What mouthpiece, facing and reed strength are you playing?

 

Yes the obvious question and I should have included this info.
The MPC is a Yamaha 4C and I use Rico and Rico Royal 2.0 reeds. I think this is about as easy as I can get and all is fine for about 3/4 hour`s playing.
Thanks, Ronish

 

your set up is not too heavy, so try to see if you horn is in adjustment you might be straining yourself because of leaks. If that turns out not to be the case, then the only other thing is to work with a teacher to try to find some improvement to your embouchure. Some people take way too little mouthpiece in their mouth (I am not saying that that is your case) and then literally fight their airflow by pressing too much on the reed creating a minute opening to blow, the whole operation should be rather more relaxed.

 

+1 to Milandro, could be you're not taking in enough mouthpiece. Fix simple before going advanced

A kind of offbeat and odd technique, but just through learning my overtones, high altissimo (without biting), and circular breathing my embouchure became very, very strong. I used to get tired and would have to pull the horn off my face and pull and stretch my lips a little to get them feeling better.

I think a lot of it will be fixed within the practice room by practicing longer and practicing some of the things above. Play your overtone series on Bb-D chromatically and hold out each note of the series as long as you can. When you reach the altissimo level overtones you will probably start to feel some fatigue in your embouchure muscles, especially when holding them for an extended period of time. But you will learn a lot of control and better intonation, plus you'll get pretty good at altissimo.

If you delve into circular breathing at all, try to go for about 3 minutes on a C#2 (non-overtone; just open) and because of your cheeks being puffed out and the contracting of your embouchure when taking a breath you will get extremely tired. Just keep working at it. The 3 minutes is a goal and it is not expected you should be able to go anywhere close to that when you start.
Also practice some pieces with a lot of octave changes. There's a piece of music out there that is the Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No.1 that starts on D and it is perfect for saxophone as it has no altissimo and whatever notes run into a range below that of the instrument just take up an octave.
This song is great because of the octave changes and you have to have a good embouchure to play it, try to play the majority of it slurring (take breaths when needed as circular breathing during octave changes is rather difficult).

Another 2 exercises (found in the tone production area) include: playing strictly on your mouthpiece, overtone octave slurs.
For the mouthpiece try to start as low as you can play on the mouthpiece (using throat, embouchure, and air pressure) and try to play chromatically up to as high as you can go. Then after you get good enough try to play some scales (probably won't get much more than an octave or the full scale at all), then proceed to arpeggios and eventually simple tunes.
For the overtone slurring play an F2 without the octave and try to perfectly slur between F2 and F1 without any note bending. Proceed down to Bb

If you work these into your practice routine (along with practicing for extended periods of time and some fast jazz licks or whatever you want to work on), your embouchure should become strong as admantium, and your problem should disappear, or only become present after 3,4,5+hours.

Hope this helps, sorry for the length just trying to get everything out there that will help.

 

Sometimes my girlfriend has that effect on me, too.

 

Sometimes my girlfriend has that effect on me, too.

At least you didn't say that you have that effect on her!

 

Thank you for your contributions. Sax is OK and I do take in a significant piece of the MPC. Mouthpiece alone playing is a challenge and will take a lot of practice for me to accomplish long before I get to the tired stage.
What about just practicing long notes and as long as I can but with a reed much harder than my 2.0? Like when you folk switch to an unweighted baseball bat and it then feels so much lighter.

 

Yeah, you might wanna jump to a 2.5, but if you're getting tired on the two, I don't imagine you'll be able to consistently hold a good sound on a 2.5

 

1. Try taking deeper breaths and see if more breath support allows you to lighten up on the embouchure. 2. Check your embouchure and make sure you're supporting it with your jaw. Is your bottom lip rolled in or out? 3. Check the position of your mouthpiece on the cork. It could be that you're tuned flat and compensating by biting. Do you get less tired when playing by yourself? 4. I know this is basic but, do you have the tip of the reed even with the tip of the mouthpiece? A millimeter makes a big difference.

This doesn't sound like a "practice practice practice" issue... you've been playing long enough that a 4c/RR2 should be effortless. If your equipment is in good shape - get somebody else to play it and make sure - then it must be a player problem, and given your experience it's probably something simple that's gone overlooked.

 

if your horn is adjustment, your technique is good and you practice on a daily base then you might want to go and see your GP because there might me more to being tired quickly than meets the eye.

 

Have you tried a HARDER reed? I notice that too-soft reeds make my lips tired just as much as too-hard reeds.

 

O.K. let me ,if you will wait, answer and ask some basic questions. First to "airmouton" 1. Not sure I understand this. The tightness of lips, jaw etc. would remain the same would`nt it, regardless of the air pressure used? 2. My lips curl a fraction over my bottom teeth. Not sure of the jaw support, I`ll check this. 3. No I`m not biting to compensate.. Yes I do get tired playing by myself but not as pronounced because in the band I`m really playing almost non stop. 4.. My reed tip is a minute fraction above the MPC tip.
Now the question I would like to ask is maybe what I`m experiencing is common. I am a senior person (70s), my band tenor music seems to always get lots of long semi-brieves with fs ffs. Are you folks saying that I should not be getting lips and mouth tired after an hour of almost continuous playing? Perhaps if I was 40 yrs. younger I would`nt have a problem. Perhaps I`m just expecting too much.

 

i have a colleague almost 80 years with none such problems......but that doesn’t mean anything, I would still ask your GP

 

Are you folks saying that I should not be getting lips and mouth tired after an hour of almost continuous playing?

Don't know about this with you being 70 years old, but still you should be able to play a few hours without getting tired.

 

well, a “ few hours” of continuous playing is probably exaggerated (it is for me) .......... but I think anybody should manage to play one hour of alternate playing (you are not playing all the time if you play with others I assume!)

 

you are not playing all the time if you play with others I assume!)

Yeah I also assumed you were in a big band setting

 

Ah, I hear "senior" and I think high school. Whoops. But regardless I wouldn't assume that you're "expecting too much" until you've tried everything.

In answer to your question: no. It takes a certain amount of air velocity to get the reed moving and, beyond that, to get a decent sound and volume. You can get this velocity by pushing a lot of air, or you can get it by closing off the mouthpiece with a tight embouchure and effectively reducing the tip opening. This changes the tone as well, but we can still look at it as a trade-off between your lips and your lungs. It might be a good experiment for you relax your embouchure and, using that as a starting point, see what you can do to achieve the same sound you had before. Almost certainly you'll need to blow more air. Perhaps you won't like the sound -- but you can always change your setup. The main thing is removing some of the load from your embouchure.

 

That tight embouchure is precisely what I`m doing. My cheeks are pulled in very tight, the area around my lips is also compressed and altho I don`t squash down hard on the reed the rest of my mouth is under tension. I also play clarinet and altho` this is not my clarinet embouchure I think some of it has carried over to my sax playing.
Thank you "airmouton" I`ll see if I can change and loosen up.

 

the tension you talk about might be the cause. When I play I try to keep a relaxed embouchure, just use enough muscle to prevent air from escaping at the sides of the mouthpiece. I tend to use a little more tension on the higher notes. but just a little. I do feel muscle tension in the area where I support the air stream. the lower abdomen. that is imho where the work is done, not in the embouchure. Jerry Bergonzi has a short video where he demonstrates what he calls "no embouchure" on youtube. that is sort of what I do ( or try to do anyway).
Maybe one lesson with a teacher who dealt with these things before could be beneficial ?

 

The facing on the mouthpiece, if crooked or not right, could cause fatigue in playing. I would try other mouthpieces. The Yamaha student 4C, if finished right is ok, but most factory made mouthpieces need some adjustment to play their best. I'm much older than you and don't have those problems because I adjust the mouthpieces to work properly. High air pressure to the reed is needed and the embouchure should be firm but relaxed in an O shape. Try saying "cheerios" before playing. Good luck!

 

I fall into that senior category, and I'll take a crack at your "pouty" embouchure question. I use it and have for a long time. From a tiring standpoint, it doesn't help much, that comes from not skipping two practice days in a row. For me, laying off a couple of days can easily become a week and then it takes me almost two days to one to work out of it. It didn't when I was younger but now it does... Just like all the other muscle groups. Tenor comes back faster, and sop kicks my butt after a layoff. My embouchure on alto is firmer, but my mouthpiece isn't at all radical. (Selmer Classic metal C**) Rico orange box 2 1/2 or 3's. That alto set up gets me a couple of hours. I fight other health issues, so your mileage may vary. For me time off is the culprit.