an eye (ear?) out for you.

 

Frank; you have received some great tips. I may have missed it if already posted, but you can make the most of your practice time by warming up on long tones. Anyway, I thought I'd post some methods to use on the gig to refresh the embouchure. As with any muscle kept in tension for extended periods, the embouchure muscles run out of oxygen and fuel, both supplied by the bloodstream, so you need to do something to get circulation going. You could just stop playing for a few minutes, but there's something you can do during short rests in a number, and that's to stretch the chops. Someone already posted something similar, but here's the scoop: pull your jaw down and 'in' similar to a big yawn, and you can feel the chops stretch. When you relax, you can literally feel the blood rushing back in. Try to do the stretch and relax slowly rather than snappy movements. I try to turn my back on the audience to do this, which looks for all the world like you're totally bored with the whole thing and about to go to sleep. This method will extend your playing time almost indefinitely if you repeat it every time you start to cramp or lose air around the mouthpiece. At break time, do it some more, with massaging added for the big embouchure muscles on each side of the mouth. I like to use both methods before, during and after warming up, and I do the stretch on stage all the time. I don't know how old you are, but as we age these muscles tend to get less flexible and resilient. Warming up, proper practice and these (or similar) stretching and massaging exercises are required for most older players. You also may need work on your embouchure to make it easier to play for longer periods with less fatigue. This is accomplished by developing a looser bite and using more lip under the reed. You may find, as most do, that the tendency with this is to play flatter, which is exactly why you see so many of the great players with their mouthpiece pushed way in. This method also produces a much fatter sound than the stuffy 'clarinet' embouchure still taught to beginning sax players. You also may need to use a softer reed, which really works well with the looser embouchure, and maybe even a more agressive mouthpiece - sounds contradictory, but isn't - a more open, higher-baffle piece can actually be darker with the loose embouchure and softer reed.

 

When I was at Interlochen in Michigan..Sinta had ALL the students put a small piece of rubber hose(about the diamter of a 2 mm or so) on a chain around their neck and when they weren't playing grip it with the lips as a sort of embouchure exercise...I did it faithfully...I don't know if helped endurance ....but what WILL help endurance is to relax and not bite...use a very relaxed embouchure...practice double lips too...

hope that helps..
cheers,
Nitro

 

Hey, this is kinda late, but Sinta's trick works. McAllister's giving them out at Interlochen, and though he doesn't make us wear it around our necks, it does help. I'll throw mine in my mouth whenever I'm just sitting around.

 

Hey, this is kinda late, but Sinta's trick works. McAllister's giving them out at Interlochen, and though he doesn't make us wear it around our necks, it does help. I'll throw mine in my mouth whenever I'm just sitting around.

Could you please give details about the construction and use of this? I would like to try to build / use my own.

Thanks!
R

 

I play altissimo alot and when I haven't been playing as much, that is the first to go. I would find a way to practice everyday even for 30min. Since that isn't possible in your situation, then I would definitely go to a softer reed.
Get a soprano sax or a clarinet for out of town. I never leave town without a soprano.

 

If you ever see such a suitcase/computer/three-piece suit businessguy playing in the basement or on the parking lot of a hotel, pass by and say hello

It's you! Keep it down, I'm working on a PowerPoint presentation for the big meeting tomorrow!

As far as that Sinta thing with the rubber tube, I think I saw that on one of the pay-per-view channels on the hotel TV :shock: