Sorry for the delay in responding to you your question. The goal for doing any of this for me is flexibility; with flexibility we have more nuance choices. There are two basic ways that I work on developing this:

First I always start with the Ee-Yahs on every note throughout the full range of the saxophone. Ee-Yahs are excellent to develop the “non-bitting” embouchure that is essential for a good jazz sound (my opinion). When the jaw is in the “Yah” (lower more open position), the sound is bigger, fatter, and more resonant. This is the optimum place for the jaw (lower teeth) because it is furthest away from the reed which results in more reed vibration. There is a video of Joe Allard demonstrating this with one of his students; Joe is actually pulling down on the student’s lower jaw to pull it away from the reed. Of course you don’t want to live in the extreme “low” position – we’re working on flexibility. As a jazz musician I’m always checking out old videos of the masters on YouTube. If you find some close ups of Coltrane and Adderley (for example), you’ll notice how much jaw movement there is within their lines. This greatly contributes to creating the expression of their notes. You’ll almost never see this with classical players who are going for “evenness of tone” throughout their lines. Also makes it easier to accomplish large interval leaps by not moving the jaw – this is where the second exercise to “flexibility” comes in:

The second approach is what I’d call “voicing”. This is all internal oral cavity flexibility and has nothing to do with the movement of the jaw. Donald Sinta wrote a great book on the subject called “Voicing” which covers this in detail. Basically do the “Ee-Yah” exercises without moving your jaw and shaping the internal oral cavity only. A great way of experiencing this is by playing a single note and saying (no words but making the shape) different vowels, …A, E, I, O, U. Listen to how you can change the quality of the sound on your horn by doing this. In this same way you can also lower or raise pitch on the sax without moving your jaw. You get the same results as the “jaw lowering” exercise but through different means. This is a favorite method of flexibility amongst classical players as it is a little more subtle than physically moving the jaw. I always start students with the “jaw lowering” Ee-Yahs first because it teaches non-bitting on the mouthpiece/reed. I’ve seen too many classical players never use their jaw that have a death-grip on their reeds and their sounds are very small, tight, and stuffy. It doesn’t matter what voicing you’re using, you’ll still get a very confined sound if you’re jaw is too tight on the reed. To me – this is one of the most important things that Joe Allard passed down to his students (whom I studied with a couple).

Again, my whole goal in working on this stuff is to have flexibility with my sound. These exercises have helped me get closer to achieving this. Hope this was helpful – please let me know if you have any more questions.

Best – Ricky

Regards Martin Leeson,Birmingham,UK