I was a bit surprised when the five year old kid managed to honk out a note using my tenor mouthpiece with a medium reed….
His parents had asked me to come help him with math that day. And we worked on counting and some basic addition and subtraction for a bit. He’s also interested in drawing a music, so we also spent a little time on that.
I tutor students in math as part of my work since I studied physics in school and have been tutoring for some time. Before, I worked in a laboratory and one year as a professor at a junior college, so my work used to actually be physics with music on the side. These days I do music, with math/physics on the side as well as a few other projects.
Had brought my tenor with me, planning to play it, but not especially prepared to have someone else play it. However, pretty much right after he saw the saxophone, he wanted to try playing.
I was skeptical. Thought it might be too heavy, which he promptly said was not the case. And I knew that the two mouthpieces I had in my case were picked for how I want to play, not for someone on day 1. But between the Metal Otto Link #8 and the Vandoren V16 T9, it seemed like the Vandoren mouthpiece might be easier to play.
Not by much though. The higher number indicates a wider tip opening and you need more air to get enough pressure through the mouthpiece.
-
- Metal Tenor Mouthpiece #8
-
- Selmer mouthpiece #3
-
- Vandoren Tenor sax mouthpiece #9, with the plastic Bari* reed
-
- Vandoren Tenor Sax Mouthpiece # 9, Cane reed
For the Vandoren mouthpiece, I had not played that mouthpiece in a while myself, but I washed it off as well as a medium plastic Bari* (the company) reed which I keep as backup and put it together.
At first, just on the neck of the saxophone.
As I predicted, all that you could hear at first was air. But….. he was determined to get a note! Could be partially because I had expressed doubt.
Then he blew as hard as he could and honked out a note and then a few more times.
After doing that, he wanted to play the sax itself, I figured I could hold it and that might work. But he wanted to put on the strap and hold it himself.
At first, he reversed the positions of his left and right hands, so I corrected that and showed him where to put his thumbs and fingers. At that point though, since the tenor sax is approximately the same height as him, the mouthpiece went significantly above his head. I could have guessed that, but it’s pretty much impossible for a five year old to play a tenor sax.
So we went back to my original plan, I held the sax and fingered a G and he did manage to play that note. I was impressed!
I’m thinking an alto sax could be something he could play. Having a mouthpiece designed for a beginner, specifically a more closed tip opening, and a softer reed will help.
Potentially, a curved soprano could work as well. But I’m going to see what happens with an alto.
Basically, it takes a bit of air to even get a note on a more advanced set up. He could play a note, which took some effort. But it definitely was not controlled.
For me, I found that it took a while for me to develop the control necessary for a metal mouthpiece.
Let me know if you have some experience starting to play saxophone when you were very young. I started at age 11 and did start with tenor.
Some questions come as result of this… First, why, on God’s green earth, would one even THINK of putting a baritone reed on a tenor mouthpiece, as it occurs that the reed would be too wide for the mouthpiece, and thus cause some major problems for all but the most experienced. ( I learned this the hard way from being forced in an emergency situation many years ago to use an alto sax reed on a Bb Clarinet, which is much the same comparison, in terms of the general size of the respective mouthpieces.)
Secondly, I would think that a five year old wouldn’t have anywhere near the lung capacity to deal with the sort of wind necessary to get a sound of a tenor. (I tried a barri sax once, and in comparison to the alto, found that that alto required much less air. or so it seems.
I’ve never picked up a tenor, but I’d imagine it would be somewhere in the middle of the alto in barri, in terms of the amount of air required to be put through the horn to get anything out of it.) But, yes, I started with Bb clarinet at 13, (which I have all but mastered) and only recently switched to an alto sax, mainly because of its stronger, brighter tone, which is more fitting of music outside the classical genre of sorts.
Hey Scott,
Thanks for your comment.
First answer is simple, it’s a company called ‘Bari’ that makes reeds among other things. It’s a tenor sax reed. Although I have heard of people using different reeds, not something I have done.
For second part, that was what I thought at first too, but he did get a note, just not with a lot of control.
I have played soprano, alto, tenor, and bari. You’re basically right about the air requirements.