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Saxophone Cleaning Tips – Eliminate Sticky Key Syndrome

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Does your saxophone have sticking keys that make it difficult to play?

The first point would be to not eat or drink before or while you play saxophone.  Water should be the saxophone player’s beverage of choice when you’re playing or are about to play.

In terms of cleaning it, don’t buy a synthetic fuzzy saxophone swab-stick!

saxophone swab in the trash

saxophone cleaning stick in the trash

I had one myself, but then I cut off the cap and threw it away. They work somewhat well at first and are convenient.

BUT as they age, the fibers come off and get stuck to your saxophone’s pads. These fibers then create micro leaks which can hurt your sound.

Some saxophone players have used them for years and think that they work wonderfully. However, I know of problems they have caused. If you go to a repair shop and they have a special light, it can reveal the micro leaks in the horn.

It takes a little more time, but get a swab with a string that you run through the saxophone. I have a one for the body and one for the neck and mouthpiece.

Personally, I clean my saxophone each time after I use it. My cleaning consists of running the body swab through twice and then cleaning the pads on the spoon keys as well as swabbing the neck and mouthpiece.  Some players almost never clean their horns.

Learning Saxophone – Rhythm…..

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First saw this video a few years back and thought of it again and decided to post it.

A homeless drummer banging away. And he sounds awesome.

We can have music without notes…..

So let’s start with rhythm.

Think about the music in Brazil. There are beautiful melodies. But the foundation is rhythm.

Dancing is about rhythm.

Depending on your teachers and classes, you may use a metronome. But not all musicians and singers use theirs (or even have one). And a metronome is pretty mechanical.

Saxophone players, how’s your rhythm?

Learning Saxophone – Having Trouble Remembering Music? Not to mention in all twelve keys!

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Robert asked a question about remembering everything in life and on top saxophone pattern in music

of that the idea of learning music in all 12 keys!

Part of it is seeing things in patterns. We think in terms of words, not letters.

Even a single sentence might have close to a hundred letters.  But a word might be a single syllable.  We process the words faster and process the letters but don’t dwell on them.

For the twelve keys bit, if you remember in terms of numbers or patterns – things get easier.

Here’s a quick example.

In the song ‘Harlem Nocturne’, there’s an ending line to the bridge that has a certain pattern to it.

Bb down to Gb goes down a fifth.

B down to E goes down a fifth.

A down to D goes down a fifth.

What’s more, Db to B to A….. there’s a whole step in between each of those notes.

This is just a few notes of the section, but the rest of it has a similar pattern.  The notes are descending along a whole tone scale.  And it alternates between this whole tone descent and jumping down by fifths.

That’s how I think about that section of the song.  To play it in all twelve keys becomes a much smaller challenge.

Having the technique to play it smoothly in all the different keys becomes the issue.

Learning Saxophone – What’s the Real Point of Playing in All 12 Keys?

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Playing a song in all 12 keys…..

Something that we at least theoretically feel is a good thing since we’ve been told it’s a good idea.

But what’s the real point?

Are you going to go play a show and do ‘Blue Bossa’ in the original key and then for your second number play Blue Bossa modulated a half step up and then for your third number…..

Probably not.

Is learning a song in all 12 keys even worth the time if you can’t play it well in the original key?

I would say no.

Knowing the notes is just one piece of music.

If your rhythm, articulation, phrasing, etc isn’t sounding good, then learning a song in 12 keys is a waste of time (in my opinion).

So learn music in the original key first, and then once you can play it well, you can move on knowing it in all the keys.

It’s up for debate whether you should know more songs, but only in the original key, or fewer songs and in all the keys.

Knowing the songs in all the keys means you have a much greater understanding of the harmonic structure of the piece.  That’s a good thing, but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle.

Having a wider variety of songs in your repertoire is nice, it can be argued that having a smaller repertoire of songs that you can really play might be better.

The middle ground might be knowing the song in the original key and also knowing the intervals of the song in terms of numbers.  Then you can figure out how to play it in another key if you need to.

It will take some time to be able to do that well on the spot.

Being comfortable with scales in all keys is an important early step.

Playing in different keys on saxophone is a bit different than playing in different keys on piano.  On piano, you may be able to keep the shape of your hand position and simply move it.  On sax you can use completely different fingers in another key.

So think about where you’re at musically and don’t just learn music in all twelve keys because you hear you should.  Do it if it makes sense for you right now.

What do you think?

Saxophone – Constructive Criticism vs Noise

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If you post a video of yourself playing saxophone (or singing or doing something else) on Youtube, there are trolls out there who enjoy pointing out everything wrong with it.

Could be your first video and you may feel bad about what they wrote.

But you shouldn’t.  If it’s an anonymous person who doesn’t give a name or a video/recording of themselves playing, you really shouldn’t worry about it.  They may or not know what they’re talking about.  And expecting you to listen with a negative approach is silly.

Earlier, I got some anonymous comment criticizing my time and tone on sax and going on to say some other things about Sax Station.  From an anonymous person.

Found it a little annoying.  But I didn’t really care.  If you have some constructive criticism for me about my sound or Sax Station, go ahead and contact me and let me know.  I’ll probably appreciate it if you do it in a constructive way.  Many sax players have helped me out with ideas and added things that make Sax Station better.

Feedback matters more when it:

A) Comes from someone you know and respect.

B) Comes from a sax player you know can play.

Preferably both.

Other saxophone players can play better than me.  Sonny Rollins, Joshua Redman, James Carter, the list could go on for a while.  But internet troll #347 isn’t on the list, since I don’t know what he sounds like.

Sax Station is about helping people learn the saxophone and it does that.  I know because I run it.

If you have suggestions to help that process work better, I would love to hear from you.

And if troll #347 is reading this, include your name next time, makes your comment a little bit less like noise.

Thanks!

-Neal

Flying Fingers on the Saxophone? What to do about it….

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Saxophone Fingers TechniqueBeen working on saxophone technique a bit over the last couple of months.  It all starts with the fingers.

How you press and lift your fingers affects your sound a great deal more than you might think.

Slamming them down triggers reactions in the rest of your body which changes your sound.

Even moving your body as you practice affects your sound.  It’s a variable that you want to eliminate as you practice.  You have more control if you don’t move anything except your fingers.

During performance, go wild!  Don’t want to be a statue on stage.  But you’re not performing when you’re practicing, you’re improving how you play.

Received this email from James,

Hello Neal,
My biggest frustration is keeping my fingers on the keys, especially my right hand.  I have been taking the advice from your website to practice the movements slower and I have had some success, but when I do not focus on keeping my fingers where they belong, they float high above the keys.  What other training measures can I implement to get my fingers to stay where they belong?
Sincerely,
James

My response:

Hey James,
I can see that, I’ve had more trouble keeping my right hand on the keys, something about the feel of the left hand makes it a little easier to keep the curve there it seems.

To be honest, it’s not a small feat to get your fingers to stay on the keys.

Javier offered this suggestion,

“….practice in front of a mirror and watch his fingers move, learn to feel how the fingers feel close to the keys and do it slowly over and over again to teach the fingers muscles how it’s supposed to feel. Then close his eyes and keep practicing and open them to keep checking and learn to feel the corrected distance from the keys… and stay relaxed in both hands which is imperative as you speed it up”

So a mirror and really slowing things down can help.  Your muscles have memory and you have trained them in a different way for a long time.

The change won’t take place instantly.

If you want to take some personal lessons with me I can help you more directly.  But I can’t really just tell you how to make it work right without seeing what you’re doing and giving you feedback over an extended period of time since you’ll need to work on it for a while.

Let me know if you’re interested.

-Neal

Pentatonic and Blues Scale – Tenor Sax and Alto Sax

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The pentatonic and blues scales are fun to play around with and give you a certain bluesy sound.

Minor pentatonic has one less note than the blues scale, so they’re practically the same scale.

That means the blues scale is a pentatonic minor scale with the raised fourth aka lowered fifth (in addition to the perfect fourth).

1,-3, 4, 5, -7

with the minus sign meaning ‘minor’

is the minor pentatonic.

1,-3, 4, #4, 5, -7

is the blues scale.

In the key of Bb (concert), the blues scale on tenor sax is

C, Eb, F, F#, G, Bb

on alto in Bb (concert), it’s

G, Bb, C, C#, D, F

To check out an application of the minor pentatonic scale, you can look at the free lesson on the tune Cantaloupe Island which uses the minor pentatonic scale exclusively for the melody and in which you can apply the blues scale over improvisation.

How to Get that ‘Spanish’ Sound on Saxophone

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Chick Corea wrote a song called ‘Spain’.  I like it, fun to play.  Little bit challenging to get it up to speed on top of getting the phrasing and articulation right.  Articulation is actually very similar to phrasing when you get faster…. but that could be another post!

When he plays it live, he often does an intro to it that’s based on the ‘Concerto de Aranjuez’.

It’s played ‘rubato’ – that means fluidly with your own sense of time, you can speed up or slow down as you feel makes it sound good.

Thought it sounded cool, so I tried playing it as an intro for Spain a couple years back.

Was thinking about it again and about what gives it that ‘Spanish’ sound.

Part of it is the phrasing and articulation.  Those things you need to learn by listening and playing around.

Part of it is pretty simple to learn though.  That part is the notes.

If you know the major scale you can play the ‘Spanish’ sounding intro to Spain.

You won’t start the major scale on the root of the major scale though.

If you play the notes of the major scale, but start on notes other than the root, you’re playing what are called the ‘modes’.

There are seven modes.

Ionion | Dorian| Lydian| Phrygian| Mixolydian| Aeolian| Locrian

If you’re in C major, the ‘Ionian’ mode starts on C, the ‘Dorian’ mode starts on D, the ‘Lydian’ mode starts on E, etc.

The key signature of Spain is two sharps which would be D major (E major for tenor/soprano and B major for alto/bari) if it was major.  But the melody isn’t major.

If you play D major starting on different notes, it could become a minor scale.

The notes from D major are the only notes used in the intro to the song.

The chords are centered around B minor though.  And it’s B minor using the notes of D major, that corresponds to the B ‘Aeolian’ scale for the intro, based on where things are centered and the chords.

The ‘Phrygian’ mode is also characteristic of Spanish music and is pretty similar to the Aeolian mode.

Try playing around with the Phrygian and Aeolian modes.  If you can play a major scale, you can play these modes.

In the key of C

Phyrigian Mode:

E | F | G | A | B | C | D

Aeolian Mode:

A | B | C | D | E | F | G

Towards the bottom of the page you can hear me play this introduction and Spain on saxophone.

Tenor Sax Transposition – How To?

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Talking about alto sax transposition the other day in response to Jerry’s question.  Transposition on alto saxophone is a bit trickier than tenor saxophone, on tenor (and soprano) you can pretty much transpose on sight.transposition

Tenor saxophone and soprano saxophone are both in the key of Bb.
Concert instruments – piano, flute, etc are in the key of C.

That means if you play a “C” on your tenor saxophone, it’s the same as a Bb on piano.

The interval between C and Bb is a whole step.

So if you read music written in C (piano music for example) you go up a whole step to transpose it.  If you see a Bb, you play C, if you see a G you play A, etc.

Not too hard to get comfortable just playing music by thinking ‘up a whole step’.

Any questions?