  In a reduction sequence of a graph, vertices are successively identified
until the graph has one vertex. At each step, when identifying $u$ and $v$,
each edge incident to exactly one of $u$ and $v$ is coloured red. Bonnet, Kim,
Thomass\'e and Watrigant [J. ACM 2022] defined the twin-width of a graph $G$ to
be the minimum integer $k$ such that there is a reduction sequence of $G$ in
which every red graph has maximum degree at most $k$. For any graph parameter
$f$, we define the reduced $f$ of a graph $G$ to be the minimum integer $k$
such that there is a reduction sequence of $G$ in which every red graph has $f$
at most $k$. Our focus is on graph classes with bounded reduced bandwidth,
which implies and is stronger than bounded twin-width (reduced maximum degree).
We show that every proper minor-closed class has bounded reduced bandwidth,
which is qualitatively stronger than an analogous result of Bonnet et al.\ for
bounded twin-width. In many instances, we also make quantitative improvements.
For example, all previous upper bounds on the twin-width of planar graphs were
at least $2^{1000}$. We show that planar graphs have reduced bandwidth at most
$466$ and twin-width at most $583$. Our bounds for graphs of Euler genus
$\gamma$ are $O(\gamma)$. Lastly, we show that fixed powers of graphs in a
proper minor-closed class have bounded reduced bandwidth (irrespective of the
degree of the vertices). In particular, we show that map graphs of Euler genus
$\gamma$ have reduced bandwidth $O(\gamma^4)$. Lastly, we separate twin-width
and reduced bandwidth by showing that any infinite class of expanders excluding
a fixed complete bipartite subgraph has unbounded reduced bandwidth, while
there are bounded-degree expanders with twin-width at most 6.
