Excess saliva when doing long tones, is this normal or a problem?
I'm an intermediate alto player, and I have been doing long tones for a few weeks. I go from the bottom to the top of the chromatic scale and back down in 4/4 time at 60bpm holding each note for two measures.
After about every 6-8 notes I get a buildup of saliva in the mouthpiece and if I don't stop playing and suck it the sound goes bad.
I'm just wondering if this is normal and expected. I will understand if my saliva is perhaps on the higher side of average, but I would like to know if this is a common problem. The problem does exist for me during normal playing of charts but is definitely worse when I'm doing long tones. Thank you!
Posted Aug 24, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC
13
I had kind of a similar problem when I started, and now some days I have extra saliva, some days I hace almost no saliva at all lmao. What I used to do is to keep tje siliva under my tonge and not lettin it get ocer it, this way the air I am blowung would not get almost any saliva wit it and the sound would come out neately, after a wile In a rest or a respiration I would swalow the saliva and start acumulating it again, I know it sounds gross but is the way I used to manage it. Also you should maybe drink more water during practice