Pleaseee help me. I play the alto and bari sax and if i play for to long i get a painful mark on the inside of my lower lip, because of the pressure from my teeth against it when i play because you fold ur lip over your teeth to play. It`s really making life difficult, ive tried reducing the pressure, but the tone sufferes..any ideas???
-thanks

Play until you get a calus.....it`s the only way.

really?? Can u get calus on the inside of ur mouth?? I cant seem to loosen the pressure without tone going so it looks like i`ll jus have to do it the painful way

if you put a folded up cigarette paper on the inside of your mouth over your teeth where it is hurting while you play it might help, but you can`t do it forever, i did this when i had a brace

the same happens to me, I play tenor and everytime I practice at home that happens and it hurts so i stop playin. But when I try to play a different way the sound starts to suffer too!!

yea i had the same problem but at first i put a thin peice ov wax on my teeth but you cant do that forever......i play all saxes and i used to hurt bad but now i got a calus and i am fine

Okay here ya go. That happend to me when i started playing the sax but all i did was put less of my lip on. If that doesn`t work just keep playing the way you are and it will go away after a while

Tune is a difficult thing, but as far as I know you shouldn`t use pressure as musch as air, position and tounging to get a good sound.

This sounds bad! There should not be excessive pressure on your lower lip as the mouthpiece is supposed to just rest on it with the sling supporting the weight of the sax.
Try putting more mouthpiece in your mouth and reduce the pressure applied by your lower jaw. With a bit of practice, you should be able to control the tone with a slack jaw and elliminate the sore lip. I can play for hours and I can assure you I do not have a callous on my lower lip.

A good sound isn`t produced by pressure, it just helps beginners but when you`ve got the hang of it you will not need the pressure to produce thaty beautiful, singing sound a saxophone may have.

Go to wal mart, and in the dentures section get a box of "ezo" its wax for your dentures*go figure* cut and peice from the weird shape long enuff to cover your the front 4 teeth in your mouth*on the bottom* after you`ve cut it, fold it in half, put on teeth and kinda mush it around till ya get it to the form of your teeth.... Start playin and the pain is gone.. Another idea is oragel.. Or you can use both until the pain from not using wax goes away... Oh yea one more thing.. When your wax starts to turn white, you should probably cut another peice off.. Hope it helps yall

the only problem i have is that my braces cut into my lip and it makes square bumps. but after a while it didn`t hurt me.

Much of your problem is that you`re trying to make the lip do most of the work. The lip and jaw are used as a pitch adjuster and not pitch producer. Learning how to support notes with the correct amount of air takes time an effort. I double on alto/tenor and bari and have to use different air support techniques and lip and jaw support for each horn.
Your band/sax instructor should be able to diagnose the problem ans suggest how to use the lung/diaphram combination to support the notes and how to acquire the correct pitch.

A lot of modern sax playes use what is called "up stream" playing, in that, raw air power is used to get that big, fat sound and the embrochure is the tuning adjuster that produces the lip slides, slurs, whines and effects popular today.

As an experiment, try playing second line G on the horn and add more air, less lip until you find a comfortable compromise.

Is your reed stregnth correct? Is the cane to hard or soft for your playing level at this time?
Try another reed stregnth uop or down and see if the problem gets worse or better.

Look for leaks and mis-adjustments in the horn also. If it`s a school horn, it may need adjustments. Most schools/colleges have a horn doctor on retainer to handle school horns. Some teachers are qualified horn repair techs.

As others have said, you also need to practice enough to harden the lower lip. Any pro will tell you that as soon as you don`t, the lip gets soft and cuts easily.

Practice, practice, practice.

Form our mouth as if you were saying pooh, you`re bottom lip should go out and form a cusion, the muscles in your face should be relaxed except for the corners of your mouth which should be tight enough to prevent air from excaping.

My private teacher recomended this...
Take a piece of a football mouth guard thing. Cut off a rectangular pice, which would go over your teeth, and protect their edge from your lip. Now get a candle, and gently heat the plastic. When its slightly warm, put it on your teeth and let it cool. It should mold perfectly to your teeth, and should help a lot. After a while you won`t need it anymore, because your lip will toughen up. Hope this helps...