In my first article for the Best. Saxophone. Website. Ever. I discussed using melodic shapes from J.S. Bach’s music to expand your vocabulary and improve your technique and range. We then took those shapes and applied them to a standard chord progression. Today I want to delve in to just one piece of Bach’s music, [read more…]
Introduction The quest to find the right mouthpiece can seem like a never ending process. Once you find the mouthpiece that you believe suits you best, the next step (or at least for myself) is to find a secondary or back-up mouthpiece that plays identically in case something were to happen (drop, stolen, natural wear, [read more…]
Here's a new alternative to the uninspiring tunes often found in the average beginning sax book. This collection of 25 tunes, each with backing and demonstration tracks plus a video tutorial, is the product one of my most significant discoveries in over two decades of working with beginning saxophonists. That is, beginners learn fundamentals much faster by playing the kind of music that attracted them to the horn in the first place.
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🎷 Sax Fundamentals Faster
Editor’s Note: Below is a powerful exercise shared by renowned sax professional Kenny Brooks. Thanks to the great saxophonist, David Valdez for putting us in touch with Kenny to get Kenny’s permission to include it here on the site. As a means of using amazing improvisational material to improve my ability to move around the horn swiftly [read more…]
If you’re like me, you’re always looking for ways to vary your practice routine, improve sense of rhythm and expand your language as an improviser. Here are a few exercises that incorporate groups of five notes (quintuplets) into some very simple triadic exercises that you can practice over the entire range of the saxophone. Some [read more…]
Stuck for ideas of what to play over that ii-V7? Give the octatonic (eight note) Diminished Scale a whirl. It’s a self contained, colorful, almost automatic source of melodic and harmonic tension and release that the masters have mastered since its inception. Within this symmetric, octatonic galaxy resides every available dominant tension (with the exception [read more…]
Anyone can play fast and accurately. There is no magic to it, just practising in a correct and constructive way. Most students nowadays fall into what I like to call a computer game mentality when they practice. They play a passage/lick/exercise wrong and/or sloppy a few times, and when they play it right once or [read more…]
I’m guessing that each and every one of you reading this practice scales on a regular basis. It’s one of the first things that we learn and something that is reinforced throughout our lives in school or when taking lessons. Scales are amazing. I’m a huge fan and I believe they are a necessity for [read more…]
Introduction If you have listened to Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga, you might be wondering, who is that killing saxophonist backing up these two famous entertainers? If you don’t know, this is Steve Kortyka. I recently reached out to Steve to take a skype lesson and during my lesson, Steve shared two concepts with me [read more…]
Introduction I have been taking lessons from saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, in which we have discussed a topic called “Approach Notes and Enclosures”. Chad informed me that this concept has helped many of his students move away from just playing scales over chords or “button pushing” and has helped students develop lines that sound more like [read more…]
This guest post is from saxophone and multi-reed player, composer, recording artist, and educator Sam Sadigursky of SamSadigursky.com One of the best ways of building your ears and learning the jazz vocabulary is to transcribe solos by the masters. It’s one of the few things that, in some form or another, just about every jazz player has [read more…]
Tips and Techniques from the pros PLUS free access to the Sax Lessons with the Stars archive - 10 years worth of interviews and exercises featuring the likes of David Liebman, Bob Mintzer, Ben Wendel, Bob Reynolds, and many more!
