How to practice on your saxophone mouthpiece for amazing tone with Carl Raven 

I was taught to tune on the mouthpiece before even touching the horn about 6 years into playing and it improved my playing experience drastically.

I started practicing a couple of minutes a day before I grab the horn the first time I saw the vid. and it does make a difference.

Yes, I practice with just the mouthpiece. It is good way to break in new reeds, and I do it while walking. I play tunes using my step for rhythm.

I started this a number of years ago along with overtones. It made an immediate difference to my tone and I can play the full scale on the mouthpiece which the cats seem to like. Once you can hit various notes then use a piano or keyboard through headphones and this will make hitting the scale notes a way lot easier. If you can’t get anything but one pitch from the mouthpiece then practice overtones as mouthpiece tones are a similar thing but slightly more difficult.

Mouthpiece exercises have been a great help for me over the years... my goal was to play Happy Birthday on just the mouthpiece... (my poor wife!) but it really helped my sound.

I just started practicing on my 5C mouthpiece today and it's lots of fun. Plus it's great that I only have to put together a couple of pieces to practice without going through the whole set up.

Neighbours hate this guy! XD Really cool exercise!

Impressive! I do sometimes practice with my mouthpiece when I don't have my sax with me for a while and want to maintain my embouchure, but this is an eye opener as to what can be (& should be) done.

As beginner learning Sax since few weeks also trying to blow into the mouthpiece to play notes. Greetings from Germany.

Iv done it with the mouthpiece on the neck, but never on its own. Something new to practice 😁

Since I've seen that I started out, practicing this with the mouthpiece , going to start back that way thanks be safe

Amazing to hear that range. I'm a total beginner practising with a saxlab silencer. It isn't silent but a bit quieter and good for practising like this. I can do about 4 notes so far.....

Wow,i am going to add this exercise to my daily practice routine.Thanks Nigel👍

I like the Silencer by JazzLab, for mouthpiece exercises. Since I bought it, my neighborhood stopped to stalking me.

This is great, this could be done while I'm driving to work so I don't have to annoy the whole house lol

Hello, very interesting. I’ve just started back trying to play my tenor sax again, after many years of absence. I need all the help I can get!

Back in high school band, our coach made us play with only mouth pieces for weeks until we passed his range test.

I play about 30 minutes 5 days a week and find playing tunes good fun. Christmas carols are good (Ding Dong Merrily on high for example), pop tunes too. I also do scales (major, pentatonic and blues) and I also play argeggios and practice tonguing techniques to improve my articulation. I find i have a range of about a 12th on my mouthpiece but this can be changed or increased by putting a finger over the neck end of the mouthpiece and moving it around whilst trying to blow high tones. This closes off some of the hole and when you find the right position you can move up into much higher notes than is possible otherwise. There is quite a lot of information out there on the net eg examples of what exercises to play and why. Well worth doing!

I do.. I put a Jazzlab mute on the end to make it quiet, because I hate the sound lol.

It works on begginner mouthpiece

I do mp exercises, trying to go up and down a tone, but I will trybtge scale, and neck exercises too.

I do practice on my mouthpiece sometimes. I believe if you can sound good on your mouthpiece you can sound good on your horn. I usually practice with a tuner and try to sustain certain pitches. I usually go chromatic. I can say it helps with tone and intonation.

Hi Nigel I have being doing it while I drive with a cheap neck piece because I work in London and live in the north east, I go home for the weekend and back to work for week days ( I know it's wrong but I have develop a great tone, but my finger work not as good)

When I was young I would play my mouthpiece like a kazoo.

Nice, but how do you actually change the note from the G#?

Tnx for sharing

I made a mouthpiece silencer from a large vitamin bottle - carved out the front flap opening a little and the mouthpiece fits snug - put a wash cloth in and a hole in the bottom and it works great - costs ? $ 0 I think it reduces the volume at least by half . You cannot tell by the video, I guess because the phone recording volume is maxed out . Maybe if I put the phone farther away during the sound test it would be apparent . However, you can hear the sound resonate in the room at the end of the first test . In the second test, you can tell there is no resounding resonance present . Here is a video showing what I have . ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yHIAxdTOvk8.html Maybe I will try making a saxophone cover-all silencer with a cardboard box and some shredded newspaper ...

Is he talking about concert pitch or alto sax pitch?

To what extent is it fine to move the mouth to get the note? Or is it better to do everything with the throat?

I never use my mouthpiece is just blow into the hole on the neck sometimes i blow over the keys

Just started this week practising with just a mp and within days I’m noticing all sorts of stuff, although adding the neck makes me less able to do a range of notes why is this?

I’m 55 and have only been playing Alto Sax (first ever instrument) for almost 2 years now. How do I play make a more blues sound as opposed to jazz? What are good blues artists/albums that I should listen to for inspiration? I struggle trying to play with play along tracks. How can I get used to playing with a “Play along” track? Sorry for all the questions

Today I noticed when I blow the sax I have resistance on my upper teeth and on my cheeks.if I don’t feel that I don’t start playing .it feels like it that way I can control my airflow well and keep me in tune with my soprano sax.is it the right way ?thanks

I can’t change the pitch more than a full step up and down what am I doing wrong? I’m moving my tongue around in my mouth and nothing really changes

In 2018 I was fortunate enough to spend over four hours talking politics and music with Gilad Atzmon. He gave me a lesson that was one of the highlights of my life and later that evening I watched him perform with his quartet and strings at Ronnie Scott's in London. What a day. He asked me to do what Carl is doing here and I found my embouchure was about a fifth higher than his. That's what allows him (among other things), to sound like this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mbg0YYH5wr0.html

Do you have a video on brands of saxophones ? From top of the line to student models ?

Hi what kind of tenor sax is that black /silver sax?

Why does my note come out as concert Gb?

Are you still practicing on your mouthpiece everyday Nigel?🤔. 😜

He's 'bending' the note as with a harmonica bend