While vertical pressure (biting) is allowed to happen among most saxophonists, I highly recommend AGAINST it. I believe that very minimal tension in the jaw area is required to produce a tone. Let the airspeed and the tongue placement do all of the work. Biting causes pain in the lip, constriction of tone, and possibly could lead to TMJ, which is huge bad news. OANegrin

ok thx

I agree with onegrin. Tightening or bitting the reed is very detrimental to your tone as the reed is distorted in its vibration. The result is a really buzzy sound not preffered, by any classical saxophonist that i know at least, and also bad intonation. I would work the embochure. Try to keep your jaw still in place (unless you are doing vibrato of course) by looking at urself in a mirror. Make the embochoure is firm, not tight with pressure. Sometimes all it takes to play a high note is to blow a bit harder. Hope this helps.