Linear Progression on Saxophone?

By Neal Leave a Comment

saxophone linear progression pullups/gym I was at the gym in Monterey and Jacob was telling me about how novices at the gym make very rapid progression and are able to do a linear progression with more weight each session.

Part of the process of getting stronger has to do with straining yourself which is much easier to do when you’re not as strong. It’s also easier to recover in shorter periods of time at the novice level. When you’ve been doing it for a long time, your body is much stronger and it takes a lot more to strain the muscles and consequently takes a lot more to get even more strong.

So you make a lot of fast progress early on, but then quickly slow down in terms of the rate at which you become stronger. Olympic lifters do not increase their max loads by five lbs each week. It would be interesting if they did…. Then the strongest person would simply be the person who had been doing it the longest/the oldest person. But that’s definitely not the case.

The small steps that get you just a little bit farther become more important at that point.

With playing saxophone, you also make rapid progress in the beginning. You’re learning new notes, new rhythmic figures, what the crazy Italian terms mean and how they apply to the music.

Then there comes a point where you know most of the notes. You can go beyond them with altissimo, but adding on an additional altissimo note on saxophone is far more of a challenge than simply learning the fingering for it.

You know the vocabulary and dimensions of music. Putting them all together and really becoming a master saxophone player and musician….. that requires time and thought.

In many ways, music does not face the physical constraints of strength training, but there are challenges in a similar way when pushing yourself to the next level. Sometimes you need to change the way you practice or the way you approach the music or the way you think about things. Sometimes it involves listening to new music.

It takes effort simply to maintain where you’re at – with strength or music. And conscious practice and effort to go beyond that.

You can definitely continue to master music and improve your sound throughout your whole life. But there isn’t a single book that will give you all the steps.

Any thoughts on this?

Saxophone Ear Training – Godfather Theme

By Neal 4 Comments

Nino Rota composed ‘Speak Softly, Love’ or the Godfather Theme.

The ‘solutions’ to the music (the notes for this lesson) are listed below the video. They’re not listed all at once though. They’re listed one at a time. You can scroll down to see one and then if you want to check the next one, you’ll need to scroll down farther. In this way, it’s a slight bit of a hassle to check the next note and I would encourage you to not look unless completely necessary.

Try it out! And let me know how it goes.

You can buy the sheet music if you would like, but I would recommend buying the original recording and learning the rest by ear. You can also check out Saxophone Tribe to get help playing this.

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Thanks