Woodwind instruments such as the saxophone, clarinet, and flute need great care and maintenance. This way, they get to retain their excellent sounds, boast an excellent finish and enjoy a greater resale value. As a woodwind player, you must understand that you need a specific set of accessories to realize these objectives. This is why this guide will examine the benefits offered by certain must-have accessories for woodwind players. If this is something that’s drawn your attention, read on!
Table of Contents
1. Helps Offer You Support
You need a lot of support when playing a woodwind instrument such as a saxophone. Without such support, you risk an incorrect posture while playing your instrument. This might lead to a possible injury. Fortunately, you can avoid such an injury by investing in a neck sling. Using this accessory, you get much-needed support, which helps you play better by shifting your focus to playing the instrument.
Other than the saxophone, the neck sling also supports your neck when playing other woodwind instruments. This includes the bass or bassoon clarinet and the clarinet.
2. Maintain Good Hygiene
The last thing you want is compromising your wellbeing in the name of playing a woodwind instrument. This is something you can avoid using a mouthpiece brush that you can use to clean your instrument carefully. As a woodwind player, all you need to do is dip the mouthpiece brush into warm, soapy water and brush it over your instrument. Subsequently, you’ll be sure that the mouthpiece is clean and hygienic to use, hence ensuring you remain in good condition while using it.
3. Guarantee The Safety Of Your Woodwind Instrument
Buying a woodwind instrument isn’t cheap. Because of this, you need to take great care of your instrument to ensure it remains in perfect working condition. One such accessory that helps guarantee this is the instrument stand. Buying this accessory is crucial, more so if you often go to concerts and find yourself placing your woodwind instrument on the floor, bed, or chair. This way, you’re guaranteed its safety and functioning for an extended period.
4. Reduce Maintenance Costs
Like many artificial gadgets, woodwind instruments need regular maintenance to ensure they remain in perfect working condition for a prolonged period. You can realize this in different ways, such as using a polishing cloth to get rid of dust or marks on your woodwind instrument. It also helps ensure the silver or brass remains in excellent condition even when you’re not performing. Thanks to this, you get to avoid some problems in advance or deal with them earlier on, which helps reduce its overall maintenance cost.
Regularly applying lubrication is also another way of ensuring that the woodwind instrument remains in superb working condition. Some of the must-have lubricants include slide oils, valve oils, and slide greases.
5. Strengthen Your Flaws
If you’re struggling to realize the desired sound on your woodwind instrument, the reed is an accessory you need to buy. This accessory allows you to produce the sound as desired from your woodwind instrument. You need to replace the reeds over time because it usually starts splitting or chipping over time. How often you should replace it depends on the frequency of playing your woodwind instrument.
Featured Image by Bob McEvoy en Pixabay
