\nOnly one saxophone student was accepted to do graduate work at Juilliard each year.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n
These lesson recollections might be helpful for someone who wants to transition to the Allard school of saxophone playing <\/em>or if someone just wants to understand various Allard school exercises like overtone exercises in the proper original context.\u00a0 <\/em>I’m not sure I have ever read these basics put together in writing before <\/em>but one will often read about the overtone exercises out of context.<\/em><\/p>\n The reed making concepts were also totally mind blowing. In the process of trying to teach it to me, George would make me the best reeds I have ever played.\u00a0 <\/em>I would bring in the reed I was working on and it didn’t play well at all. In about 3 minutes, George would fix it and make it perfect.\u00a0 I<\/em>t was bizarre, He would hold it up to the light and say something like here is the problem, see this fiber right there, it’s stiffer than the others so you have to cut that one out.\u00a0 T<\/em>hen the reed would play perfect. One of the reeds he adjusted for me lasted like 3 months!\u00a0 Best reed I ever had!\u00a0 I<\/em> totally never understood what he was saying and to this day I never figured it out.\u00a0 I<\/em>t was like he was doing some kind of magic.<\/em><\/p>\n These lessons took place in the late 70s.\u00a0 T<\/em>hese are only the basic concepts and will suffer some loss in written form.\u00a0 E<\/em>verything that came afterwards revolved around these basic ideas though.\u00a0 Writing these memories out, helped me reconnect with the past and the fundamentals. The process of remembering and writing them out also helped me move forward a bit.\u00a0 These very simple concepts really take years to unfold and sink in.\u00a0 Even today, they still effect my playing in a positive way.<\/em>-Gary Jones<\/em><\/p>\n The Esteemed Saxophone Teacher Joe Allard<\/strong><\/p>\n Joe Allard (December 31, 1910 \u2013 May 3, 1991), a native of Lowell, MA, was a famous saxophone and clarinet \u00a0professor at Juilliard, The New England Conservatory and The Manhattan School of Music. \u00a0Some of his most famous students were: Michael Brecker, Eddie Daniels, Bob Berg, Dave Liebman, Paul Winter, Steve Grossman, Kenneth Radnofsky, Bill Pierce and many many others.<\/p>\n I found reading these memories from Gary Jones both fascinating and enlightening. \u00a0Many of the tips on working with saxophone reeds I had never heard before. I love how relaxed it all feels when you’re reading it. \u00a0The more relaxed and natural everything is the better. \u00a0Thanks so much to Gary Jones for writing this out and making it available to the saxophone community!<\/p>\n *Note: I have edited Gary’s account of the lessons below slightly to make it easier to read in 2021 (ten years after I posted it) by adding punctuation, paragraphs and correcting some grammatical errors. I tried to keep the original thoughts and intentions of Gary’s writings as close to the original as possible.-Steve<\/p>\n Lesson 1<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n First thing, is to do this exercise for a week with just a reed, no mouthpiece and no horn:<\/em><\/p>\n Holding the end of the reed in your hand, place the reed on your lower lip like you are going to play it.\u00a0 Just let it rest there.\u00a0 Relax your mouth totally so there is no tension in your lip at all.<\/em><\/p>\n Your lip should be straight across and slightly turned over the top of your lower teeth.\u00a0 There should be no downward tension on the reed, it should just lay there. The only tension on your lip is the slight weight of the reed and reeds aren’t very heavy.\u00a0 Your lower lip goes right against your teeth with your lip as an uninvolved cushion between reed and teeth.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Open your mouth like you have an invisible mouthpiece in there.\u00a0 Now practice blowing over the reed like that, just like you are playing the reed on an invisible mouthpiece.\u00a0 Use your lungs to push air but don’t involve any of the muscles in your mouth or face.\u00a0 When you blow over the reed your lips and mouth shouldn’t respond in any way.\u00a0 The most important thing, is that your lower lip doesn’t respond by curving around the sides of the reed in any way.\u00a0 No clamping down on the mouthpiece because there isn’t any mouthpiece there to clamp down on.\u00a0 Your bottom lip is completely relaxed like you are asleep. Practice blowing like that.\u00a0 This is what it should feel like to blow the saxophone.\u00a0 Keep a reed in your pocket and practice this exercise a lot.<\/em><\/p>\n The other important exercise from the first lesson was breathing exercises.<\/em> As the air goes out, you can restrict and control the flow by pursing your lips like a flute embouchure.\u00a0 The exhalation should be like playing an even steady long tone. If you practice this while stationary, just pace your breathing by counting imaginary steps like you are walking at a moderate walking pace.<\/em><\/p>\n This is to develop good breathing but also for relaxation both mentally and physically.\u00a0 You can’t play music if your head and mind are full of mental chatter. Later, for added layers of concentration, you can count repetitions.\u00a0 You could for instance do three groups of 12 different 20 count cycles or some other variations similar to that.<\/em><\/p>\n This type of mindfulness would correspond to the multiple layers of concentration needed to keep track of complex jazz forms.\u00a0 One of the things we are trying to do is to make more seamless the union of mind and body.<\/em><\/p>\n The goal is for you to hear or think a sound and it comes out of the horn, just like speaking.\u00a0 The breathing exercises are yoga exercises. Yoga means union.<\/em> In keeping with this theme, there was a hatha yoga pose to practice that first lesson.\u00a0 Much to my surprise, I was instructed to get on my back on the floor in the practice studio and do the sivananda yoga posture Setubandasana\u00a0 “the bridge” or “bridge-building pose”. (bridge the gap between body and mind)<\/em><\/p>\n At the end of this first lesson, George told me to get the book “Top Tones for the Saxophone” by Sigurd Rascher and to get a single bevel reed knife.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lesson 2<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Ok, so now that we have the proper embouchure, it’s time to put the reed on a mouthpiece.\u00a0 First we have to prepare the reed.\u00a0 This is going to be hard to describe, but the purpose of this is to get the reed to seal properly.<\/em><\/p>\n Soak a new reed in a glass or bowl of fresh water for 15 minutes and then lay it out on a mantle or table somewhere upside down to dry.\u00a0 After it dries, lay it upside down on your left index finger.\u00a0 It might help to wet your finger so the reed will stick.<\/em><\/p>\n Hold the reed knife in your right hand and put it on the reed near the bottom of the back of the reed. Put your left thumb behind the knife blade for support.<\/em> After you get the reed flat, get a clean piece of high quality paper and put it on a perfectly clean flat hard surface.\u00a0 Place the reed on the paper flat side down. Put the tips of your first three fingers along the center back of the reed and rub the reed counter clockwise in a circle 100 times to polish and seal the flat side of the reed.<\/em><\/p>\n A freshly cut piece of cane like all plant stems is a series of tubes.\u00a0 These tubes conduct air and water so an unsealed reed can’t seal on the mouthpiece properly.<\/em><\/p>\n At the end of your playing session, you can check the seal on the flat side of the reed.\u00a0 Take the reed off off of the mouthpiece carefully and look at the reed and mouthpiece. The reed should have a sharp line where the area above the mouthpiece window is wet and the fibers might be swollen.\u00a0 Below that, the area of the reed on the mouthpiece table, should be perfectly dry. The table of the mouthpiece should be perfectly dry.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/allard-1.jpg\")
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\nWe were in an urban environment where we walked a lot but you could just as easily do this sitting down. When you are walking, breath in through your nose for five steps. Then, hold your breath for five steps. Finally, breath out through your mouth for five steps.\u00a0 Eventually, work your way up to 20 steps in, 20 steps hold, 20 steps out.\u00a0 You might like to do some empty counts after the exhale and before the next inhalation.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nEventually, the head space the breathing exercise puts you in, starts to become a mental state you learn and can use when you play.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"posture_bridge\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2021\/bridge.jpg\" "\\"posture_bridge\\"")
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\nIts basically about opening up and stretching your lower abdomen. Concentrate on how you are breathing when you practice this.\u00a0 Learn to breath in deeply by drawing your diaphragm down.\u00a0 Only at the end of your inhalation is there a need to expand the chest.\u00a0 It’s important to do the exercises, but also to understand the reason why you are doing them.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWith a counter clockwise twist of you right wrist and with your thumb for guidance and support for the blade, work the table of the reed until it is flat.<\/em>
\nYour thumb and index finger work together to control the pressure on the reed. you have to keep the knife pressure even left to right and the motion is scraping not cutting.\u00a0 This takes some practice.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nYou want to flatten about the first two inches of the reed (tenor reed).\u00a0 The most important part is about half way up where the mouthpiece table ends and the mouthpiece window begins.\u00a0 You want the whole area of the reed on the mouthpiece table to be flat and not warped or curved. You know the reed is\u00a0 flat, when the material comes off the reed evenly all the way across.\u00a0 Material will come off only the high points at first.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nNow rub your finger or thumb along the top cut side of the reed, from the vamp to the tip, to seal the top. Rub a lot, like 100 times.\u00a0 You are trying to seal off all the open pores on the top of the reed vamp.\u00a0 This will seal the reed and make it into a solid object.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nYou can, if you want, also shape the tip of the reed to fit the mouthpiece tip exactly. This will help the seal as the reed vibrates.\u00a0 Line the reed up to the tip but below it so you can see what it needs.\u00a0 Take the reed off the mouthpiece and hold a piece of very fine wet or dry sandpaper in your left hand.\u00a0 You can get a little stiffness out of the sand paper if you need to by making a little bit of a curve with it as you hold it in the air. Don’t put the sandpaper against something just hold it out in the air.<\/em><\/p>\n