Hey neal, I have a question. What is your best practice technique. My time allotted for practice daily is about 1 hour. How can i fit a good practice schedule into 1 hour?
And, how can I try to get circular breathing! I’ve been trying for days, and I cant get it.
What does an expert like yourself recommend?
Thanks for the help
-Stavros (ALTO SAX
Hey Stavros,
I always start with long tones. One exercise I do takes about 8 minutes. I spend one complete breath split between two notes. Then progress up and down chromatically one octave from low E to E. Then I usually do some more long tones from a book that I have. After that I do some scales from Jackie McClean’s book. Then I do some jazz exercises- ii V I’s, etc. Sometimes I’ll work on classical stuff out of Rubanks or some other books. And I’ll work on pieces I’m playing with groups and transcriptions towards the end. I used to do more playalongs- abersolds. All that can fit within an hour- it all depends on how much time you have. If I don’t do anything else, I’ll still do the long tones- so then you still feel like you’ve played the next day.
For circular breathing, I talked to a teacher and he told me about how the didjeridoo players do it. How long have you been playing for? One of my teachers could circular breath, and it’s a good effect sometimes, but not the most important thing to learn.
There’s an exercise related to holding water in the cheeks.
-Neal