Aggregated Saxophone Exercise

This page is a follow up on the compilation of exercises I've written in #Saxophone. It's scattered, so it needs a place to be together. Most of these exercises are actually done together with scales.

Exercises

Scales

1. Basic Scale Practice
   • If you aren't familliar with scale fingering, this is the place to start.
2. Composite Scale practice
   • Once you learn all the scales, you should learn to transition between scales. This can be done as ascending one octave, down almost an octave and... resolve to minor second. So start with D major scale (D1) up to D2, then go down to D#1 and do the D# major scale.
   • This will help you learn to transition between keysignatures in time.
   • You can also alter this in many ways:
     • Instead of major scale, use minor scale, dorian mode.. whatever, as long as it's up, down, minor second up.
     • Instead of minor second up a key, it can be anything.
     • Mix and match these two for more "fun".
3. Chords
   • Try playing all chords in a scale
   • Try playing all chords of the same type up and down the chromatic scale.

A sign that you aren't familliar with a scale is key death mashing. You might try to hurry up and mash a key because you can't keep up.

Tone

1. Long Tone
   • Basic exercise, we all hate it, but we all need it. Practice your fundamentals here:
     • Saxophone placement
     • Embouchure
     • Breath through your diaphragm
     • Blow out and block with your tongue, not your throat.
     • Tongue the note before playing.
     • Keep the sound consistent.
     • Tongue the note when ending.
     • Repeat.
   • Other exercise metrics:
     • How long your breath is.
     • How clean is your pitch bend
     • How correct your tone is on first blow.
     • How on point your note is to a tone at the point of attack. (Especially second D to F!)

Pitch Bending

1. Long tone Pitch Bending.
   • If you want to learn pitch bending, we need to isolate the exercise from other techniques first.
   • Try playing an second E and pitch bend it. Second E specifically because it's "easier"
2. Tuning to a Drone
   • Next, let's try tuning to a drone!
   • Pay attention to the sound when you are playing the saxophone, you can noticeably hear a frustration , minor second-ish sound if you aren't in sync, or you will hear a warble going all waahhh waaah waah waah
   • If your sound is in tone, then your sound and the other drone will be almost indistinguishable.
3. Tuning to Someone
   • Finally, learn to tune your sound to someone else. This is important because in a band, we want to blend in together to form a loud, unified sound.
   • This is also useful if you don't have a tuner (practically impossible).
   • As an additional exercise, try and play, tune your mouthpiece, play again. Do this in as little time as possible.

Breathing exercises

1. Diaphragmatic breathing

   • You should always be breathing deeply!

2. Improving lung capacity

   • Try and breath fully... and then breath more!

3. Air expulsion

   • Try and increase air output speed using your body core instead of expelling more air.