Improving Your Sax Playing the Fast Way

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The Woodshed

I’ve recently begun to throw myself full force into practicing again. Although I’ve done quite a bit of professional playing in my day, the last few years have seen me doing a lot more work at the computer and a lot less at the horn. But unlike other periods where music performance was a more central part of my life (ie: music school), this time I’ve really jumped headfirst into some of the fundamentals of playing the horn while at the same time working towards becoming a more intuitive musician overall.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

When I first started practicing regularly a few weeks ago, I sounded alarmingly terrible. My high school self could have mopped that floor with this beleaguered tenor cobweb brusher. Playing a musical instrument is not like riding a bike. If you don’t use it, you most certainly lose it.

However, I did notice that my former level of proficiency seems to be coming back to me at a much faster rate than it took to build up my skills in the first place. So yes, it’s true that those chops disappear if they’re allowed to sit dormant for an extended period of time, but they can come back pretty quickly as well.

Making up for Lost Time

Granted, I work full time as a web developer while also pouring my heart and soul into this website and projects associated with the site. So it’s not like I can lock myself in the shed for eight hours at a time. Realistically, it’s more like 45-ish minutes a day, sometimes less, sometimes more. But having a limited amount of time to practice has made my practice time more efficient than it’s ever been.

Gone are the days of noodling around the horn playing things that are already comfortable for me to play. Nowadays, I seek out my weak spots and make it my business to focus on those weak spots first and foremost.

Here a few of the things I’m practicing which have allowed me to improve on my instrument at a more rapid rate than I ever have improved in the past.

  1. Long Tones
    As my good friend and saxophone bad-arse Tim Wilcox showed me, I practice fading my notes in as though they came out of nowhere, going all the way up into the fortissimo range, and then coming back down to fading out. However, I make it a point to not remove the horn from my mouth between notes. This robs my chops of the chance to recuperate, thereby strengthening them.I also make it a point to be conscious of biting down too hard on the mouthpiece with the upper teeth. I’ve noticed great results from a combination of the Joe Allard school of tone production as well as the “No Embouchure Embouchure” as espoused by Jerry Bergonzi. My bottom lip is not rolled in all the way, nor is rolled out like I’m puckerin’ up for a big fat kiss. This natural way of playing has made my tone noticeably bigger. More on the topic of lip position in this article here.
  2. Overtones
    One of the beautiful things I’ve found about running this site is that I get all kinds of great practice techniques to add to my arsenal. To gain control over the character of my sound as well as the altissimo register, I’ve been practicing my overtones as outlined in this article here, where saxophone awesome-factory, Ricky Sweum shares some fun and effective exercises with us. The most exciting thing that I’m taking away from my overtone practice is use of the tongue. In practicing moving around the back of my tongue into different vowel and consonant sounds, I find myself able to nail the different partials easier than ever.
  3. Scales
    With scales, I’m learning that I can only play my scales as fast as I can play the most difficult interval within the scale I’m practicing. Prime example: F# major scale – sure I can rip through it, but some of the notes get trampled on the way. As I isolate the trouble spots, I find that it’s the first four notes of the scale that really give me gas (not literally, but you get the point…). I mean, going from F# to G# clearly and evenly at a fast rate is hard enough, but how about G# to A# – now that’s a true biz-natch! Try to bring in some articulation and now I’m reallyin trouble. So what do I do? I practice going back and forth between the trouble spots very slowly, savoring the feeling of the keys under my fingers, focusing on anything other than my fingers, making sure to keep my arms, wrists, and hands from clenching (thanks to a reminder from Bill Plake [Sorry(!), but this web page has disappeared since the original publication of this article]). You can read more about this approach to practicing tough intervals in the beginning of a series I’m working on here.
  4. Ear Training
    I don’t really have a set regimen for this, but I like to take Best. Saxophone. Website. Ever, contributor Sam Sadigursky’s method of practicing simple songs by ear in all twelve keys. You’ll probably laugh at this, but playing that sax solo from the 1980’s hit Careless Whisper will definitely give your ears a run for their money. There’s some big intervals in there which make it a lot harder to play by ear than Frère Jacques or Mary Had a Little Lamb. Besides that, I like doing things like randomly playing a major scale in an unfamiliar key in fourths or fifths. For example, an Ab major scale in fourths would be Ab-Dd-Bb-Eb-C-F etc etc etc. Diatonic 7th chords are great as well (Google that if you’re not familiar with diatonic chords). Finally, practicing hard-to-hear licks, such as licks based on altered scales, is a nice little kick in the ear as well.
  5. Paperless Transcription
    This is basically a subset of ear training which I learned while putting together a summary of a Joe Henderson mater class. In the master class, he shares how when he was coming up, he wouldn’t learn solos by transcribing them, but instead repeating by ear what was played on the record and committing that to memory. Umm, yeah. Not easy. So since this was my first time attempting this, I thought I’d make life easy on myself  by starting with one of easiest jazz musicians to transcribe – Miles Davis. Since it’s so easy to zip around on a saxophone, it just seems like transcribing a sax solo by ear without paper might be too discouraging a first foray. Miles’ solo on Venus de Milo from the incredibly classic album Birth of the Cool is what I’ve started with, and so far so good.
  6. Play-Alongs
    Although jamming with play alongs (or “jazz karaoke” as I like to say)  can be a noodley stroll down Comfort Zonesville, I make every effort to practice things that are uncomfortable for me to play. I mean, who would have though that I suck as bad as I do at blues in concert Ab? Or what happens when I solo over an unfamiliar tune without the benefit of having the chord changes before my eyes? Basically, the goal is to move away from simply “letting my fingers do the walking” (as Jamey Aebersold like to call it) and only play things that I actually hear in my head. I’m finding that when I restrict myself to only playing what I can hear clearly in my head, what comes out is often pretty trite and vanilla. All of this means that I need to expand my ears and my vocabulary into some new areas. To that end, Matt Otto’s Modern Jazz Vocabulary Vol. 2 has been very helpful. One thing that’s really challenged me has been to sing a solo over the play-along, and then jump into the solo playing my horn to see if I can form a continuous musical stream of thought between what I’m singing and what I’m playing. Since the ultimate prize is to be able to play everything you hear, this has been a cool way to push myself towards that goal.

Yeah, I Know

As you can see, I’m reading very little music besides Matt’s book, and I definitely need to start working on some etudes and classical repertoire. But since I live in a condo with finicky neighbors, my practice space is basically my wife’s non-walk-in closet, playing with the bell of my horn practically buried in her clothes. Yeah, real classy. In the meantime, I’m looking into getting one of those nifty saxophone mutes so I can blare away to my heart’s content with a music stand in front of me.

So that’s what I’ve got for now. I’d like to delve a bit deeper into the individual bits of my practice routine in future articles, but I’m glad that I got to take some time tonight to give the general overview.

So pray tell, my esteemed saxopheliacs – what are some of the most helpful things that you’ve been practicing?

Photo by cogdogblog