Ultimate Guide to Practicing Saxophone

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The Ultimate Guide to

Practicing

Saxophone

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Published by McGill Music Sax School Denby Dale, England UK

www.mcgillmusic.com

©McGill Music Sax School 2013

About Nigel McGill

Nigel's saxophone playing has been featured at festivals, clubs and theatres around the world. As a performer and musical director Nigel has worked with some of the biggest names in show business today from London's West End to tours in Europe, Canada and Japan. Nigel’s saxophone music can also be heard on movies and television shows including “24” “Me-dium” and “Brothers and Sisters”. As well as running the big band for the award winning West End show "Rat Pack Live from Las Vegas", Nigel is the band leader for top UK singer Do-minic Halpin and is busy performing around the world.

In 2011 Nigel created Sax School which has already helped thou-sands of sax players worldwwide. Sax School is a huge online re-source of lessons covering all as-pects of saxophone playing from getting started through to learning pop solos and classic jazz tunes. Although originally from Australia, Nigel, his wife Emma and two boys are now based in the UK and when not performing, enjoys getting out and enjoying the British country-side!

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THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO PRACTICING SAXOPHONE

Introduction

So, You Want To Get Better At Playing

Saxophone?

I’ll let you in on a little secret. There is a short cut to becom-ing awesome on the sax. It’s easy to do and anyone can do it. It’s not expensive and it doesn’t involve brain transplants or hypnotherapy! It will enable you to play things you only dreamed of on your saxophone, and will leave you with the amazing sense of confidence and satisfaction that comes from truly knowing your instrument.

The secret...

practice regularly - but in the right way!

In this book I’m going to show you how to get the most out of your practice time so you can get the most out of your playing time. We are all busy people with busy lives so now more

than ever it’s important to understand how to use your time effectively to get the most

benefit from whatever time you can spare.

I hope you enjoy working through this book and use

it regularly during your practice time. By

fol-lowing the steps out-lined in the

follow-ing sections you will learn how to de-velop a regular effec-tive practice routine. And then you will know the secret to getting better on the sax, and more impor-tantly will be playing great!

Good luck and happy practicing! Nigel

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Why practice anyway?

Starting a new instrument is great fun. It feels fan-tastic to be able to make your first sounds and melo-dies and to be able to share music with others. Re-gardless of whether learning a new instrument

comes naturally to you or you have to work at it from the start, everyone has a point where they reach the

limit of their natural ability. It’s at this point that you will need to have a game plan on how to keep progressing.

Although I feel everyone is capable of becoming awesome on the saxophone, you need to make the decision to approach it systematically if you really want to get there.

This is where practice comes in.

Practice allows us to move beyond the limits of our natural ability. Practice takes our POTENTIAL and makes it a REAL-ITY. That’s a powerful concept and one which most people don’t really think about.

Unfortunately, lots of people associate the idea of “practice” with endless hours of boring, repetitive drills and exercises. Not very enticing. The good news is, it doesn’t need to be that way.

In my opinion, the real trick to practicing is little and often. And, doing it in a fun, structured and effective manner that you can see real benefits from. More on this later.

The real reason for practicing though, is that amazing feel-ing you get when you can now do somethfeel-ing on your

instrument that you thought impossible only a few days before. That is an awesome feeling. And it’s

addictive too.

Music is a journey that starts with picking up a new instrument for the first time, and lasts your whole life. There really is no end to where you can go with your instrument, what you can play and who you can share your music with. And like any

journey you need to be in great shape to really get the most out of it. For us saxo-phonists that means fit embouchures, flexi-ble fingers and lots of hot air!

So starting and maintaining a practice routine that works for you is going to help you keep musically fit and flexi-ble so you can exceed your natural abil-ity, have more fun playing sax, and make the most out of your musical journey. You might be surprised where you end up!

Practice takes

your potential

and makes it a

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Effective practicing

So you’ve cleared your diary, your instrument is out and you’re ready to start your practice session... Practice time is precious so you need to make the best use of it. Firstly, make sure you haven’t got any distractions.

So that means:

• Turn off your mobile phone (or at least put it in another room!).

• I know you haven’t got the TV or the radio on right?....

• Leave facebook alone for the next few minutes!

• Get comfortable.

Ready? Here we go.

Start slowly. Take your time and remember to always focus on accuracy! In fact, a great measure of your progress is to make sure you can play each phrase, scale or musical passage 3 times completely accurately before moving to the next one. This sounds easy, but if you are really strict with yourself this will quickly show any errors in your playing.

I was once told a great analogy about this:

Green Balls, Red Balls And A Big Black

Bag.

Imagine that you have a big black bag - like one of those ones a magician might have and a bunch of green and red balls. When you are practicing, imagine puting a GREEN ball into your black bag every time you play your piece or scale abso-lutely correctly. However, every time you play a piece or scale with an error, you put a RED ball in the bag.

Now think about how many of each you might have at the end of a prac-tice session, or after a week of practicing! Most people (if they are honest with themselves) will have loads more red balls than green balls! After all, it’s so

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tempting to just keep hammering on when we are trying to learn something new. It takes much more discipline to take the time to go slowly and concentrate on accuracy.

The real test for this exercise though is when it comes time to perform your scales or pieces. Reach your hand into your big black bag and pull out the first ball that you touch. Is it a green...or a red one?

Most people spend too much time putting red balls into their big black bag when they practice. In other words, most people don’t focus on accuracy when they are practicing and end up playing things incorrectly over and over. The end result being that the incorrect version of the piece or scale is programmed into their playing making it very unlikely that, under pressure, it will be performed accurately - and you will pull out a RED ball!

Your brain is like a big black bag, so please take your time when practicing to make sure you only put green balls in there! Slowly, accurately, programming

your brain to play the piece or scale correctly.

Accuracy Not Speed!

Although it’s tempting to steam through your pieces when practicing, it’s so important to understand the importance of accuracy over speed.

The thing is, if you can play something slowly but accurately, you can always speed it up. But, like an unbalanced wheel that wobbles worse and worse as it goes faster, playing a piece with poor technique, messy fingers or wrong notes will get

harder and harder to play as you speed up. In fact it is often impossible to fix problems with notes and technique in a piece

while you are speeding it up.

If however you take a few moments to get your piece com-pletely correct at a nice slow tempo first, then speeding it up will be a piece of cake! You will be surprised at how quickly you can get a piece or scale up to

a fast speed if you do the slow accurate ground work first. A golden rule when practicing is to make sure you can

play each phrase 3 times completely accurately be-fore moving onto the next. This goes for scales too.

Be strict with yourself - it’s a great habit to get into and will make sure you are programming the cor-rect patterns into your mind when practicing.

Practicing Is Not For Your Neighbours!

One final but very important thing about practicing. We prac-tice to work on the things we can’t yet do.

Always play 3

times accurately

before moving

on.

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That sounds really obvious but it’s so important. We spend our practice time working on the things in our playing that we can’t yet do. In that way we are always improving.

This is important because too many of us spend our precious practice time playing things that we think our neighbours or house mates will enjoy. It is great to spend a little time at the end of your practice playing something that you feel great about and you know sounds really cool. But please don’t fall into the trap of spending the bulk of your precious practice time playing stuff you already know.

This is really one of the most important lessons about effective practicing. And, unfortunately it’s a lesson that I’ve even seen pro musicians neglect.

I was fortunate to study at a music conservatorium in Austra-lia which was exclusively filled with very talented young musi-cians. All of us spent hours every day practicing. It was ex-pected of us and part of the experience of being there. How-ever, talented as many of these musicians were, it was surpris-ing how many would spend hours each day playsurpris-ing through pieces they already knew - mainly for the benefit of their com-petitors in the next practice room!

I’m sure it made them feel better about themselves but did it make them better players?

Be strategic about the valuable practice time you can spare and you will get the most out of it. And if your neighbours or house mates get really peeved by listening to you practice, then give them some free tickets to your next concert!

Top Tips:

• No Distractions

• Start Slowly, accuracy not speed!

• Play each thing 3 times completely accurately before mov-ing on.

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Planning your practice

time

Structuring your practice time is essential to see great pro-gress. It is so important to be strategic when planning your practice and the things you cover during each session. Being a great well rounded player is a combination of so many differ-ent skills including finger flexibility, tone, stamina, breath con-trol and musicality. So, in an ideal world we should try to cover each of these skills when practicing.

Sounds complicated?

Here is a simple formula to help cover all your saxophone bases in each practice session:

Breaking Up Your Time

To get the most out of your practice, every practice session should contain these 4 elements:

1. Tone exercises / warmup (your strength)

2. Flexibility and technique exercises (your fitness) 3. New pieces or studies

4. Something fun to finish with!

Regardless of how much time you have to practice, start by di-viding that time in half. Half of your practice time should be spent on New Pieces or studies, with the remaining time split amongst Tone Exercises, Flexibility and Something fun!

So if are able to spend 30 minutes practicing, your practice plan would look like this:

5

15

5

WARMUP TECHNIQUE PIECES SOMETHING FUN

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If you’re a really busy person and only have 12 minutes avail-able then your schedule would look like this:

Regardless of what time you can spare, it’s essential to include all four elements in each practice session. This way all the im-portant skills are covered helping you to make the best pro-gress in the shortest amount of time.

So let’s look at each element of your practice routine a bit closer:

1: Tone building exercises (your strength)

The strength of your mouth or embouchure has a massive im-pact on the quality of your tone. By working on tone building

exercises like long tones, slow melodies, and exercises using intervals and dynamics you can really build massive strength in your embouchure. This will also dramatically help with in-tonation or tuning, and your breathing. Tone building exer-cises don’t have to be boring and they don’t have to take hours to do. Just like you might do in a fitness training session, it’s most important to be consistent and focussed during these ex-ercises to get the best results in the shortest amount of time. At least 2-3 minutes regularly here will make a huge differ-ence to your playing!

2: Flexibility and technique exercises (your fitness)

Any athlete knows the importance of build-ing coordination and flexibility. As a

saxophonist these things are equally im-portant to you. By practicing exercises that loosen up your fingers like scales and studies you can make massive im-provements to your finger flexibility and smoothness. Again, focus and consistency makes all the difference and will allow you to

achieve more in a shorter amount of time. Us-ing a metronome here really helps to keep you even (and honest!). Plus you can see how much

you are progressing. Check out the example ex-ercises at the end of this book for some ideas

on what to practice here.

2

6

2

WARMUP TECHNIQUE PIECES SOMETHING FUN

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3: New pieces and studies

You’re warmed up, flexible and ready for action. Now it’s time to get busy with a new piece or study that challenges you. Re-member that we learn by pushing ourselves to do something new and different. So don’t fall into the trap of just playing something you already know here. Practicing isn’t for your neighbours! It’s only working towards things we can’t yet play that we get better, so make sure to work on something that pushes you outside your comfort zone. New pieces, transcrip-tions of recorded solos and studies are all great things to work on. Again consistency, focus and determination will see you make massive improvements in the shortest amount of time. You will be amazed at what you can achieve!

4: Something fun!

Well done! You’ve stuck to your practice plan, and worked in a focussed and consistent way through the first three sections. Now it’s time to reward yourself!

Finish each practice session by playing through something you really love. Choose something that makes you feel good and you are proud to be able to play. This could be anything from a scale to a concerto!

By including all four of these elements in every practice ses-sion you will be working on all of the main skills you need to get your sax playing charged up. It’s a great idea to keep a list of the exercises in each section that you enjoy working on. Over a period of time you will have a library of exercises and studies that you can come back to over and over.

Remember, practicing is a long term project. Make it a habit and part of your weekly schedule. Most importantly, plan to keep track of your progress over the long term. Put all these elements together and you will be on track to see massive pro-gress with your playing!

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Little and often...

The best habit to have when working on your sax playing is a regular practice routine. And the best practice routine is little and often. Don’t fall into the trap of 1 big practice session every now and then. Learning an instrument is like training as an athlete.

Ideally you should try to practice 3-5 times a week, even if it is only for 10-15 minutes each session.

If you are really serious about making amazing progress then the ultimate scenario is to find time every day to do between 10-30 minutes. OK, 30 minutes might be difficult for most people every day, but any time you can allocate daily is awe-some.

When I was studying at the music conservatorium in Austra-lia, I practiced 4 or more hours every day, but in normal life this is a little difficult to manage! At the end of the day

though, the more time you can allocate on a regular basis, the more improvement you will see.

Make your practice a priority when planning your day out. Steal 15 minutes from your

TV time to practice, or fit it in while the kids are getting ready for school. Or

per-haps get up 15 minutes earlier?.... Be

crea-tive about when you can fit your

practice in. Stick to it. And, most importantly, re-ward yourself for sticking to your prac-tice schedule with some-thing fun at the end of the week!

By finding a routine that works for you and sticking to it you will be creating a “saxophone habit” that will really get your playing on track!

Remember

to treat yourself

at the end of each

week of

practice!

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Tune in.

One part of practicing so often overlooked is Tuning. Tuning is really important, particularly if you are playing with other musicians. Even if you are just playing alone, a good sense of tuning will help you to have a better overall sound, and musi-cality.

Tuning is not only about individual notes on your in-trument but how each note on your range compares to the others. Every instrument has certain notes that are more difficult to keep in tune. Understand-ing your particular instrument and how to deal with it’s tuning will make a huge difference to the quality of tone you can produce.

So how do we work on tuning?

The first step is to get hold of a music tuner. Traditionally standa-lone digital tuners were the way to go, and you can get a digital tuner online or from your music store quite cheaply. The other option, and one which I use daily, is to get a tuner app on your smartphone. There are tons of these available - some free or very cheap.

Getting Tuned Up

Before starting any tuning ex-ercises make sure your

sax is nicely warmed up.

A cold sax will always sound flat. Also, if you are practicing in a really cold room you might find that the top of the sax is warm but the bottom is cold. This is going to make your low notes flat, and your top notes sharp! So if your sax is cold, blow some air through it to get it up to room temperature. You could also do some long notes to get the whole instrument up to tem-perature.

Always work

slowly with your

tuner - accuracy is

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Once warmed up make sure your sax is in tune overall. A chro-matic tuner will show your tuning on any note, but it’s best to start by checking the notes, A and F# in both your low register and upper register (with the octave key on). These notes are good to check because they are in the middle range of the sax and aren’t traditionally problem tuning notes.

Start by playing a solid long tone on each of these notes while watching your tuner display. If your tuner says you are play-ing sharp, or too high, then move your mouthpiece out slightly on the neck cork.

If your tuner shows your sound to be a little low or flat, then you will need to push your mouthpiece further in on the neck cork.

As a general rule, most saxophones are roughly in tune with about 1 cm or 1/2 an inch or cork showing beyond the mouth-piece. When making adjustments to the mouthpiece position, only move a millimeter or so at a time and then re-check with your tuner.

With some practice you will soon get to know where your

mouthpiece needs to be on your sax to be in tune and the proc-ess of tuning becomes much faster. It is however a great idea to make tuning part of your daily routine. Even if you have been playing for years there will still be notes that you can im-prove your tuning on!

Push your mouthpiece OUT to make your sound

LOWER or FLATTER.

Tuning Your Sax:

Push your mouthpiece IN to make your sound HIGHER or SHARPER.

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Tuning Exercises:

Scale tuning

Choose an easy scale starting in the middle of your saxophone. A good one to start with is C major, starting on middle C. Play each note slowly checking your tuner to make sure it is in tune before moving to the next note. Work your way down to the lowest note possible. Then return to the middle and work slowly up to the highest note making sure each note is in tune before moving to the next. Once you can do this easily on C major, move on to more advanced scales.

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Interval tuning

Start again on an easy note like middle C (Ex. 1). Check the tuning then play the same note an octave above checking the tuning here. Then progress up a scale first playing the low octave note, then the same note an octave above. You can work through all scales in this way.

For some variation, try playing this exercise using different intervals. Ex.2 uses an interval of a 5th (C-G), and Ex. 3 uses intervals of a 10th (C-high E). You can make this exercise as difficult as you like. The more obscure the interval, the more difficult it will be for your ear to guide you with your tuning - which is really good for you!

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Make friends with a

metronome!

A metronome is an often feared device amongst musicians! Why?

Just like a tuner, the metronome tells no lies. It’s a truth sayer that can often be the bearer of bad news and a

slave driver!

Sounds dramatic right?

The thing is though, it is so important to make

friends with it because the metronome is one of the best practice aids around.

Along with a good concept of tone, a great sense of TIME is one of your greatest assets as a musician. Time or beat is the glue that holds all music together and the framework around

which all music is created. Even ancient tribal music was based around the beating drum.

These days fortunately we don’t need to have a big sweaty man in a lap lap beating an animal skin stretched over a log when we prac-tice. Your smart phone is a much more pleasant and practical solu-tion. And a more portable one! There are hundreds of free and cheap metronome apps available for all smart phone platforms.

Digital metronomes are also readily available in music stores everywhere for very little money (less than $10). And if you are a traditional kind of person you can still buy

the big windup “tick tock” kind. Any style of metro-nome will do. The real key to making friends with your metronome is using it consistently and taking your time to be very accurate.

Always use your metronome when practicing any scale or piece. Start slowly. As with all music the key is accuracy first.

Your metronome will not only keep your beat really even, it gives you something you can measure. In other words,

al-There

are loads of

great free or

cheap smart

phone

metro-nomes

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though you may only have been able to play a scale at 60 beats per minute this week, you may be able to play it at 70 next week and so on.

Over time your metronome will become your best friend in practice. An ally rather than an enemy, and an indispensable tool that will push you to exceed your expectations and show you how you have progressed.

What’s On My iPhone?

My favorite metronome app at the moment is “Tempo” made by Frozen Ape. I think it is about $1.99. I have also used many free

metronome apps but I like Tempo because it’s so simple, easy to use and reliable.

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The practice planner

It’s so important to keep track of your practice as you go

along. By keeping a record of not only what you have worked on but how you have progressed with new challenges you can easily measure your development. This is great not only for setting yourself a target (major scales at 120 beats per min-ute!) but as a “pick me up” for those days when you feel less motivated.

The easiest way to keep track is using the Sax School practice planner. Fill this in each practice session with details of what you have worked on for each segment of your practice, in-cluding time spent and notes on progress made.

Use the practice planner like a diary keeping all your entries together. It’s great to look back over the last week, month or year and see how you have progressed.

Here’s an example of how your completed Practice Planner may look like:

Keep

detailed

notes to measure

how you are

progressing.

Use this link to download the practice planner. download down-load downdown-load download down-load downdown-load download down-load downdown-load download down-load downdown-load

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Tone Building Exercises

Long tones are brilliant for building your tone, embouchure strength and stamina. The following exercises can be played in all keys. Also try to play them over your whole range to give yourself a great workout.

1. C Warmup

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3. Dynamics.

Although this exercise looks really easy, it is a monster work-out for your embouchure! Concentrate on making a very smooth transition from very soft (ppp) to very loud(fff) and back over each long note. Use your metronome to measure your progress and make a note of the tempo you practiced at in each session.

As with the previous exercises, work on this exercise over your whole range and in different keys.

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Flexibility and technique

exercises

Exercise 1.

This example is in G major, but try this exercise over all your scales. Start slowly using your metronome and speed up gradually while keeping your fingers really even. The aim here is to keep your fingers as even as possible. Remember to keep your fingers close to the keys and your movements very efficient. Also, keep an even flow of air through your instru-ment to maintain an even tone.

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Exercise 2.

This is a tricky exer-cise using scales played in 10ths (oc-tave and a third). You can play this exercise on any scale and is best practiced over your whole range. Start slowly with this exercise and concen-trate on getting the same quality sound on every note.

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Flexibility Exercise 3.

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Major Scales

Being fluent on all of your major scales is so important in your saxophone development. Because all western music is based on scales, they are the building blocks of music. The finger patterns that we learn when practicing scales will come up again and again in pieces.

It’s important to make scales part of your regular practice rou-tine. Scales don’t have to be boring - be creative with how you practice them! There is an endless number of ways you can mix up your scales, play them in patterns or with different rhythms. Also, as you get more confident with your scales you can challenge yourself with the harder scales with 5,6 or 7 sharps or flats.

Practice Tips:

• Start slowly and keep a careful eye on your Key Signatures.

• Try playing these scales over your whole range. So, start on the first note, continue up the scale to the highest note you can play, then play down the scale to the lowest note you can play, and return up the scale to the starting note.

• Always use a metronome when practicing to keep your beat event. Also, keep a record of how fast you can play your scales accurately during each practice session and see how you progress from week to week.

• Experiment with different articulations: All tongued, all slurred, two tongued and two slurred. Be creative!

• This scale list includes all major scales up to 7 sharps and 7 flats, however some scales are duplicated enharmonically. In other words, C#Major is actually the same scale as Db Ma-jor, F#Major=Gb Major and B Major = Cb Major. These scales are spelled differently but are played the same.

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Final Thoughts...

As you develop on your instrument it’s important to not only be a student of saxophone, but a student of how to practice. Understanding how to be more efficient with your practice goes hand in hand with actually doing the practice. There are always new ideas and techniques to inspire and motivate you so seek them out and keep learning.

These days we are very fortunate with the internet to be con-nected to a huge community of like minded people and this is a fantastic advantage when it comes to learning an instru-ment.

Places like Sax School allow you to connect with other sax play-ers and discuss technique, equipment or how to practice. Or, simply to get some support from someone working towards the same goals as you.

The other great thing about learning online is you have a huge spectrum of lessons available so you can focus on what

inter-ests you. Wether you want to learn classical saxophone, jazz or just to play your favorite pop sax solo there are lessons available to help you. And of course with youtube there is an endless supply of videos of great players to get you inspired! I urge you to connect with other musicians using forums, face-book and other online music communities. It will add a whole new dimension to your learning experience, and you don’t need to leave your house!

Also, getting involved locally with other musicians through community music groups, local bands or orchestras, or even just having a regular jam with mates is a wonderful way to use what you have learned in your practice. Step outside your comfort zone a little and you’ll be surprised how much you will get from the experience of playing with others. But mostly it’s loads of fun!

Whatever your saxophone goals are, I hope this book has in-spired you to develop and maintain a systematic approach to your practice. Making your sax practice a habit - an integral part of your daily life, is the best sure fire way to achieve your musical goals.