Your fingers affect your tone on saxophone much more than you might think.
A master teacher named Henry Lindeman came up with a method of playing in the 1930s that places a great deal of emphasis on technique for a solid foundation in playing. Henry Lindeman taught Phil Sobel who taught Gary Meek, who I have learned a lot from.
Your air stream, tongue, and fingers all need to be aligned to get the tone you want.
And the lack of steadiness or movement that is too abrupt will disturb your sound on sax.
Check out Saxophone Tribe to learn much more and improve your technique (and sound) on saxophone.
Hey Neal,
Great lessons you are doing!
I’ll experiment with the curved fingers and playing more on the finger tips. I know classical cats do that…
Re B to C (and F to F#): When I did some lessons with Mary Fettig (http://maryfettig.com/) (who is teaching at http://JazzCampWest.org in a few weeks) she talked a lot about “finger crosses”-her term for the situation where one finger presses and one de-presses as you move between consecutive notes. IIRC Mary learned to use side-C and side-F# at the encouragement of Phil Woods, when she was studying with him. I relearned all my scales based on this and I do it now. Granted there are situations where you have to cross fingers, so you should also practice making your crosses smooth. E.g. if you play F, F#, D#, you should cross because getting from side F# to D# is a big problem. I’ll admit that catching these exceptions is challenging, but I still use this method. (There certainly are a lot of great players who don’t worry about crossing fingers…Stan Getz, Dayna Stephens….)
Hey Brian,
Thanks.
Appreciate the ideas from Mary Fettig. I have talked to a few sax players about where it’s appropriate to use the alternate fingerings, really seems to be a matter of preference. Definitely can make things smoother. Comes at some price in terms of intonation and sound though. At higher speeds, it’s generally not noticeable though. Didn’t know Phil Woods encouraged that. Lots of different approaches to the saxophone out there!
Thanks for all the great tips you give.
Neal i know there is no such thing as that great mouth piece,but i am looking for a more real old sound out of soprano sax. I have a cannonball,its a great horn,the mouth piece that came with the horn is good. What would you recommend
Keep playing on what you have? How long have you been playing?