hi I'm Pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson from get your sax together dot com and on
this video we're going to cover part one of how to put your saxophone together
so...exciting times you've got your shiny new saxophone, you open up the box and
you're looking for these following four main pieces to get your sax going -
Part one is the body. That's the main part of the saxophone with all the keys. Part two
is the neck, sometimes called the crook. Part three is the mouthpiece, which will
have a cap to protect the reed and a ligature which is going to hold the reed
in place. And finally, part four is the neck strap, or sling, which is going to go
around your neck and help take the weight of the instrument. Now, in part two
we're going to cover the body and the sling so in this part, first of all, we're
going to cover putting together the neck and the mouthpiece, which is probably the
trickiest bit, so let's get to it!
So, first things first the beating heart of the saxophone, which is the reed. Now if
you look in your case somewhere you should see something that looks like
this. Hopefully it will have a protective guard. This is the reed. It's a small
piece of wood made from cane. This is what produces the sound on the saxophone
and you'll see that one side is flat and the other side is curved downwards
towards a thin tip. The thin tip end is going to go in your mouth. Now in order
to get a nice seal with the flat part of the mouthpiece we have to wet the reed
before we put it on so that is the first thing we're going to do. All you do you
simply put it on your tongue like this, put your lips around it and leave it
there while you do the other steps I'm going to show you, so...
...[garbled] put it in your mouth, like this, while we do the other steps.
While you still have you reed in your mouth take your mouthpiece and all we're gonna do is slide it gently onto the cork of the
neck, taking care not to bend this fragile mechanism on the neck. We're
gonna cover exactly where your mouthpiece should be on the cork in a
later video. Slide it on. Now, when you see the flat
side of your mouthpiece, that wants to line up with the middle of the underside
of your crook a bit like this... and now for the tricky bit, so we're gonna take
our mouthpiece and crook and take the ligature and place it over the
mouthpiece. Now your ligature might look completely different from mine, it might
be upside down, but you just need to make sure that the wide end of the ligature
goes on first and that the screw is always on the right-hand side. So once
you've got that in place slacken the screw, not too much, just enough that you
can take the reed out of your mouth, very gently put the thick side of the
reed in first and then what I like to do is use two thumbs, like this, to carefully
line up the reed exactly flush with the end of the mouthpiece and make sure
that it's also central and then gently pull your ligature central on to that.
This is the tricky bit... when it's in place you tighten up your
screw. Now don't over crank it to strip the thread but it should be quite firm.
And then it should look something like this. And that is now ready to plug into
the body which were going to cover in part 2.
Ok, brilliant, easy-peasy. Now for a quick recap. Number one carefully take your reed and put it
in your mouth. While you're doing that find your mouthpiece and take off the
ligature and cap. Gently put the mouthpiece onto the neck lining up the
flat part with the underside of the crook. Next get your ligature, make sure
it's on the right way,
take your reed out of your mouth and then using two thumbs to guide it line
it up perfectly with the end of the mouthpiece. Once it's in place tighten up
the screws and then carefully put the mouthpiece cap over it to protect the reed.
Easy-peasy!
By the way if you're a tenor player, exactly the same process, but your crook
will look a bit different. See the tenor crook's got this nice curve to it but
exactly the same process as the alto. If you liked this video please show some
love and subscribe. I'll see you for part two and other fantastic sax related
videos on get your sax together dot com. See you later!