interesting discussion
I don't know if this helps or not but i can weigh in on it. (i'm not the greatest player in the world -- duhhh)
cold i can only play about a 6th (b concert down to a d#)solidly on the mouthpiece without moving my jaw at all. I am certain of this. there is no small movement at all.
I just had my wife put her hand on my jaw bone and tell me if it's moving and she said no.
I imagine after i warm up i will be able to do the other two notes or possibly much more. warmed up for me happens only after hours of playing and is a pretty drastic shift.
for me there is no nerve energy moving to my jaw or lip that could move it.
in a 100% relaxed state all energy is withdrawn from the muscle. this means there can be no movement of preasure or lip or jaw or anything else.
I have seen where other people use their jaw in and out, i do not do that to such a pronounced degree.
this happens i think to a very small degree just in response to the large amount of and changes in air pressure.
again its important to realize that these exercises are just that, exercises.
they are the means to an end but not the end in itself.
i do change the amount of mouthpiece in my mouth and my lip changes kind of floats in and out covering or uncovering mostly using the reed as friction to cause the lip to turn in or out.
i was taught that the amount of reed you cover or uncover was almost subconscious and not something you think about.
i do not find in my own playing a great need to position my jaw wildly differently for different registers.
I don't like the way the guy sound doing it on the youtube video Black Obelisk pointed out.
when it comes to perfomance and things like this it boils down to art and not a playing method.
what the guy in the video is doing comes off like a performance affect to me. the uneven tone caused by it sounds like a mistake from an artistic point of view.
there are alot of guys that play that way.
there are alot of guys that don't. my personal thing is much more like say pharoah sanders whose lip position is much more fixed and the tone is more consistent from register to register.
rleitch:
It really doesn't take any preasure on the reed to play. your lip is just a fulcrum. it's dead it does nothing.
it's just a stop on the reed. there is no pushing.
a good way to get a feel for it is to play way out of the side of your mouth.
you don't have any muscles over there to mess you up.
don't play that way all the time though like kenny g.
I do remember the pitch bending exercise now thanks to Black Obelisk.
I'm glad someone can contribute further and teach and remind me.
EE NYC: i read the study about the vocal tract which i found interesting.
they don't say how many players they tested or if they tested player who have been doing overtone exercises for many years.
I would LOVE to see the results of that study done specifically on one of joes better students like tenor player Ken Hitchcock or someone like that who really lives the life of a player in this style.
The high notes or altisimo notes measured in the study are a natural part of the tone of all the notes inculding the low notes.
anything you do to make the altisimo notes you can do to bring those notes into the tonal spectrum of low notes.
every note you play on the saxophone is essentially a multiphonic.
The stuff Jones posted is the initial Joe Allard beginning concepts, but isn't the entire thing.
i was just trying to get someone started, i obviously left small amouts out. AND my knowledge is very limited. as i said before i'm kind of a hack player.
i was not a very good player when i took these lessons and alot of it went straight over my head.
You mean reed adjusting. Allard taught reed adjustment, not reed making. He taught how to balance reeds. Many teachers taught the same concept. It's not magic.
whatever , we started off with vandoren blue box #5s because we couldn't get full on blanks.
i think i knew it wasn't actual hoo doo magic.
it seemd ike magic to ME because i couldn't do it. to this day i still can't do it and get the type of mind blowing results those guys were getting.
If you can do it and get the same type of mind blowing results they were getting then i think YOU can do magic TOO !
all bow to the reed mystic. i'l sacrifice a goat if youl make me a reed.
Brecker chewed his mouthpiece like crazy when playing
OK and this is an important distinction.
joe taught that when you were performing you were in "all bets were off" mode.
these tecniques i described were for PRACTICE not perfomance.
performance is about dreaming emotions and going into some rather sublime levels of consciousness. not about thinking about lip position.
Are you saying that Allard students don't play high baffle pieces? (Real question, not being a smarty)
the idea was to have lots of different type of mouthpieces for different styles.
Bob berg was there and others who at times played on very modern mouthpieces.
I don't thiink anything about the thing dictates large chambers.
it certainly allows you to play on very large chambers if you want.