Here is a habit that every musician can do improvement on. This is probably one of the easiest and non time consuming repairs that you can do yourself. shwoodwind has a great article on cleaning mouthpieces and calcium build up, but on today's post I'm only to talk about basic cleaning of the mouth piece.
First let's talk about what will happen if you don't clean that mouth piece. Over time of not cleaning the mouthpiece, you will start to have build up of saliva and whatever else food or drink you had that day. If this continues maggots ( yes I said maggots) will start to form inside your mouthpiece, along with mold and other harmful stuff. Here is a picture of the beginning stages of it:
Pretty gross right? So here is a simple way that you can keep your mouthpiece from looking like this.
What you'll need:
A mouthpiece brush
cold to lukewarm water
soap detergent
What to do:
Fill your sink with cold to lukewarm water. If the mouthpiece is an old hard rubber composite make sure it is cold. The mouthpiece will turn green with luke warm water. After filling the sink take your brush and put dawn soap on it. After applying soap to the brush, gently scrub the inside and outside of the mouthpiece till it is nice and foamy. After scrubbing risen the mouth piece with water and dry with a cloth or towel.
Now you have a clean mouthpiece.
~MT~
This is actually a really good tip. I teach saxophone, and I can't tell you how many students I see using a gross mouthpiece. One young man once told me he thought he needed a new saxophone becuase his breath stunk after he played. All it took was a quick cleaning of his mouthpiece to change his mind.
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