May 24, 2011 make your sax growl make saxaphone growl tenor sax growl how to make a saxophone growl alto saxophone how to growl how to growl on alto sax. Category Howto &. In my experience, the lip out method produces a noticeably bigger sound. A good rule of thumb is to make contact with the reed using the fleshiest part of your lower lip. This way, the reed can vibrate as much as possible while you use the least amount of pressure necessary to hold the mouthpiece in place.
You wouldn't be inventing your own instrument if you followed every one of these instructions, so get creative. The basic PVC saxophone 'shape' is to cut out four more PVC lengths in addition to the mouthpiece, and to connect them all with elbow joints. In cutting the lengths, the main pipe where finger holes will be placed is the longest.
Use a hacksaw or PVC cutter to make any wild size or shape you want. The overall length of your pipe will affect the notes played, so you can mess around with a number of length combinations.
Next, drill holes in the longest of the PVC tubes to make finger holes for playing. You can experiment with different spacing to get different harmonics, but ultimately the closer the holes exposed are to the mouthpiece, the higher the note played.
Sound Science Stuff:
The sound created inside is due to standing waves created in what is effectively a close-ended air column. For a look at the science in harmonics and close-ended wind instruments, check out this website. For a look at specifically how saxaphones work, see this primer. A significant difference in the sound of a brass sax and our PVC sax is that our column is not a conical or bowed shape, but a cylindricial one.
When you open up air holes with your fingers, you are changing the length of the wave that resonates most strongly in the tube. In a simplified way, this is similar to shortening the length of the tube to wherever the closest exposed hole to the mouthpiece is.