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SAXOPHONE EMBOUCHURE

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"CORRECT" EMBOUCHURES

Embouchuremeans what you do with your mouth. There is more than one correctsaxophone embouchure. The pictures on the right are from a very good book by Ben Davis (published by Henri Selmer no less) which is now sadly out of print.

The picture shows three types of embouchure:

  • Fig. 5 - a saxophone embouchure in which the lower lip does not cover over the lower teeth
  • Fig. 6 - the bottom lip forms a cushion between the lower teeth and the reed
  • Fig. 7 - the top lip also forms a cushion between the top teeth and the top of the mouthpiece
I disagree with the author in that I don't think any of these are wrong. They each suit different saxophone players and styles.

I originally used the embouchure in Fig. 6, but was later taught to use the lower lip without any support from the teeth. This takes a while to get used to as you need to build up the lip muscles, but I find it more flexible than the other two. It’s pointless to go into too much more detail without being physically present with a student so I'll paste a couple of extracts from his book, which must have been quite controversial at the time as the no-lip over teeth saxophone embouchure was quite revolutionary.

 Saxophone Embouchure

Saxophone Embouchure

Saxophone Embouchure