About Brad Carman

Brad Carman enjoys an unusually diverse musical career. Beginning his professional career as a freelance trumpet player, picking up the saxophone, clarinet, and flute as an adult while earning a degree in Music Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since then, Brad has worked with wind ensembles, orchestras, jazz combos, big bands, ‘pit’ orchestras, show bands, studio horn sections and with numerous chamber ensembles, including Quattro Formaggi Saxophone Quartet which he founded in 2005. He is also a charter member of the 9-piece rock band The Big Payback, and has worked as an entertainer for Carnival Cruise Lines, sailing out of New Orleans, Miami, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Awarded the first-ever Gerald B. Olson Award for excellence in music education, he is frequently called upon as a master class instructor, ensemble coach and clinician, and has maintained one of the most active private studios in Madison, WI for over 17 years.

Posts by Brad Carman:

One Of The Quickest Ways To Get You Flying Through All Twelve Keys

Professional classical musicians seem to be able to memorize impossibly complicated solo works, orchestral excerpts, and other pieces in a short amount of time and with remarkable recall and precision. Similarly, professional jazz musicians know hundreds of tunes and seem to be able to play back almost anything they hear – in any key [read more…]

These Fun Technical Exercises Will Prepare You For Just About Anything

Technical Exercises in all Keys All players should organize their practice, but that structure should also leave a lot of room for variety and creativity. For most of my students, I recommend they practice in one key every week with a combination of scales and arpeggios, plus some kind of technical exercise that resembles the [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.

SAXTECHNIQUE.COM

Lightning-Fast and Crystal-Clean Saxophone Technique

12 Tips for Hitting that Altissimo G Like a Pro

This is a guest post by saxophonist, arranger, and educator Brad Carman of BradCarmanMusic.com. We all know that some notes on the saxophone are tougher to hit than others, especially as we begin to delve into the altissimo register. While there is a great deal of information out there about the art of altissimo as [read more…]