Saxophone

Melody section instrument in the jazz trifecta (Melody, rhythm, percussion)

In reality, these are (slightly more refined) notes I've taken down while taking lessons at Rubato Music. So it may be out of order outside of the first section.

Fundamentals

By fundamentals, I mean embouchure and air support!

These are the notes I collected from lessons: Try and memorize this each time you start playing to get familliar to it!

Embouchure:

Primary goal: Form a solid foundation for your reed to vibrate without more force than needed.

Imagine holding a ruler on one hand. This ruler is the reed. Try and make the ruler wobble by using your other hand's finger to flick it!
- If your holding hand is not gripping strong enough, the ruler wouldn't wobble properly
- However, if your holding hand is gripping just nice, the ruler will wobble beautifully.
- If your holding hand is death gripping it, the ruler will still wobble okay, but somewhat stiffly, but the real kicker is that your hands will tire out quickly..
Now imagine this ruler as the reed. You want to apply just the right amount of reinforcement to the reed.
The top part holding this ruler (reed) is held by the mouthpiece already, all you need is to apply the bottom part, so this is where your lips come in.
- Your bottom lip similar to the hand scenario above should reinforce should grip onto the reed in just the right amount of pressure. Don't overdo it.
- The main reason the bottom lip is curled in is to allow you to efficiently grip onto it.
On the flipside, because the top part of the ruler is gripped already, you don't need to do anything with your top lip. (Except prevent air from escaping.)
- Which is why it's stressed that we want to relax it! If we grip it, this might actually negatively impact our bottom grip and we will start wobbling..
Extra experiment: Try and place the ruler against under an object, like a table.
- Try putting your finger at different positions:
  - Far away from the edge of the table
    - Your ruller will now vibrate against the table, which causes a lot of nasty sound.
  - Right on the edge of the table
    - You might lose your grip and slip away
  - Slightly off the edge of the table
    - Perfect!
- Now internalize this feeling onto a reed

The neck should be facing forward, parallel to the floor, not the mouth
- You might have a habit of tilting your head to fit it, don't. You should not have to move your head at all. Pretend you are talking to someone.
- You can instead adjust how your saxophone is rotated later. But really don't move your head.
Put the lip at the point where the reed intersects with the mouth piece!
The lip contact point is right on the boundary line between wet flash and dry lip area.
Before you slide your mouth in, make the sound of "Ffffff"
Experiment and test how little muscle flexing you actually need to keep your embouchure in place.
- Ideally, the side of your mouth is only for preventing the air from leaking out. Most of your gripping should be done with your "chin" muscles and philtrum muscle.

Breath:

Primary goal: To form a sound with a nice clean attack and consistent sound. We do not want any extra funny sounds.

Clean attack: We need to stop the air with our teeth. Our teeth is stiff and will prevent sound from wobbling around. Use this impulse to vibrate the reed!
Consistent sound: We need to train our lungs to breathe out air in a consistent manner. That's why we need to brace our core when breathing out, we want to keep our body stable as air flows out.

You should stop the air with your tongue. Not your throat
- Failure to do this will result in the "ugh" sound. Which is very funny, but you definitely don't want that in a concert.
- This follows up with the tip of breathing the air out with a "tu" sound
Breathing in: You should use deep breathing, this means you should feel your stomach inflating and your chest shouldn't rise up.
Breathing out: Brace your core, be ready to untongue, breathe out.
Exercising breathes: Try and put tissue paper on the wall at fist distance, and breathe out in a control manner getting the tissue to flutter smoothly in the air.

Saxophone placement:

Primary goal: To play the saxophone without any tension in the body

The sax should only be held by the strap
Your finger is only allowed to perform pushing. No lifting allowed!
An excessive tilt on your saxophone will result in your strap / harness not doing its job. When playing the sax on the side, this might cause the left thumb to have to lift into angle! So you should adjust your strap / harness accordingly.
When standing..
1. Try and push the saxophone forward with only your thumbs. You should be able to rotate then the saxophone upwards and downwards into your mouth.
  - If the mouthpiece is on your nose / on your chin, you probably need to adjust your neck strap.
  - Remember, the "correct" position is that the neck is parallel to the floor, so try to adjust accordingly!
When sitting down
1. You may notice that your neck is now slanted. So to achieve "neck parallel to the ground", you rotate the mouthpiece.
  - So technically speaking, it's the mouthpiece we want to be parallel to the ground the whole time.

Tonguing:

You typically tongue on the "blunter" side of the tip of the tongue.
- Using exactly the tip of the tongue is going to cause reed damage..

Tone

For high notes, use cold air (fast air)
For low notes, use hot air (slow air)
- Just remember air velocity affects reed vibration frequency.
With everything in place, now overtone exercise should truly be difficult "by using correct technique"

Part 1

This is from saxophone lesson 1 (first was trial, plus extra information gathered from the internet)

Embouchure

Your lips should be curling in, not out! It was noticed that when I say F, I actualy curl my lips out. Don't do that. You should curl in.
- F is really more of just a guide, the specifics is pull your lip in, chin muscle down, this reinforces the embouchure. The end goal is to reinforce the embouchure on the reed!
Make sure your top cheeks aren't flexing. It should be just enough to hold the air in, but no more. It needs to be relaxed.
Top and bottom teeth should be parallel (Okay I think this one might be subjective.. my teeth are very misaligned..)
If you want to relax your top lip muscles, try imagining E. But don't overdo it. Just a bit is enough.
In the ideal case, your tone shoudl be straight and consistent.
In the ideal case, you do NOT need to use your thumb to lift the saxophone at all. Imagine you removing your thumb hook, you should be able to push the saxinto your mouth just by pushing forward.. not pulling up.

So we need to look into two exercises

Exercise 1: Initial tonguing
- Your air release should be blocked by the tongue, not the throat, let's prevent the uh sound.
Exercise 2: Clear, consistent sound
- TRy and make your tone consistent. This is where long tone exercises come in

Saxophone Placment

Your forearm to fingers hand should be straight! (Remember the basic form when drawing hands is two rectangles... no bending allowed! It should be one straight line across on top)
The saxophone is not supposed to point directly forward while playing. So you don't have to obsess over that.
Is your strap / harness adjusted accordingly? You can try offsetting to one side of or the other since your saxophone will typically lean a bit to one side!

Part 2

Is the song you are practicing too simple (cough), you can always practice fixing your bad habits...
A slow song doesn't mean it's easy! There's a very likely chance you will hurry..
Call and response:
- In a nutshell it sounds like asking a question and giving a response.
  - The call usually has an ascending sound
  - The response usually has a descending, resolving sound.
  - It can literally be 2 notes, for any number of bars!
  - Even if you
Avoid pushing your head too far back, you will know this is the case when you air starts choking.
Some saxophone notes are unusually sharp, this is usually the second D->F#
You can use syllable notes to read better in rhythm if you need them. A bit cheesy, but every bit helps!
- Whole tone: Pear
- Quarter note: Apple
- Triplets: Strawberry
- Eight notes: Watermelon
Exercise 2: Long tones! Dreadful exercises, they are, but very important, but they won't be as boring if you have an objective in mind.. a. You can always try pitch bending b. Long tone challenge: How long can you hold your breath at a steady tone? c. Long scale tones: Try and hit the correct pitch
Song of the lesson: Polka dots and Moonbeams

Episode 3

Pitch bending: So maybe the jaw thing didn't work out, try this instead:
- You might notice letting your jaw down will only change tone color, but not pitch, so...
- Instead of trying to let the jaw down, just slowly make it sound like you are giving up on blowing, like a sigh. You m i g h t be able to hear pitch bend.
- It should sound vaguely like an among us game start jingle if you play second E.
- Another way to think about this is loosen and slack off (read: be lazy) with your lower lip muscle.
  - You still need more air though, like, actually more air than before.
Diaphragm breathing: You need to breath through your stomach, not your chest. It's also healthy!
Dynamics: You might have the bad habit of enjoying impulse. Ideally your volume should be consistent, instead of going BAM BAM BAM, it should go all like daaaaaaaaaaaaah, imagine your sounddwave being drawing on a graph, it should be rectangular, not triangular!
Keying: Make sure you press the button before the song even starts, not as it starts!
Breath control is extremely important, don't sleep on it!
- What happens when you use your air inefficiently?
  - Your volume becomes impulsive. (not professional)
  - You start compensating your embouchure by biting (ow)
  - You can't play phrases completely (ahaha you bloody pleb)
So here comes exercise set #3, try and practice each of them at a time without stressing too much. Once again, you can do this with scales a. Dynamics: Try and have a strong attack that lets out a consistent volume. b. Breathing: You should really mostly be breathing with your diaphragm. Also, breath with your mouth, not your nose. Your nose is usually blocked anyway. c. Keying: Don't forget to press your buttons early! Also please don't mash the keys.
- Ruleset: Start with the following 4 beat measure count
  - Beat 1: Attack, play
  - Beat 2: Continue playing
  - Beat 3: Stop
  - Beat 4: Breathe
  - Repeat
- Once you can do it in muscle memory, try and reduce breathing time.
  - Breathe once in 2 notes
  - Breathe once in 3 notes.

Episode 4

Pitch Bending part 2:
- Instead of tuning our instrument to tuner, try tuning to a drone / someone else.
- Probably one of the most practical skill you can have when playing in an ensemble.
- A good tune should be entirely in unison!
- On the other hand, a bad tune will probably sound like the following
  - A grating Minor second, but worse.
  - Warbling. Waaah waaah waaah waaah.
Saxophone placement:
- Please don't pivot the sax to your upper teeth, it will cause your head to rotate.
- The mouthpiece is perpendicular to the face, not the floor... you might want to check the correct orientation..
Embouchure
- As always, after 4 weeks, please remember only your lips need to be firm.
- Too tight, and your tone will be choked, too loose, and your tone will be airy.
Tuning:
- Get a nice sound before tuning. Don't play to fit the tuner!
Finger patterns:
- All scales have a specific finger pattern.
  - You might want to start looking into the bis key.. you've been neglecting it.

Episode 5

For higher notes, you need to make your lip surface area sharper and sharper (lower area) This should be a force pointing 45 degrees forward For overtone exercise, try and hiss until you can hit the target Remember both hands must be comfdoratble when playing

Should embouchure be a push force or curl force?

Episode 6

Interestingly, if you are not playing in tune with someone, nearby snares will start to vibrate!
Practicing the Low B -> Bb transition:
- A good way to check you are doing correctly is that the B pad near the end of the saxophone doesn't open
It's actually possible to play "undertones" on the saxophone, this is a great way to determine if you are blowing correctly!
- You can perform this by pressing the corresponding upper octave key, and play the lower octave note. Try it! Your saxophone is broken, this is indeed a possible thing, although it will be tricky, and airyness is expected thanks to the open octave air vent.
When sight reading, the 4 fundamental things you need to take note of in general to the whole music is the following:
- Time Signature
- Key signature
- Accidentals
- Repeats
When sight reading, it's better to abandon a note than to let your error cascade, remember, you're not playing a rhythm game! Mashing your notes will NOT work.
When sight reading, play through your mistakes first! You don't want to just stop.
- Typically you will just play without stopping
  - Seriously, don't, you really don't want each person in a 7 man band to wait for that 1 person... and then another person flubs up.
- Then review your mistakes
- Then fix the mistakes
- Finally, perform one more time!
Keep practicing second D, ideally you should be able to get it right without having to compensate!
- You will need to get used to loose embouchure.
Phrasing: Even when you breathe can be part of a phrase!
Pitch bending: Try and relax both your lips and chin! You really don't want to cancel each other out and prevent your pitch from getting bent..
song of the lesson: A child is born

Episode 7 (Mar 28 2025)

You should tongue more: Try and aim for a clean tongue at high bpm! (of course you dont actually tongue every single note when phrasing.. but as a beginner, you should practice!)
For british note names, try thinking of them in terms of note length!
- Semibreve: 1 note per bar
- Minim: 2 notes per bar
- Crotchet: 4 notes per bar
- Quaver: 8 notes per bar
- SemiQuaver: 16 ntoes per bar
- DemiSemiQuaver: 32 notes per bar
- HemiDemiSemiQuaver (wtf name): 64 notes per bar
Transposition:
- When playing an alto saxophone from alto sax sheets, the concert note you are playing is transpose minor third up.
- When playing an alto saxophone from concert sheets, the note you need to play is transpose minor third down.
- When playing a tenor saxophone from a tenor sax sheet, the concert note you are playing is transpose major second down.
- When playing a tenor saxophone from a concert sheet, the note you need to play is transpose major second up.
- When playing a piano from alto sax sheets, the note you need to play is transpose minor third up.
- When playing a piano from tenor sax sheet, the note you need to play is transpose major second up.
Tuning:
- Alto saxophones usually tune to G, this is actually Bb in concert pitch!
- Bb are often tuned to in jazz since most brass instruments has that note in open fingerings. (Trumpet, tenor sax)
- fun fact: strings tune to A, maybe it's just arbitrary classical reason like A = 440 hz.
- Remember, tune the instrument, not you. Your first tuning note should be correct, then you learn to adjust for other notes.
Embouchure: Remember, the correct letter to pronounce is "F", not "Mmmmm"
- Do you remember learning to use the letter "vo-", it works even better.. maybe! Either way, it's a lower flat chin.
Breathing through your mouth is an opportunity to reset your embouchure.
- Please never breath through your nose.
- Also dont breath through the sax, that's how you get sax lungs.
Exercise of the week:
- Learn to breathe with your diaphragm automatically:
  - .. using only your mouth. nose is a death sentence.
  - Don't be panicky when breathing, it should be natural!
- Figure out how to get your embouchure consistent
  - Actually, weren't you playing with a 2 reed instead of a 2.5 reed for a while?
- Get a nice tongue attack
  - By the way, don't forget to tongue every note when practicing scales! It's not something you do when phrasing, but it IS something you need to practice!
- Learn to figure out how much air you can sustain.

Episode 8 (Apr 3 2025)

2ne register DEF: As always, practice target the pitch to be correct the moment you play it!
To prevent air from leaking into your cheeks, you can try sucking your cheeks in (although mine feel more like swelling on the right side...)
Rubato: The out of time thing is called Rubato. Rubato should be structured! You can take time here and there, but you must return it back and start and end the notes cleanly on beat!
- Be attentive to the divisions, phrases are often in 4 bars.
- If you want to rubato... learn to keep time first!
- If you are doing rubato the first time, chances are it will sound "better" than just crotchets / quarter notes, like you are actually singing! But something will still sound bad...
  - The answer is time, even though you take time here and there, your rubato must still be on beat! Always respect the time!
The real book is not gospel, make sure to listen to the music and listen to how people rubato it!
- ... this holds true especially for lead sheets that are just crotchets / quarters, you will not have a good time playing as-is.
Thinner > Paint, wait, why is this in my notes again? I mean yes the hobby shop is there but what the hell is thinner > paint supposed to mean

3rd F3:

Special F, B, A, right Bb key

Episode 9 (Apr 17 2025)

Exercise of the week: Fix your cheek trembling, this is non-negotiable.

You should pucker in your cheeks to keep it strong!
One of the reasons your cheek starts trembling is that air starts leaking in, then this air leaks into upper lips, making it not able to relax!

Bonus exercise: Spend a day just doing long tones. One hour of long tones. Im sorry neighbours.

Your head has a habit of tilting forward while playing, obvious this is a byproduct of excessive computer use so.. let's tilt our head back for a better throat airway, yeah?
- Bonus: Your saxophone will not tilt backward 45 degree, too, so push it forward towards your knee!

Episode 10 (May 1st 2025)

Rhythm exercises:
- Exercise 1: Fill the beat
  - Imagine if you are only given the first beat in the bar, you must now play all beats in the bar while still remaining synchronized to the given beat.
  - Hint: If it's difficult to remain synchronized due to beats being slow, you can always try subdividing beats further.
- Exercise 2: Count the beat
  - You are given a bar of rhythm. Play the measure while doing the following:
    - Say the beat with your voice, while clapping to the rhythm
    - Do it the other way around too, clap to the beat while saying the rhythm.
  - You want to do this with mouth and hands specifically because you are playing the saxophone. Unlike the piano, it's only hand coordination. Now we want to improve our mouth hand coordination.

Episode 11 (May 5 2025)

I'm going to be gone for 1 week! So this week's topic is... practicing without your saxophone!
Reed:
- Did you know you can suck on the reed to develop it quicker? A good sign that the reed is fresh is that when you suck on a reed (yes), bubbles will come out.
  - Apparently internet info says that you can also forcefully blow into the reed from the side that's usually attached to the mouthpiece, that's quite interesting, isn't it?
  - Also, try experimenting tightiening the ligature more! Like, way more.
- A well-developed reed will generally feel right to play, this is especially noticeable when you are starting to use a harder reed.
Because you are now playing with a harder reed, chances are, you will play louder the first time.
- Embouchure: To play softer with a harder reed, try and get a firmer embouchure and faster air!
When you don't have your saxophone:
- Lung exercises:
  - Try and avoid hybrid breathing. Make sure you are diaphragmatic breathing purely!
  - If you want to play soft as mentioned above, you should increase your air speed by bracing your belly, not by expelling more air! This makes air control and expulsion exercises a legit concern to practice.
  - Want to increase lung capacity? Try and breath in as fully as you can... then breath in again, just a bit more!
  - Combined together with tonguing, you should be able to play a soft sound cleanly. A bad habit is when you expel too much air just to get the sound "started", this exercise is particularly important.
- The "imaginary" instrument
  - You can always practice chord tones without your instrument. Why not grab a water bottle?
  - Memorize 4 chords and get practicing to a metronome!
Suggested song of the week: Mr PC, a 12 bar minor blues. Of particular note is practicing the fingering.

Episode 18 (26 June 2025)

A lesson in Jazz history and identifying the subgenre of a jazz music.
At the beginning, we have classical music..
Then, slaves were imported into the US. This brought in Spirituals and work songs (Gospel music)
- During this time, the culture mesh brought alive the early version of Blues
- Marching band jazz was also started at around this time. These are New Orleans Jazz and Dixieland jazz.
  - Marching band jazz: A good sign to notice is drum rudiments and lack of guitars. This also means the bass is played by sousaphones.
  - New Orleans jazz: These are the marching band jazz you would expect to hear, strong drum rudiments to support the melody! Also no guitars.
  - Dixieland is like a white version of New Orleans Jazz born out of New Orleans Jazz
    - "created when one instrument (usually the trumpet) plays the melody or a recognizable paraphrase or variation on it, and the other instruments of the "front line" improvise around that melody."
    - Also it has clarinets.. and maybe banjos
The 40s / 50s
- Broadway music and showtunes take over
  - These are songs you basically see in black and white shows.
- Broadway fusioned with old stuff = Standards (ie repertoires)
So when we mention "Straight ahead" jazz, it usually represents all the above, it's jazz when you think of "jazz" in its purest form.
- 251s, Tritone subs, blues
Big Band: The most notable feature is strong woodwind flourishes. Totoo toto TOOT when a melody is done
Swing: (I'ts a kind of music)

Episode 19:

remember to sing to your clapping... not clap to your singing
- Basically, change your singing, not change the time.
Other ways of counting include..
- Counting by note duration instead of bar
- Count by "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and"
- Count by "1 and" being determined as "on-clap-" and "on-hand separates"

Episode 20:

A lesson on Modal music
- Modal music are jazz songs that stay on one chord for a long time. Staying on one chord for a long time keeps the relevant chord scale abstract, therefore allows more free improvisation
- When we think of a D minor chord (ii), usually, we can split it into 3 scales:
  - D Dorian (0)
  - D Aeolian (-1)
  - D Phrygian (-2)
- From there, we can determine the relevant major scale
  - C Major (Major 2nd down)
  - F Major (Minor 3rd up)
  - Bb Major (Major 3rd down)
- It's not a bad idea to memorize this, this will allow you to change keys rapidly on the go and keep the song modal.
- Another quick way to identify the relevant major is to check the key signature value
  - D dorian has value of 0, what major has value of 0? C Major!
- Try and learn it both ways.
Rhythmic exercise:
- It's a good time to add triplets to your exercise!
- Start from minim, to semibreve, to quaver, to semiquaver, to triplets in one go!
- (Remember you can always breath on semibreve if it's natural and you need more air!)
- Another possible exercise is to alternate between semiquavers and triplets.
  - 2/3/2/3, rest/rest/rest/rest, 3/2/3/2, repeat
etc:
- You may not have noticed it, but your fingers are lifting while playing.
- Tonguing: Try dududu
- Starting the first note:
  - The air pressure should be ready already. Don't wait till the song starts before you start blowing!

Fundamentals​

Embouchure:​

Breath:​

Saxophone placement:​

Tonguing:​

Tone​

Part 1​

Embouchure​

Saxophone Placment​

Part 2​

Episode 3​

Episode 4​

Episode 5​

Episode 6​

Episode 7 (Mar 28 2025)​

Episode 8 (Apr 3 2025)​

Episode 9 (Apr 17 2025)​

Episode 10 (May 1st 2025)​

Episode 11 (May 5 2025)​

Episode 18 (26 June 2025)​

Episode 19:​

Episode 20:​