Saxophone Jaw Pain? How to reduce and prevent It!

Learn everything you need to know about saxophone jaw pain, what causes the jaw to hurt while playing sax, how to treat saxophone jaw pain, and what to change in your saxophone playing to prevent jaw pain. Important Note: This website does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional for any health concerns.

How to treat and reduce jaw pain from playing saxophone?

Treating jaw pain from playing saxophone can be tricky but there are great ways to reduce and prevent pain. Prevention is the best cure and we’ll show you how. But if you’re in need of immediate relief from saxophone jaw pain here is our favorite treatment tip from the Mayo Clinic: Applying moist heat or an ice pack to the side of your face may ease pain. Acute pain is best treated with an ice pack. Chronic dull pain is best treated with heat therapy. Apply heat or cold for 15 to 20 minutes several times a day.

Before we dig deeper let’s make sure you know…

What causes jaw pain while playing saxophone or after playing sax?

Jaw pain is often a symptom not a root cause. Common causes of jaw pain playing include:

Tooth or mouth problems. Consult your dentist to rule out infection, teeth grinding, or other mouth issues that may be easily treated and help remove your jaw pain. Saxophone playing requires focused use of your lips, teeth, jaw, and throat. So keeping your mouth healthy is vital for a healthy sax life.

Fatigue or injury to the neck, spine, or back can cause sympathetic jaw pain. Pain in those larger muscle and joint groups can cause you to alter your body posture in unnatural ways. This can have a ripple effect on nearby muscles and joints like the jaw. Remember the jaw is a hard working joint you rely on every day for eating and talking, and pushing it even harder by playing saxophone.

Changes to your bedding, pillows, or sleep patterns can cause jaw discomfort. Often these are temporary but may be just enough discomfort to overload your tired jaw from playing saxophone.

Diet. Think about what happens to your jaw if you started a new morning breakfast routine including granola with raisins over yogurt. It can taste great and fuel you well, but it’s a lot of heavy chewing. It’s like you woke your jaw from a restful slumber and forced it into the gym for a crossfit workout. Your jaw will be more tired at the start of the day and more prone to fatigue through the day. Medical experts suggest that 15 minutes of chewing per day is typical, so don’t overload your jaw with hard repetitive chewing and gum. Plus chewing gum while playing saxophone is no good. Just ask your middle school band teacher!

How to treat jaw pain from playing saxophone?

If your jaw already hurts from playing saxophone, here are several things you can do right now to reduce the jaw pain:

1. Relax your jaw. Strengthening the jaw is almost never the solution. Jaw muscles are super lean and strong and have been busy with a regular fitness routine ever since you began eating solid food!
2. Decrease inflammation in your jaw. Ice it for 20 minutes then rest it intensely. If appropriate, use anti-inflammatory medication like ibuprofen and/or sleep on your back to avoid side-sleeping jaw tension. Ask your dentist about a night guard or bite guard to help open, position, and relax the jaw while preventing grinding.
3. Practice neutral jaw position. Sometimes all you need is a small physical reminder to chill out and relax your jaw. Here’s our favorite exercise to relax your jaw. Place the tip of your tongue at the top of your mouth just above your top teeth near the gums. This instinctively helps open the jaw slightly to relax the muscles. As you do this, you should feel your lips and cheeks relaxing. This exercise also serves as a great physical meditation. Use it on stage when you aren’t playing saxophone, or in stressful situations when you may begin to clench your jaw. Small jaw movement like this can help center your body and mind connection into a more relaxed, healthy state.
4. Massage therapy can do wonders to relax the tight muscles and fascia surrounding your bones. Our saxophone playing founder, Rulon Brown, was in a major car accident at age 27 and shared the following: “I felt terribly nagging neck and back pain that moved down my arms and up my neck to my jaw.  I had to go through months of deep tissue massage, physical therapy, and muscle relaxers to help my larger muscles (scapula, traps and lats) relax enough to let my bones do their work. Bones should have been helping hold my body up but my hurt, cramped muscles were pulling my bones into painful posture. That caused secondary pain in my jaw and arms. Massage therapy and PT were absolutely vital to recovery and my playing saxophone and flute again.”
5. Strengthen your back and core. Saxophone playing can fatigue our bodies so it’s important to use our large core muscle groups well. Strengthening your back and core can do wonders to relieve secondary pain in your jaw.

Saxophone specific ways to treat and prevent jaw pain from sax playing

1. Make sure your saxophone mouthpiece enters your mouth evenly and is not biased to one side. Too often, sax players drift their embouchure to the right side of their mouth without noticing. This off-center embouchure angle stresses the jaw by requiring uneven holding force from the jaw. This may seem like a trivial concern but multiplied by hundreds of hours of practice and performance, this small bad habit becomes a big pain the jaw. If you bias your embouchure to one side of your mouth rather than an even center embouchure, focus your practice time in front of a mirror to improve your embouchure  position. This can often fight the biggest cause of saxophone jaw pain - an unbalanced embouchure!
2. Avoid bad saxophone vibrato technique that can fatigue or damage your jaw. Correct vibrato is made by gently pressing your jaw up and down so the reed is bent in the desired vibrato pattern. Incorrect saxophone vibrato moves the jaw forward and back, fatiguing the muscles, joint, and tendons of the jaw. Saxophonist Rulon Brown teaches a powerful "wah wah" saxophone exercise to help you learn correct saxophone vibrato technique and avoid forward/back jaw movement.
3. Be mindful and careful with jutting your chin forward or back while playing saxophone. Too much of this can fatigue or misalign your jaw and cause TMJ. Two common playing examples include (1) "subtoning" notes by pulling your chin backward so more of your bottom lip mutes to the reed's vibrating tip, causing a subtone sound, and (2) poor slap tongue technique where the player pushes their jaw forward making more space for the player's tongue to suction against the reed then pull away quickly causing the reed to slap the mouthpiece and make a slap tone. These are great sax playing techniques but make sure you are doing them efficiently and that you are aware of your jaw movements when playing. Maybe an intense slapt tongue piece requires a bit more pause after playing. So add in more jokes and banter with the audience after that song to give your jaw a rest before you dive into the next tune.
4. Ditch your traditional neck strap and use a back strap or harness to hold the saxophone's direct weight. These move the saxophones direct weight off the spinal column. We love the JazzLab sax holder.
5. Focus on your saxophone playing posture seated and standing. Practice in front of a mirror to notice if you are holding your body in tense ways. Pay close attention to your shoulders or neck. Often we tilt our head or lift our shoulders while playing saxophone and this creates tension over time.
6. Experiment with reed cuts, softer reeds and/or a smaller mouthpiece tip opening. Sometimes sax teachers and players fall into the false choice that harder strength reeds is the sign of a great player. That's false. Every mouth is different and reed strength is dependent on many factors including mouthpiece design and tip opening, musical style, the players mouth, etc. Many great players adjust down their reed strengths as they age because they mature in their control of the instrument and realize they can conserve energy and be just as effective. If you can go down a half strength in your reed and radically improve your playing comfort, why not try it?
   
   As example: If you are playing a mouthpiece with 7 tip opening, try moving down to a 6 or 5. Or experiment by keeping the 7 tip and using a softer reed. Or if you are playing a reed with a firm thick heart (Vandoren blue box) try a reed with less resistance (like the Vandoren Java Red).  Sometimes small tweaks like this to your mouthpiece can free up your jaw and mouth to play more relaxed.
   Reduce body tension when playing saxophone - everywhere you can!

• Schedule regular breaks into your saxophone practice to avoid body tension and muscle fatigue. For example, twenty five minutes of focused practice followed by a five minute break that includes walking away from your saxophone, stretching your arms, and drinking some water. 
• Try adjusting your saxophone playing position to rest the saxophone weight against the front of your right hip. This helps relax the right arm and shoulder.
• Practice in front of a full-body mirror to notice if you are holding your body in tense ways. Pay close attention to your shoulders or neck. Often we tilt our head or lift our shoulders while playing saxophone and this creates tension over time.
• Keep your hips, knees and ankles relaxed and loose while playing. This helps your whole body stay more relaxed yet "connected" with the ground without being "locked" into one tense spot on the ground.
• Try a hookless thumb rest on your saxophone to free up your right hand and arm. You don't need a thumb hook on your sax unless you are doing aggressive movement on stage while you play. Here's our favorite ergonomic saxophone rest.

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions About How to Prevent and Treat Jaw Pain from Playing Saxophone

What type of saxophone neck strap should I use to prevent jaw pain?

Common saxophone neck straps press directly on the spinal column and that can lead to discomfort and pain in the neck, shoulders, and jaw. It is better to use a “back strap” or harness style neck strap to lift the weight of the saxophone off your spine and place the weight onto the yoke of your shoulders and back. Those are much larger muscle groups and bone structure than the neck spine. So be sure to consider this and invest wisely in a strap to move the saxophone weight off your neck and onto your back and shoulders. 

Why do I have jaw pain when I play saxophone?

There are many factors that can contribute to jaw pain from playing saxophone. Common causes are poorly designed saxophone neck straps causing spine tension, bad posture while playing saxophone, overuse or over practicing without rest and frequent breaks, unrelated teeth grinding. See the more detailed instructions above.

How to fix jaw pain from saxophone playing?

To fix the jaw pain you feel from playing saxophone make sure to take frequent breaks during long playing sessions, use a good neckstrap that moves the saxophone weight off your spine and onto your back and shoulders, improve your playing posture to release unneeded tension, adjust your saxophone for optimal playing angle and ergonomics (this may include hookless thumb rests and playing angles), use treatment options described in detail above, and consult your medical provider. See the more detailed instructions above.

Can I use hot packs or cold packs to treat my saxophone jaw pain?

Yes. Our favorite treatment tip for saxophone jaw pain is to apply moist heat or an ice pack to the side of your face. Acute pain is best treated with an ice pack. Chronic dull pain is best treated with heat therapy. Apply heat or cold for 15 to 20 minutes several times a day. See the more detailed info above.

We hope this article on Saxophone Jaw Pain and How to Fix It has been helpful and informative!