Basic Sax Skills

I did not learn to play saxophone in the most traditional way. When all but one of the saxophonists quit band going into 7^th grade I volunteered to give up playing trumpet to be a saxophonist. After school I stepped into my director’s office and was given one of the school’s alto saxophones. In about 5 minutes I was told to stick the reed on the mouthpiece like so, put the thing together like that, here’s a book and go have fun. Ok!

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I caught the hang of it pretty quickly and soon I was better than the guy that played for two years. Getting to college, however, I was enlightened by my saxophone professor that there is a whole new approach to producing the perfect tone, the totally detailed guide is in Larry Teal’s Art of Saxophone Playing.

It all starts with playing on just the mouthpiece. To do this, place the end of your pinky on your bottom lip and barely roll it over your bottom teeth, set the mouthpiece with the reed on your bottom lip about a quarter of an inch in, place top teeth on the top of the mouthpiece, create an air-seal with the lips and blow.

It should sound like a horde of dying cats, but make sure the reed is not being choked. The trick, however, lies in getting the dying cat to sound an A on a tuner. To accomplish this, have your students open their throat like when they are yawning. Once mastered, the next step is to use their mad throat muscles to bend the pitch as far as they can like a slide whistle. The first time they do this successfully will probably sound like an air-raid going off.

            If students do not sound an A on the mouthpiece then their tone will be bright and quite unsuitable for the concert setting.

This recording of a beginning saxophonist is quite good, fantastic for a beginner! His tone, however, is not close to characteristic yet. His sound is bright, honkish, and somewhat buzzy on some notes. Have a listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wEpqXzHFMI

On the other end of the spectrum, this recording of Jean-Marie Londiex is beautiful. The tone is vibrant and melt-in-your-mouth-chocolate sweet. Londiex is one of the greatest people to ever play saxophone and this recording exemplifies it beautifully. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKO1cuxpHG0

Now think about this: if you put beautiful sounding saxophones in your band, would it not make the band sound better? Playing in the Wind Ensemble at TLU, I definitely feel like players that have a beautiful sound are able to blend with the tambres of other instruments, making the entire ensemble play increasedly harmoniously. There have been pieces in which my saxophone sound meshed with the French horn sound so well that our notes to where you could not tell if a saxophone or a horn was playing.

            What kind of experiences have you had where a piece of music was so beautiful that you just sat in awe while listening to it? This is mine!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KgCOugiUMM

Audition Night Nightmares!

I remember it so clearly. It was my junior year of high school and I had auditioned and made the cut at Region to be eligible for Area with chance to audition later for All-State. Only the top players from Region are selected to go to Area, and I got second chair in the region on bari sax. Not bad, but the same guy beat me from the year before. That was going to change. My eyes were focused in on the highest goal: to kick bari sax butt at Area auditions and make it to State! Even in my college days now I don’t think that I have ever practiced the same pieces for sooo long. As the days counting down to the next round of auditions drew closer, I just knew that I was going to kick some tail.

            It was about a 3 hour drive to get to the school that auditions were held and my classmates that also made it to Area made the ride interesting. When we finally arrived there were still a couple of hours until audition time, so I lugged my big baby down the sidewalk to the holding area brimming with high school instrumentalists of the highest magnitude. I spotted my rival across the way and gave him a friendly wave, but I was not going to give him any chance to beat me again. I got my saxophone out and proceeded to play my music slowly and then again at the correct speed. After a couple of run-throughs on each piece I spotted a couple of my friends from other schools chilling outside on the grass. I went out and conversed with them for a while and had a great time catching up. When it came time for the call to audition I picked my music and the bari off of the ground and headed inside.

            Waiting outside of the audition room I had the chance to size up the competition. A few had very nice saxes that glittered in the light like they were brand new. A few of the others looked like they had been through a war zone. My baby was in about average shape comparatively, but in the many hours of practice I had created a bond with my bari powerful enough to conquer the world! When it was my turn to step into the audition room I had it all planned out. I would skip the optional one breath warm up and jump straight into the scales. I took a deep breath and began to play. To my horror, sounded much higher than they should have. I kept my wits enough to end up using my warm up breath to experiment, but everything continued to play much higher than normal. In a panic I stepped out of the room and told the other players what was going on. I held out a single note while 8 pairs of hands poked and prodded at different keys to see what the problem was. Nothing. Nobody else had the remotely same brand of saxophone that I did so I went in with my horn and butchered the beautiful lines that I had practiced a thousand times before. Every melodic line was tainted by the horrible wrong notes. Nearly distraught by my horrible performance I saught out the on-sight repairman. He looked my horn over for a few minutes and had me play a little, but he couldn’t find the problem immediately. I took my mouthpiece and hoped that someone would let me use their horn. When I got back one of the other saxophonists did let me borrow their instrument and I waited patiently to go into the room. On the second round of the audition I walked in with a saxophone that felt alien to me. The keys seemed like they were too close together and were cold and unforgiving to the touch. I proceeded to play the more technical piece, but instead of the fluent movements that I enjoyed with my horn I felt clumsy. My fingers even missed vital keys in the middle of even the easiest passages. After the horrors I gave the horn back to its owner and I was greeted by the repair tech. On the way back to his office I was informed that there was the tiniest sliver of grass under one of the pads that I never use, holding it open just enough to wreak havoc. I’m sure my face looked like a cartoon character’s when my eyes bugged out and jaw to hit the floor. The results came out about an hour later and I was relieved to see that I got second to last and the guy that beat me was only a chair ahead of me. Those facts were strangely comforting to me.

            The biggest lesson that I learned from this experience was that one should NEVER lay an instrument in the grass, and that auditions can bring out some very serious emotions. Nerves are powerful emotions that definitely influence a performance tremendously. From this experience I can now sympathize with my future students to know how they feel going into a performance, and I will be a better teacher because of it.

            What’s your audition nightmare?

How to Send a Reed to Heaven

OCD shows up in the craziest ways, my closet is messy, my binders a mess, but by golly I have a beautiful looking reed when I play. Nothing gets on my nerves more than people around me playing on terrible reeds. Without a reed, there is no chance of producing a sound, making it the most crucial part of the instrument. Do middle-schoolers get that? No. Even some high-schoolers don’t get it. 

The first time that I worked with one of my students he came in with a nice big chip right on the edge of the tip. Our first lesson? How to send a reed to heaven. After explaining that there’s no way a reed will play correctly if it is cracked or chipped, I asked him if he had a name for it and if he knew how to send it to heaven. When he shook his head no to both answers I took the reed and named it “Bob.” Then I looked at him straight in the eye and drove the tip into the metal music stand in front of me, the result being a deformed little hunk of reed. I have never seen a student’s eyes get as big as his did after I did that! Since “Bob” was “no longer with us,” I gently placed it on the palm of my student’s hand. We looked at it sadly for a moment and I told him that he can conduct the “funeral” in any way he sees fit.

I also have a high school bari sax player that I see almost every week. His tone was sounding a little fuzzy so I asked him to show me his reed. There were the tell-tale little mold spots all over the flat part on the back. He always had a good reed after my story. If you are frustrated with the quality of students’ reeds, tell them this story and they will keep their reeds in mint condition! Story time!

A band director was preparing her band to go to concert and sight reading contest. During one rehearsal her bari sax player couldn't get a sound out. The first thing she had him do was take off the reed and show it to her, but after struggling for a few moments it was apparent that the reed was stuck to the mouthpiece. He had not taken it off for about a month. Once he did get the reed off, both the student and the director were horrified to see long, black, hairy mold and little white creatures wiggling on the reed. The student managed to contain his shock long enough to ask if he could buy a new reed, but the director looked at him and whispered to him to put it back on the mouthpiece and play until the end of rehearsal. Wide eyed student seemed to turn a slight shade of green as he walked back, but he managed to survive rehearsal without seeing is lunch again.

           

If that is not creepy and disgusting enough motivation for any student to take care of their equipment, I don’t know what is! Ever since then I can’t stand to see bad reeds, much less one that is starting to show signs of mold. Must be my OCD taking over again...

Welcome and Saxophone Stuff

I am nearing the end of my college career with only one piece of the puzzle left to go: student teaching. My first placement is in a middle school and the other is in an elementary school. The bottom line is that I’m excited and terrified at the same time. I have looked around to see if there are other blogs out there with people in my current situation, but I haven’t found much. I want a place to put my experiences in this pivotal point in my life and all of the resources that I have found in my journey as a music education major. Hopefully I can also put together my own version of saxophone pedagogy (that I am sure will be revised many times before I am done). 

To start off with saxophone stuff, the first thing students need is a good setup. So far my experience has been that students can’t go wrong with a Yamaha YAS-23, Selmer C* mouthpiece, Vandoren blue box reeds, and a functioning ligature.

I haven’t had bad experiences with the regular, cheap ligatures, but I like my Rovner Mark III and love my Vandoren Optimum. If my students are looking for a step-up ligature I am going to recommend the Rovner. The change in my tone from my old no name leather one to the Rovner was an amazing improvement. My sound was darkened dramatically after the change, but it doesn’t allow as great of flexibility as my Vandoren Optimum.  

Thus far my favorite reeds are the Vandoren blue box. They are consistent, have great tone, and last much longer for me than any others. The Rico Reserves are not bad and have more options for reed strengths than other brands. I find them to be somewhat reedier sounding, especially after the first couple of blows. I would use them when having students step up a strength but are not ready for as large of a step between Vandoren sizes.  I haven’t tested this theory yet.

I don’t see much wiggle room with the choice in mouthpiece because the C* is consistent and develops the proper embouchure muscles leading to a warmer tone. The only other mouthpiece that I have tried was a Yamaha 4C which was very bright. After I land a real job I will experiment with other mouthpieces, until then I need suggestions and opinions others!

As far as the instruments themselves I am firmly in the Yamaha boat. The instruments are well built and are phenomenal student instruments that sound great for a modest price. The Selmers are good too, but my preference is definitely Yamaha.

The accessory that is not as vital, but still important to me is the neck strap. In the private lessons that I have taught at the middle and high school level almost every student has trouble with their neck strap not staying in place or being very uncomfortable, especially for tenors and baris. As far as functionality, the cheap ones that come in the kits are do their job but are often uncomfortable because they dig into the player’s neck, are itchy, or are not close to the right length. I have also seen tragic accidents occur when the plastic hook gives out and the horn gives the ground an unexpected hug. The most reliable and comfortable neck strap that I have found is made by Neotech. They are only $15 and not only are the comfy, but mine has lasted through the rigors of marching band and college playing. Not to mention they come in all sorts of fun colors!

In a perfect world all of my students will have my preferred equipment, but that is obviously not the case. After all, life doesn't like to go as planned. The students I taught today had reeds that were chipped and cracked beyond being playable. It's amazing that they managed to produce a sound! My heart sunk when they told me that it was their only reed that they had all school year. It makes me wonder if it would be worth it to make crappy reed identification activity a grade in beginning saxophone and clarinet classes...