One of the most common struggles new saxophone players must overcome is the quality of the tone. The saxophone isn’t the easiest instrument to play, as you need to learn to manipulate the airflow in order to create the unique and pure tone.

If you are struggling with a rough tone, sudden squeaks or bad intonation, the following tips will help you improve your control of the airstream. These exercises will improve the tone of your sax and take your playing to the next level.

Improve Your Breath Support

First, it’s important to learn the right breathing technique. You need to breath from the abdomen, as this guarantees you use the muscles in your abdomen and back to push out air. It gives you much more breath support than breathing from your chest.

Take a simple straw and a normal piece of paper. Try to blow through the straw against the paper with the objective of making the paper go horizontal. Make sure you feel the air pushing up from your abdomen.

Boost Your Vocal Cords

You also want to focus on your vocal cord, also known as the larynx. This is because it regulates the air speed and will help make the sound clearer.

A simple way to exercise your larynx is to sing sirens up and down. You could also try to sing the vowel sounds – A, E, I, O and U –at a steady pitch. This is a great exercise to do right before your playing sessions.

Focus on Avoiding Puffed Cheeks

Most saxophonists starting out make the mistake of puffing their cheeks when they play. You shouldn’t intentionally puff them, as this will inhibit some of the muscles you should be using to fix intonation.

Try playing a high E while saying first the word ‘heel’ and then the word ‘pool’. Notice the difference? You can see and feel how the tongue affects the sound of your saxophone and you can use this to your advantage.

Learn the Right Mouth Positioning

Finding the correct embouchure, which is the way you hold your mouth on the mouthpiece, is a crucial aspect of tone development. It is important to pay attention to this right from the start.

The key things to notice with your position are:

• Top teeth should rest on top of the mouthpiece and they should not move while you play
• Your bottom teeth should not touch the reed of the saxophone

Don’t worry too much about the lip position. You can have it pushed out or simply curled in while you play. Just make sure the above tips regarding your teeth are observed.

Play regularly and focus on the above tips and exercises. You should start noticing how each aspect influences your airstream and how this, in turn, improves your tone. Perform crescendo-decrescendo longtones as well. This is a great step to improving tone and helping you control the depth of your sound.

Fixing problems with your airstream later on is possible, but it will take more time. So, add the above tips to your routine as you begin to play the saxophone.After a while, you’ll notice new clarity in your tone.