Receive a question related to tonguing the notes for the song Careless Whisper for the alto sax video lesson I made.

I’ve started to follow your Careless Whisper instructions. it gets a little harder on the 3rd page where it goes into a high D, (which I’ve forgotten the fingering) so I give up there, but it is my current goal.

I may need to take my sax in for servicing as it`s been in storage a while. Plus I think I will need to get some new reeds, they are number 2 and have also been in storage.  It’s hard to make time to play. But, already  between yesterday and today I’ve improved.

However, I can’t remember if I am supposed to tongue every note. Maybe you can answer that for me. Maybe I am supposed to slur only where there is a slur notice.

Thanks again

My response:

The D uses a palm key and the octave key.  Check out the fingering chart if you need to look up the notes.

Slurring and tonguing depends on the music, sometimes you actually don’t play exactly as it seems to be notated with everything tongue and you definitely don’t want all the notes short in a lot of situations.

If you would like more personal help, check out Saxophone Tribe.

http://SaxophoneTribe.com

For something like Careless Whisper, you could play it with your own style in which case you would tongue where it seemed to make sense.  Or if you’re trying to play it similar to another sax player, you can learn some things about phrasing and articulation from how they approached it.  For Careless Whisper, I would check out either the original or Sergio Flores.  Or you could listen how I played it and you could see exactly what I did within Saxophone Tribe if you’re interested.  From there you can change it a bit into your own style.

The image above in the post shows one piece from my recording of Careless Whisper from the video.  You can see that there are four notes, the first three notes are slurred  the fourth is tongued.  To make things smoother, I would recommend not tonguing all the notes for a tune like this.

Could show you more things like that in how I approach music within Saxophone Tribe.

To sign up for Saxophone Tribe, go to this page

http://saxophonetribe.com/so-you-really-want-to-learn-how-to-play-saxophone/