Archived 1/5/2026
The aim of this exercise is to develop your embouchure by exaggerating movements. Try these:
With mouthpiece only:
Play in front of a mirror
Play a tone using a classical embouchure. Have a firm bottom lip (but smooth chin) that is curled in, firm corners brought in, and a relaxed upper lip + upper jaw. Play in front of a tuner and note the pitch.
Play a tone usnig a relaxed jazz embouchure. Have a supported, fat bottom lip (curled out slightly) but stay relaxed. Relax your jaw. Chin should be wrinkly. Ignore your corners - they should naturally rest in position. Upper lip + upper teeth should be relaxed and merely rest on the mouthpiece. Play in front of a tuner. Notice your pitch is flatter and your sound should be brighter. BOTH the pitch and the tone quality should be noticeably affected.
With the instrument:
Do the same as above and pick comfortable, middle register notes. For the jazz embouchure in particular you may find the need to adjust your bottom lip + jaw to hit notes in the higher and lower registers. But for now DO NOT play very high or very low. Just notice the difference in pitch and tone quality.
Finally, push in your mouthpiece quite a bit until you have an in tune jazz embouchure. Now, instead of being flat having a jazz tone, you'll be in tune and have a jazz tone!
Finally, here's some helpful videos on the subject:
A demonstration of jazz embouchure vs classical
When you relax your jaw, keep your lip in the same position. As a funny visual, I picture this chicken and imagine my lip as the chicken's head, not moving where it connects to the reed. While my chin and jaw are similar to the chicken's body moving up and down.
The Better Sax guy has some advice too
Worth watching is seeing Stan Getz perform. Notice his chin, bottom lip, upper lip, how much mouthpiece he takes in and the mouthpiece position (it's pushed in quite a bit).