Question:

Hi Neal, Is there always some discomfort in your bottom lip from your teeth digging in, I am finding after practicing for 40 – 60mins my bottom lip is pretty tender.

-Brett

Neal:

That depends on how exactly you’re playing.

I think I used to have more discomfort in my bottom lip from the same thing happening. But some time back, I began to somewhat stick my bottom lip farther forward.

Sounds like you’re also applying more pressure than is needed.

So try curling your bottom lip a little less and using a bit less pressure. It will feel different at first, but probably a better way to play in the long run and with less pain.

Question:

I play a cannonball alto sax and like most or all saxophones, on the top of the body of the sax there are two screws that you are supposed to tighten up in order for the neck piece not to move.

One of the screws on my sax broke and my neck piece moves around but I can still play normally like I used to. It’s as if no screws are tightening the neck piece.

My question is will this affect my sound?

-Miguel

Neal:

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer has to do with understanding what both of those screws does.

One of those screws tightens the connection with the neck. The other does something else.

It sounds like the one that did not break is the one that does something else.

That screw, from what you have said, sounds like the screw that tights the hold on a lyre. Is the screw going into a small square shaped slot? If so, that’s probably what it is.

A lyre, for anyone does not know, is sort of like a small music stand that you can attach to your saxophone. It’s used in marching bands many times. You can attach a small book of music with it to your saxophone so that you don’t need a full music stand. That means you can move around and march. Although, most marching bands eventually memorize their music I think.

That screw is for a lyre, not to tighten the connection between the sax neck and body.

The connection between your sax neck and the body of the horn is important, you want it to be a good connection. It can affect your sound in a bad way if it’s too loose. And you could potentially damage your instrument by tightening too much.

What I would suggest, for now, is taking the screw from the lyre holder and replacing the screw that does in fact tighten the connection with the neck.

You very well may want to replace the broken screw and have both screws functioning in those two places. Whether the lyre holder is important depends on whether you use a lyre or not.

But the screw that tightens the neck connection is very important, that will affect your sound.

Question:

I’m a new sax player and my teacher recommends I play the mouthpiece
and head for two weeks. Is that necessary to start playing?

-Tobi

Neal:

Question:

How long will it take me to play all sax scales?

(Currently can play “nil” major scales)

A few other people have said they know zero of the major scales.

Response:

How long it will take you to learn the scales on saxophone depends on many things.

They include whether you have played instruments before, how much you practice, whether you have a teacher, etc.

But probably the best way is to learn one scale and then see how it goes and how long it takes.

I would say half the scales will take approximately as long as it takes to learn the first scale. The other half will probably take half that time.

There are similarities between scales.

For example, the difference between C major and G major is one note, the F#.

If it took you a very long time to learn your first scale, it may take quite a bit less time to learn another scale.

Once you have learned a few scales, it’s probably going to be more accurate that the next one will take about as long as the previous one.

What do you think? Let me know what your experience learning scales has been! Leave a comment below.

Phillip, who is taking the saxophone improvisation class, asked,

“what are chords?”

Hello Phillip,

Say there’s a song that you want to play, but you don’t know the notes.

The first thing you might do is check on Sax Station to see if I made a lesson about it. Some of the lessons have the notes. But most of the lessons with music have it broken up into pieces and slowed down. That’s going to make it easier to figure out.

If you want to ask me a question, there’s a page for that.

https://saxstation.com/ask-a-saxophone-question

You can let me know about a song you want to learn on that page too, I may teach part of it. If your question is about the first note of a song and you have spent twenty minutes trying to figure it out,  I’ll probably tell you. You do need to fill out the information in the question form though.  That gives me some background so you get a better answer to your question.

If you email me without going to that page, you may simply be told to go to that page. There’s a purple button on every page of Sax Station that goes to that page.

There is a note on that page that says not to request copyrighted music, because you won’t receive it (full score) from me.

Many times though, I do teach small parts of songs. Sometimes the notes are given, other times you are given the first note and it’s more of an ear training exercise. And generally I’ll have links to buy the sheet music. At the same time, anything you can hear, you can learn by ear if you spend some time on it.

Ear training is an important part of becoming a better musician. Yes, it is more difficult early on.

If you are working on learning something by ear and get stuck at a certain point, that’s a legitimate question.

If you don’t start learning something by ear at all, spending zero time on it, because you assume it’s hard, less likely you’ll get any help from me.

I received a question from a saxophone student who used the form on the question page

( https://saxstation.com/ask-a-saxophone-question )

Francisco:

Hey Neal, could you send me the notes for under the sea I could get by ear as soon as possible I have to presented to my teacher