Introduction One of the first saxophone-centered stores I ever visited was Roberto’s Winds. I remember when I first visited, the Vandoren V16 hard rubber line of mouthpieces for tenor and alto sax had just come out, in addition to Roberto’s Reeds and earlier versions of their wooden ligatures Quite recently, in addition to reeds, ligatures, [read more…]
Introduction While attending TCNJ (The College of New Jersey), a music major named John Ketts told me that if I wanted to really get my jazz chops together, then I should study with one of his friends who just graduated from William Paterson University named Dave Pollack. I had never heard of Dave before, but [read more…]
You know that adrenaline you get from hearing a saxophonist tearing through super-hip lines with incredible clarity and a rock-solid time feel? Now, obviously, there's a lot more that goes into great sax playing than just playing a bunch of fast notes, but without solid technical skills, your playing is going to lack a critical dimension when it comes to exciting your listeners.
Luckily, there is, indeed, a clear path to developing those head-turning chops while at the same time adding original modern vocabulary to your improv "vocabulary", and renowned sax recording artist and educator Adam Larson's course, 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨-𝘍𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘳𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘭-𝘊𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯 is a "one-stop shopping" destination to get you there. Instead of blindly running scales or reading out of an exercise book, Adam takes you through a method similar to that of Brecker and other masters, where it's all about increasing the speed of not only your fingers, but your mind, and most importantly, your ears.
So if you're willing to do something you've never done so you can have something you've never had - click below to learn more about Adam's popular, game-changing course and start turbo-charging your playint - today.
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Lightning-Fast and Crystal-Clean Saxophone Technique
I this article, I’d like to share some specifics on two regular fixtures from my practice routine – warm ups and creating lines. Warm Ups #1: Body Wake Up I first try to ‘wake up’ my body with this exercise. I put almost-exaggerated air and body support on the notes marked with articulation, which makes [read more…]
Introduction As a fan of the SNAP Saxophone Quartet, thus far, I have been fortunate enough to speak with three members of the group (Sam Dillon, Andrew Gould, and Nick Biello). In this interview, I complete the circle by speaking with Paul Jones, the remaining member of the quartet who, up until now, I hadn’t [read more…]
To keep it interesting for myself, one of the things I did while writing The Jazz Saxophone Book, was to create what I called “Short Asides.” When something I was writing about sparked an idea that deserved a bit of a detour, I’d go ahead and write about it, and the Short Aside format helped [read more…]
Introduction I have always been a big fan of the WDR Big Band and recently was checking out the WDR Big Band playing Chick Corea’s tune Matrix featuring saxophonist Jon Beshay (see video below). After listening to the band (always great) and hearing Jon play this amazing solo, I knew I had to get in [read more…]
Introduction Since reviewing saxophone gear for quite some time, I have had the opportunity to play test quite a few vintage Meyers, Links, Dukoff’s, Brilhart’s, Guardala’s as well as the “new” vintage copies or close replicas of these sought after mouthpieces. Now, for many of us the idea of spending between $500-$2,000+ on a vintage [read more…]
Introduction I recently took a trip down to San Diego to visit family and was able to meet up with Chris G (IG: @chrisgsax) who has created some great content under his YouTube Channel Positively Progressing. During our hang, Chris shared with me one of his fairly recent II-V- Tuesday videos and this one was [read more…]