{"id":40293,"date":"2016-11-21T14:07:01","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T19:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/?p=40293"},"modified":"2016-12-01T15:53:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T20:53:00","slug":"the-sax-mouthpiece-doesnt-matter-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/the-sax-mouthpiece-doesnt-matter-really\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sax Mouthpiece Doesn&#8217;t Matter!  Really??"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, \u00a0I am reviewing a garden hose. Ok, not really but I might as well be. \u00a0Every week, I get emails saying:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The mouthpiece doesn&#8217;t matter, you will sound like you no matter what mouthpiece you play&#8230;&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Charlie Parker could play anything&#8230;&#8230;..<\/li>\n<li>You sound the same on every mouthpiece. It&#8217;s you not the mouthpiece&#8230;..<\/li>\n<li>You would sound killer on a Yamaha 4C, why are you wasting time trying all these&#8230;.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s the player not the equipment&#8230;&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>A mouthpiece change won&#8217;t change your sound&#8230;&#8230;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I received this email from a visitor to my\u00a0site the other day.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">&#8220;Steve, \u00a0I&#8217;ve listened to all of your mouthpiece reviews over the years and the truth is that you would sound good on a garden hose! \u00a0I don&#8217;t think it matters which mouthpiece you play, your sound is your sound. \u00a0That being said, which tenor mouthpiece would you say is the best of all the ones you&#8217;ve tried?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>(I thought the last sentence was a bit of a contradiction if you think about the question but let&#8217;s move on&#8230;&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2016\/gardenhose.jpg\" rel=\"shadowbox\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" style=\"border: 0px initial initial;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2016\/gardenhose.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"280\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>I can sound great on even a garden hose! Really?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">After hearing these comments so much over the years and receiving this email, I\u00a0had the thought to post this demonstration of me trying to play a mouthpiece that just will not work for me. \u00a0I will not reveal the brand so don&#8217;t bother asking.\u00a0 As painful as this mouthpiece is to play, for the sake of this demonstration, \u00a0I have decided to bear with the pain for a couple of minutes for your sake. (Although you can hear my patience growing thin during the clip&#8230;&#8230;.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I am playing a brand new Rigotti Gold 2 1\/2 Light reed on the mouthpiece that I chose as the best out of four. \u00a0I attempted to warm up for 10 minutes before recording\u00a0but honestly, I couldn&#8217;t make it. \u00a0I think I played for about 3 minutes and then decided I\u00a0needed to get this horror show over ASAP or I would stab my ears with the sharp end of a pencil!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For those of you that might think it sounds great and what&#8217;s the problem:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">Notes wouldn&#8217;t respond\u00a0consistently<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">It sounded really nasally and anemic<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">The intonation was a bit off<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">It wasn&#8217;t even up and down the horn<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">Middle D was all muffled and tubby sounding<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">It was so hard to play and I hated the sound&#8230;&#8230;.ALOT!!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Discuss amonst yourselves\u00a0in the comment\u00a0section below. \u00a0Does the mouthpiece really not matter? \u00a0Because if I had to play this mouthpiece every day of my life I\u00a0would be an accountant right now&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Thanks, Steve<\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-40293-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2016\/Garden%20Hose.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2016\/Garden%20Hose.mp3\">https:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2016\/Garden%20Hose.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><strong>Mystery Garden Hose Mouthpiece<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, \u00a0I am reviewing a garden hose. Ok, not really but I might as well be. \u00a0Every week, I get emails saying: The mouthpiece doesn&#8217;t matter, you will sound like you no matter what mouthpiece you play&#8230;&#8230; Charlie Parker could play anything&#8230;&#8230;.. You sound the same on every mouthpiece. It&#8217;s you not the mouthpiece&#8230;.. You [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":40294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[1539,1538,1540,117,12,1541],"class_list":{"0":"post-40293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mouthpiece-reviews","8":"tag-bad","9":"tag-importance","10":"tag-lame","11":"tag-sax-mouthpiece","12":"tag-saxophone","13":"tag-worthless-piece-of-crap","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}