Saxophone Embouchure – it is the connection between you and the horn that helps express the sound you want.
The tenor sax embouchure or bari sax embouchure is made slightly easier if you have a more square jaw since the mouthpiece is larger. Metal and hard rubber mouthpieces also have different shapes. So find what is comfortable for you.
Sources include: Art of Saxophone Playing, Steve Neff Lesson, Todd Clickard, George Young, Kristen Strom, and some other people/places.
A little while ago I got a question about jazz books for learning saxophone –
Dear Neal
What are the 10 most crucial Jazz Oriented Sax Method Books/.DVDs/Video,,?
Whats good whats crap,,,
My Best
Dave Doyle
Neal:
1. The Music Lesson
2. Jackie McLean Warm-up has scales and arpeggios across the range of the saxophone. I practice them with a metronome pretty much every day.
3. Lennie Niehaus Etudes Books – helped me a lot with phrasing
Basic Lennie Niehaus Jazz Conception
Intermediate Lennie Niehaus Jazz Conception
5. The Real Book: Sixth Edition
– not exactly a method book, but great resource for learning jazz tunes
The Real Book (B Flat, Sixth edition – for soprano/tenor
The Eb Real Book, Sixth Edition
6. For all instruments-The Jazz Theory Book. It helps if you play some piano.
7. Patterns For Improvisation By Oliver Nelson. It has stuff Oliver Nelson really played.
8. Charlie Parker: Charlie Parker Omnibook – E-flat (for altos/bari) or Charlie Parker: Charlie Parker Omnibook – B-flat (for tenor/soprano)
9. Basic Aebersold Play-Alongs- Volume 54 – Maiden Voyage. Has some great tunes, simplified a little bit.
10. Volume 16 – Turnarounds, Cycles & ii/V7s since this chord progression comes up so much in music.
Plus a couple more books I like:
Intermediate/Advanced Aebersolds- Volume 64 – Salsa Latin Jazz,
Not jazz, but useful-
Art of Saxophone Playing – Overall has a lot of important information about playing saxophone.
Jeff Coffin on alto sax
Victor Wooten on bass
Roy ‘Futureman’ Wooten on drumtar
There are a few saxophone blogs out there that I like. A few talk about saxophone and other topics too.
Storm Horn is about saxophone and…. storms. It’s written by Bob Hartig. It includes analysis and licks to use over things like Coltrane’s music.
Craig Buhler has blog too- he talks about sax, clarinet, improvisation and has some advanced stuff.
Helen has one at http://bassic-sax.ca/blog/
She talks about various saxophone related things and is really into vintage horns.
Having inner rhythm is crucial for playing music. Some people think you need to be born with it, but there are definitely ways to develop it.
I took a class with Victor Wooten and we did a few things to develop our sense of rhythm.
The first thing was to think of the metronome tick as being 2&4, which I had already been doing.
Then Victor told us to step it up, think of the tick as the “e” if sixteenths are broken up into (1 e + a). So the tick would be the “e” of the 2nd and 4th beats.
He also had just one tick every four measures that would be ‘1’.
And he did something with a drum machine where two measures would be played, two would be rest, and you keep playing.
Tons of stuff you can do with it, and it can really solidify your time.
There are 12 notes.
Seven of them are ‘in the key’ and five of them are ‘wrong’ notes.
So most saxophone players only practice the seven ‘right’ notes.
The fourth of a major scale is a ‘right’ note, but if you stay on it and emphasize it, that note won’t sound good.
If you play any ‘right’ note without discretion, it won’t sound good.
And if you go from a ‘wrong’ note and land on something else, it will sound good if you do it right.
Basketball teams practice rebounds.
In football you practice recoveries, fumbles, on side kicks, etc.
They practice these things because you don’t always do everything how you planned. And you don’t control all the musicians on stage.
Practicing all 12 notes can be very good for you.
Jeff Coffin, of the Flecktones and Dave Matthews band talked with us last week about improvisation.
First he played a crazy solo tenor improvisation, then we talked about what was in it.
We heard a ton of ideas. He played at least a solid 15 -20 minutes. You can use some of them in your own improvisation, but you don’t need to use all of them at once.
Mostly it’s just something to check out and think about.
I include most of the ideas:
12 notes+
anger (emotion)
assertive
body and soul
breathing
certainty
character
colorful
Coltrane
comfortable
control
cultural
do what you want
dynamics
ebb/flow
endurance
excitement
explorative
expressive
fat tone
fingers in weird places
flash
focus
foolish things (the song)
freedom
fun
good time
groove
harmonics
harmonies
howling
illustrating
ingenuity
innovation
insanity
instructive
intuitive
irreverence
jc!
listening
lots of air
loud
love
lover man
machine gun
messing around
no limits
observations
octaves
out there
pain
passionate
percussion
personal
phrasing
popping
purpose
quotes
release
resolution
responsive
rhythm
silly
sky
slipping/sliding
space
speed
spontaneity
strength
suspense
technique
tension
tradition
unresolving
variety
vibrato
vocal
way cool
On saxophone, you don’t have the luxury of playing chords all at once- they can only be arpeggiated. But that doesn’t mean you should slack off and not understand the chords as well as a guitar or piano player!
A triad has three notes the root, third, and fifth.
The seventh chord adds the seventh on top.
These chords can all be inverted to change it up. (first inversion, second inversion, etc.
The root defines the name of the chord, but it’s generally played by the bass if you’re in a group.
The fifth is the same note whether it’s a minor chord or a major chord, so it doesn’t really define the character of the sound.
The third and seventh are the active ingredients. They make the sound of the chord.
Having a minor third makes a minor chord minor. You can have a minor or major seventh on top and it will still be a ‘minor’ chord. You will use a different type of minor scale for it depending on the seventh though.
So keeping that in mind, that the thirds and sevenths are what matter the most, you can emphasize these notes when you take solo to show the changes in the chords.
Taking music from concert key to Bb and Eb or from Bb to Eb/Eb to Bb can be a little bit tricky or somewhat confusing if you do a few of those things.
Personally, I have mostly played tenor sax, but I play a little alto and have tried alto and bari.
The tenor saxophone and soprano saxophone are both in Bb. So if you have music in concert key and you’re playing tenor/soprano, you just have to go up a whole step since Bb is a whole step below C.
The alto saxophone and baritone saxophones are in Eb. So you can either go down a minor third or up a major sixth. Eb is a minor third above C.
The keys of Bb and Eb are a perfect fourth apart.
A few examples
Concert C = D for tenor/soprano = A for alto/bari.
Concert Bb = C for tenor/soprano = G for alto/bari.
Concert Eb = F for tenor/soprano = C for alto/bari.
At the Monterey Jazz Festival this year I went over to the Coffee House on Sunday night to see Viijay Iyer Trio. I got there when they were doing sound check, so then I was able to sit in the front row directly in the middle, where I could still see Viijay playing piano.
It was a sweet show.
Before they started playing, the announcer said something that Viijay had used to describe music- he called it “mathematics in action”. I liked then, but then again, I’m in physics.
The notes in music have letters as names, but they are really based on numbers. Pitches are frequencies- which are numbers of vibrations per time.
The notes of a scale are related by numbers- 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.
And chords can be thought of in terms of numbers that relate to a key- the I, IV, V of the blues, the ii V7 I, and more.
Thinking in terms of numbers allows you to move music into different keys much more easily. And that lets you play what you want in more situations.
When I was talking to Todd Clickard the other day, he told me that Mel Buffo used to say that you could learn a lot from bad musicians.
Generally, you learn from good musicians…. but when you watch and listen musicians that do things wrong, you compare them to what you do yourself. It reinforces the things that you know you should do.
For instance, Todd was talking about leading a band. Some band leaders don’t have a set list, call out 10 minute songs for dancers, and hire crappy players.
Most times, you can find something good about even a bad player/band leader though. So try and learn whenever you can!
You might like how a sax player played a certain riff right when it fit, even if he came in a bar late five seconds later.
Being a hater won’t make you a better saxophone player! Being aware of the good and bad will though.
Want to play saxophone, but feeling lost and not sure how to get started?
In this online/downloadable class you will see methodical lessons in a sequence and you can get feedback and ask questions at any point.
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Want to take your playing to the next level?
You’ll learn fundamental saxophone skills, building past the basics. Master rhythms. Learn about phrasing, tone, and more. Here you will get feedback which is crucial to developing good habits.
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