You Have to Show ALL the Notes Some Practice Love

It's unanimous:  almost all of my sax students come to lessons with little or no skill in making the low notes:  C#, C, B, and good old low Bb, the lowest of the low (unless they play a low-A bari sax.)

Why? Because they have rarely been challenged to perfect (or even to play) those notes anywhere in their elementary to middle-school music rooms. For reasons of under-staffing and over-crowding, most of the classrooms don't have time to work on anything more than the notes required to get through the set pieces for class performances.

But facility with the notes will be needed eventually, so include them in one's long tone schedule. Yep. Long tones again. There's no other way around it.

First, make sure the low keys actually seal. If it's a rental or school horn, there's a good chance the keys could be out of alignment, which causes frustrating leaks and prevents mastery.

Second, remember to breathe into the sax by filling your stomach and feeling your stomach push that air up and out.

Don't tongue the low notes. Rather, allow them to play on their own. Yes, that's way harder, but the player will develop control that goes a long way toward being able to play semi-tones or ghosted notes on all the lows.

The same goes for the upper octaves as well, by the way. Most of my students have little experience playing anything above a high C#.....meaning, D, Eb, E, and F. The palm keys, in other  words. The remedy is the same for both ends of the sax: long tones, allowing the notes to establish rather than tonguing them in.

Finally, after the ability to make and control both low and high notes has been reliably established, the job is to make them play pretty, and in tune.

Key words: sax lessons, low notes, high notes, breathing techniques, tonguing