Welcome back to Get Your Sax Together, I'm pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson
and on this week's video I'm going to teach you how to get a lovely soft
velvety subtone on your sax.
First of all, what do we mean when we say subtone?
Well it's a soft velvety tone color that we can apply to the low range of the
instrument, usually from about low E down to low B flat although once you play
with the kind of subtone embouchure you can apply it across the whole instrument
and get a lovely soft velvety sound across the whole range of the horn. But
really it's designed for the low end of the instrument. If you want some good
examples of sub tone go and check out some of the older jazz players such as
Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young those kind of guys really wrote the book
on subtone and invented the genre, especially combined with a really big
thick, woofly vibrato they defined that sound. But every sax player since then
has also used subtone so it's not just those guys so it's definitely a valuable
technique to get together.
So, how do we do it?
Okay, quite simple, I'm going to divide it into two categories one is an embouchure
category and the other is the airflow, the way you blow. So, dealing with
embouchure first. Number one you take your jaw and you move it down and back,
with a slight forward head tilt if you need to, and try and make a double
chin so it looks a bit like this...
Now it looks a bit stupid but that is what your
jaw has to do. You need to really work on the hinge of your jaw and get it going
right down and back to get out of the way of the reed. Number two, your teeth
and lips. Your top teeth need to be right on the edge of the mouthpiece, almost off
the edge of the top of the mouthpiece and your bottom lip has to have no
pressure whatsoever on the reed. And because you've moved your jaw back, your
bottom lip will also be quite far back towards the end of the reed, so it looks
a bit like this...
So you can see my teeth are almost off the end of the mouthpiece when I do my
subtone. The third point concerning embouchure is
to make sure you have a nice circular shape with your mouth and you're
supporting the sound with these muscles at the side. You're pushing them in.
That makes your top and bottom lip nice and soft and baggy and that's what we
want. So imagine you're saying of the word "hoe" and that's the shape of your mouth.
Moving on to the second category now, which is the airflow, the air stream,
and the first point is we need lots of diaphragm support, so really support the
air stream from your diaphragm. We're not going to be playing loud but we need
lots of air support to go with it from the diaphragm. Number two, we need a nice
slow and warm air stream to get a subtone. Now when I say warm, I mean if you
blow in your hand the air should be warm, as if you're trying to steam up a window.
That's why you need that nice circular shape and you need to open up your
throat, with a yawning type shape, to get that nice warm air and it's gonna be
a nice slow, warm air stream to get the subtone. The third point regarding the
air stream is we want to blow down into the reed, not up into the top of the
mouthpiece. If we're trying to practice altissimo notes we want a cold, fast air
stream going right up to the top of the mouthpiece. This is the opposite, we
need a slow, warm air stream which you're going a direct down. Now I know the air
just goes into the mouthpiece and goes straight through, so this is more just
like a mental tool that you can use. So try and blow down with a slow warm
air stream and lots of diaphragm support.
An exercise that you want to practice to
get your subtone together is to play a note down the bottom - C, B, Bb, with a
full tone and then switch from full tone to subtone, going bow-wow and you
should see your jaw moving back and forward as you get that subtone.
So here's a quick recap of what you're going to do to get a nice subtone on
sax. You're going to move your jaw down and back, you're going to put your top
teeth right to the edge of the top of the mouthpiece, your bottom lip is going
to have no pressure whatsoever on the reed, we're going to have a nice round
mouth shape supported from the side like you're saying the word "hoe"
and we're gonna have plenty of diaphragm air support, we're going to produce a
slow, warm air stream and we're going to direct it down into the reed. And when
you do that you're gonna get yourself a cracking subtone.
That's all we've got time for this week. Hopefully with a bit of practice you'll
get yourself a lovely velvety soft fluffy subtone and that will really
bring on your sax playing because that is a tone colour that every saxophonist
needs, especially if you're a tenor player because it really sounds
great on tenor. But don't worry, it sounds really good on alto, soprano, the only one
that you can't really subtone on is baritone so much. I mean you can, but it's
a little bit more difficult to subtone on baritone. If you're enjoying the content you
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I look forward to bringing you more great stuff next week. See you later!