By the way, don’t think of it as an ‘intellectual’ thing… the whole point of the bender is the day you realize you aren’t consciously thinking about it at all, it simply becomes something you do instinctively, the exact way the sax players do. You think they sit around and consciously think about bite pressure, reed angle, tongue position?

That’s what actually going on, but they don’t consciously think about it..!

It’s no more an intellectual exercise for them than for us with a bender, once you have got comfortable using it. But you got to do that first, then the world of expression and musicality truly opens up.