And now, some words of musician wisdom from tenor saxman Charles McNeal: 

How Do I Know if Sax or Clarinet or Flute is the Right Instrument for Me?

How do you know if saxophone or flute or clarinet (or any instrument) is right for you?

The short answer? You often don't at first.

I'll explain, but first, let me apologize for my utter laziness in posting to this blog -- yeah I know, it's been a while. But I'm back, and I have a new website now that explains more about who I am and about my background and style as a woodwinds instructor.

Have a look, and tell me what you think: saxlessonssandiego.com 

Now, the answer to today's question. The holidays generally see growth in my student population because of the numbers of beginners who get shiny new instruments for Christmas.

Or, lessons.

Or both.

Sometimes though, a particular instrument is just not a fit with the intended player. The best way to find that out is by sitting with a qualified instructor, learning a few of the basics, and then letting things take their natural course.

But give yourself a fair chance.

In the beginning, nobody knows from embouchure or fingerings. There are many things to perfect in sequence, but they are not impossible. If they were, none of us would be musicians. Still, some instruments present challenges that are more difficult than others. The flute embouchure, for example, or, the open-keys of the clarinet.

But sometimes, mastering those new skills can be insurmountable. How do you know when to throw in the towel? Again, sitting with a qualified instructor in private sessions is best. Many students only have the option of study in a public school classroom, where one instructor is in charge of 50 beginners with brand new instruments, and that can be a tough introduction to music.

My advice? Give the instrument of choice a decent try, but, be ready for other opportunities if it does not work for you.

For example:

I had a very young flute student recently who struggled to make even a single note on his instrument. Week after week after week went by, and he was never able to coordinate his fingers and master the tricky flute embouchure. He was beginning to hate music...that is, until we put a trumpet in his hands.

And that's the instrument he resonated with. He went on to play baritone, and he loved it.

The place to start is by renting, not owning. Check out the selection of instruments at a music store in your area with a good rental program, one that allows you to rent short-term and change instruments during the life of the contract. Start there, minus the heavy investment that a decent instrument can represent, and learn what fits you (or your child musician.)

Next, have the instrument checked out by a reputable woodwind tech. It's no use trying to play music on a leaky or damaged instrument. In San Diego, I go to Jim Weiss for all of my repairs. Message me for his contact info.

Happy New Year!


Key words: sax lessons san diego - Jim Weiss - saxophone repair - instrument rental programs

YouTube: Great Resource, Lousy Teacher

Would you hire a contractor who said he learned everything by watching This Old House reruns to teach you the building trade?

That's a rhetorical question. Meaning, I already know the answer. 

Which is no.  

Then why do you take sax "lessons' on YouTube, watching whatever new video this or that sax pro posts? 

YouTube tutorials are the road to getting nowhere fast. Here's why: 

First, the lessons as such are loss leaders that are designed to sell you something, usually more lessons, lessons access, a book, a CD, and so on.

In other words, You Tube tutorials are little sizzle reels that make the teacher and his/her lesson of the week seem like the solution to all of your playing problems.

Which they never are. 

In fact, the danger of learning via the free weekly lesson in your inbox is that your approach to music knowledge will be disjointed and not follow any sort of development or logic. It becomes a dazzling deli platter or newer-bigger-better, and in time, the actual work of sitting with a teacher and working out in a practice room seems oh so dull by comparison.

The YouTube scholar likewise has no idea where to put this all this new-found stuff into the matrix of a performance. Why? Because there is no actual teacher to guide the student through the process. 

Instead, there's next week's all new must-have solution to all things saxophone. 

If you are learning saxophone, then you are worth the cost of sitting with an actual teacher in an actual studio.  

Find the right teacher for you, meaning, a skilled educator who is actually helping you reach your playing goals. 

Then, pony up the bucks; it will be worth it in the long run. 

YouTube lessons? They're worth what you pay for them: nothing.

But wait, you say. Part of the header says YouTube - great resource. What gives?

I say this because YouTube is also the world's biggest basement full of every saxophone record or live performance available. And that's where the online resource does it's best -- by providing you, the student, with endless hours of great saxophone music to listen to, study, and transcribe as you and your teacher see fit. 


Key words: sax lessons, private lessons, online tutorials, apprenticeship, learning curve, teaching methods

  

PLAY WITH ENERGY

Think about it -- this is the one area that separates most amateurs from pros. Playing music with energy, no matter how many times you've practiced or performed any given material.

Your scale practice, for example. Try running them the same old way, and then, run them with expression and articulation. Energy, in other words. 

Play them as if you'd never heard the notes before, and let the notes jump out of your horn. 

Feels a whole lot better, doesn't it?

If you guessed that playing with energy is a mind game, you are partly correct. It begins inside, with a true enthusiasm for the music, no matter how mundane.

And I know just how mundane some of your practice material can be. 

You can also fake it until you make it. Use dynamics and articulation and emphasis and shading and make your exercises into little masterpieces of energetic playing. 

You will be amazed at the difference.

Key words: la mesa saxophone, energy, performance tips, private lessons, articulation

The Practice Log, Part Two

What'd you practice yesterday? What, exactly, and for how long? How about last Thursday? What did you work on then, and how did it go?

If you don't have total recall on practice room matters, rest assured that you are not alone. Most all of my students give a generic answer when I ask them how long and on what did they practice. Their eyes glaze over from the effort.

Help comes in the form of the practice log. Yes, there's probably an app for it, but I prefer the old fashioned pencil and paper method: you write the date, and for each element you practice during that session, you also write details such as the metronome speed.

And you keep that practice log in plain view where you can see it each and every session.

By doing the above, you set little markers in place that you can look back on in order to measure your progress -- or lack thereof.

Think about it: you could be stuck on the C# melodic minor scale at 40 bpm for eons and wonder why you aren't getting any better at playing it. Unless you take notes and make a conscious effort to advance. The practice log changes everything.

And that's what a practice log really is: not an ugly reminder of practice room difficulties, of stuff you struggle to play. Nope - it's a chart of your success, of  you taking charge of your own forward momentum as a music student.

Consider it your secret weapon, especially when it comes time for auditions, year-end juries, scale tests, and so on. Along with your tuner and your metronome, the practice log is your best friend. Why?

You can't manage what you can't measure.

Key words: La Mesa saxophone teacher, woodwinds, music lessons, secrets to success, practice aids

The D Word

A couple of my advanced saxophone students display great promise. They can play their instruments quite well, and they have both shown steady growth in most areas except for one: discipline. 

I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but bear with me.

Neither of them has finished a single objective. Not a one. In my classes, we are big on goal setting. My students bring something, whether for school or a personal need, and we make a plan that includes a series of exercises and a deadline.

Sounds good, doesn't it?  But it's not so good if you never actually finish anything.  

These particular students jump from one thing to the next. And they do manage to improve in a half-way sense, but there is that one thing that is missing: the mastery that comes from discipline. 

Which happens to be a common trait among all of the major artists you can name. Discipline. Monk, for example, is said to have practiced a single song at performance tempo for an hour at a time. 

.

In the end, non-finishers never get that fully-developed sense of completion of a job well done. And I think that's vital to the pursuit of  anything -- not just music, but anything, really. 

Never actually finishing something (learning your major scales, for example) means that, as a musician, you will always have that unfinished business to get back to. In time, the stack of unfinished business adds up and becomes a burden. And eventually, it will show up in one's performance on the band stand. 

There's a simple solution:  ready?  FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED.

Key words: discipline, practicing tips, self esteem, la mesa saxophone, Thelonius Monk, goal setting, achievement

When I Play My Scales Slow, I Make Mistakes. Lots of Mistakes

Each week I assign a new scale exercise for my students to memorize. I test the following week. And just about 100 percent of the time, the student can rip through the scale no problem.

But when I ask them to slow it down, well, that's when the mistakes start arriving.

Why is that?

Simple answer: because scales,  vital as they are, are boring. They require seeming endless repetition, and scales become something a musician practices for the duration.

Just like long tone practice, scale exercises never go away.  And it is only natural to want to knock them out as quickly as is possible.

And it is easier to get that rote thing going than it is to actually slow down and listen to your own tones each time. But that's what you want to do. Listen. Practice slow. Speed can come later.

And it will.

The overall goal is not just to be able to play fast and with agility, but for each note to be beautiful, to sound polished.

Play slowly, build the scale tones with strength, and concentrate. That's a tall order in a high speed world in which so many of us spend time involved in virtual pursuits, but so be it.

And remember: your metronome and your tuner are your two best friends in the practice room when it comes to scales.

Key words: saxophone practice tips, learning scales, private lessons, la mesa saxophone teacher

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

How to Master Difficult Music When You Just Don't Have Enough Time

Now that we're back in school, the assignments are piling up quickly. It's as if a sleeping giant has suddenly come awake and is issuing demands left and right.

This applies to band class too. Many of my students have challenging set pieces to learn for winter concert band shows and fall marching band competitions. Not to mention performance exams and juries.

It can be overwhelming. In fact, it probably IS overwhelming, especially for a few of my students who have been handed some difficult assignments.

You know who you are!

But rest assured that it can be done. The process I use is three-step: Identify, Isolate, then Integrate.

No, I didn't invent this. But I use it and it works.

Begin by playing through the piece at a slow/moderate pace. When you hit those passages that cause the fingers to fumble, Identify them, then, Isolate them. Focus on practicing just the few measures at a time that you have the most difficulty with.

Practice each phrase in small increments, very slowly at first, building up speed only when it gets better. Use a metronome.

Then, Integrate: play the entire movement at a moderate tempo and if the difficult phrase sails by, move on to the next one.

Five minutes of total concentration in the mastery of a single sax problem is worth an hour of blowing notes once a week.

Now go practice. You can do this. We've done it before.

Key words:  saxophone, better practice tips, how to play better, learning difficult woodwind music

HOW TO SURVIVE THE SAXOPHONE FAILURE BLUES

Crummy gig, practice going nowhere, stale solos, can't play as fast as you want...stuff like this got you down?

Sure, I've been there. We all have at one time or another.

How to get out of it?

Know, first of all, that it's temporary, whatever it is that is displeasing you about your performance. Someone wiser than me once said it best - this too shall pass.

Second, If you didn't nail it today, you have the next gig. And the next. And the one after that.

Third, everybody has days like this. It's one of the unwritten laws of learning to play a musical instrument. Even the greats: no, Charlie Parker wasn't born with talent, believe it or not. The legend surrounding him would make you think so but no. He earned his place, one sweaty lousy scale at a time.

Over a period of years.

They all did. Lester Young, Eddie Harris, Cannonball Adderley, you name it.

So, get back to making music. And remember -- if you're not failing, you're not trying.

Key words: saxophone practice, private lessons, performance anxiety

HOW TO PLAY BETTER SOLOS 

You've got your scales down cold, you practice arpeggios with a metronome, and you use a tuner when blowing long tones.  You've been at this for a while. You show up regularly at open mics and jam sessions, but, your improvised solos are lacking.  Here's how to fix that:

Transcribe.

Meaning, transcribe solos. There's only about a billion to choose from. Find one you like, and copy it as best you can with your own instrument.  Then, do it again, and again, and again. That's called studying the masters. All artists do this, whether they are painters or writers or accomplished musicians.

So why don't more intermediate-level jazz and blues improv students transcribe? Because it is a time-consuming and challenging process, especially in a world that offers you ten killer saxophone licks in three easy lessons.

Let me break it down and simplify the process for you.

1. Choose a solo within your skill range. Giant Steps? Not at first. The goal is to be able to play what you hear, and, to finish what you start.

2. Play it over and over. And over and over again. Listen. Repeat. Do this so much that in time you can sing the solo note-for-note. Yes - sing it first. I studied with a jazz tenor monster player named Robert Dove for a while, and I recall him saying "You can't play it if you can't sing it."

3. Now pick up your instrument and start the process by playing short passages and then replicating them. Mimic as best you can the performer's shading, dynamics, bends, as well.  Some think you should write the transcription down. I find it more valuable to transcribe directly to the horn and memorize the solo at the same time you are learning it.

4. Make it easy on yourself. Use any of the many software programs and apps available to assist you in transcribing. Back in the day when I was a kid, we had these things called turntables and we played records on them. You'd pick the needle up and put it back down, over and over and over, until you could get the passage into your head. Now, I use Transcribe!

5. The benefits of transcribing are many: learning how a master craftsman develops a solo line and handles harmonic changes, development of your critical listening abilities, enhancing your ear training, and improving your memory, to name a few.

The final step in this process is to play along with the recorded version. Remember to go easy on yourself -- it takes as long as it takes, so give the process time. Transcribing is hard at first. It gets easier with repetition, so finish what you start.

A shortcut is to purchase solos from the catalogs of the many transcribers our there and play along with the recorded version. Charles McNeal is a great source of material.  Good? Yes. But in my opinion, you will get so much more from learning with your ears instead of your eyes. Do that first, and then study a manuscript.

I'll leave you with this: transcribing a solo is the single best thing you will ever do to learn the craft of improvisation.  Only do it if you want to get better.

Key words: transcribe, sax improvisation, saxophone lessons, jazz, transcription, John Coltrane, Giant Steps, Transcribe!, Charles McNeal, Robert Dove

KEEP IT SIMPLE, OKAY?

As part of my own continuing education, I subscribe to many different music education web sites. Each week, there's some new lesson or brilliant insight in my email inbox, which I of course open in hopes that this will be the one thing that will break it wide open and move my playing to the next level. 

Sound familiar?

Of course it does. We all do it. There is a growing industry designed to feed us (at no small cost)  that manner of information, as often and as much as we can afford.

In this case, I scanned the information quickly before realizing that what was being told to me was not only way over my head, but, suitable only for a college classroom.

Not a bandstand.

The authors of this popular jazz web site broke down a blues solo and describes it in academic terms like approach notes, tri-tones, enclosures, implies sharp sevenths, and on and on.

I closed the web page and I moved it to a folder for later study...where I'd filed every single one of their previous posts. There were dozens of them, all there waiting for me to get back to them and figure out what they meant. 

In one fell swoop, I deleted them all.  Here's why:

If you are spending time reading web tutorials trying to figure out what they mean and how they apply, you are not playing your instrument. And if you are not playing your instrument, you are burning daylight.

Playing is the most important thing you will do. Ever. Learning off of a page or a web site uses a different part of your brain than does actual listening and playing. I'm not the first person to say that, either. 

Play what, you ask?  The answer is Keep It Simple.  Focus on the one thing that needs improvement in the area in which you find yourself playing most of the time.  Some examples:

1. If you are a middle school student, you likely have band class assignments to learn. Or, there's a passage in an assigned piece of music that is difficult. Work on that until it's as good as you can get it.

2. If you are an intermediate-level player but your fingering is sluggish, for example, you'll want to become close friends with your scales and arpeggios and your metronome.

3. You're an advanced intermediate student but you run out of ideas while soloing at the blues jams. Listen to a sax player you really like and respect, and then transcribe a riff or two to your horn. Emulate the phrasing, the tone, and the feel of it. Memorize it. Then, work it in some other of the keys most commonly called at the jams. 

Learn songs. Spend time playing them with your tuner and metronome handy. But don't sit and just read the latest newest lesson on the Internet. Instead, pack your time with music - listen, and play your horn as much as you possibly can. 

We learn music the same way we learned to speak: through imitation.

Key words: imitate, transcribe, shed, simple practice, saxophone, music lessons

BETTER PLAYING THROUGH BETTER POSTURE

I've been teaching woodwind students of all ages for so long now that I can tell how a student will perform -- by their posture.

I've seen it time and again, beginning from the time that the student walks into the practice studio.

How you sit at the drum kit, the piano, the clarinet, flute, sax, guitar, and on and on can determine how you will approach the instrument and the music.

With woodwinds of course, posture affects air flow, which in turn affects intonation and a host of other sonic qualities.

The good news? That you can, as Tony Robbins puts it, change your state. In this case, by sitting up, or by standing straight and holding the woodwind instrument at the correct angle so as not to choke the reed.

Case in point: a beginning nine-year-old clarinet student came with a heavy slouch. Repeated requests from me to sit up got ignored. The student could only hit a few notes, and they were badly out of tune. This went on for weeks until mom stepped in and physically lifted the kid up in his seat.

That's when things changed. From that moment on, the kid could make good notes, which reinforced the very notion of playing clarinet. To this day, the student still sits up straight at lessons.

And that's only one example.

A word about appearance: for my advanced readers who are out in public, have you noticed that when you dress like a rock star, you sound like a rock star?  At least, more than when you show up in your baggies and slaps and a Hawaiian shirt, right?

Not to mention smiling on stage.

To wrap it up, here are three things that will improve your playing: stand or sit up, dress for success, and, now and then smile.

performance, hints, better woodwind playing, private sax lessons, energy, self-image, mental state

THE SECRET TO PLAYING FAST...

...is to practice slow.

I have never been able to figure this one out, but, virtually all of my clarinet and saxophone students, especially the intermediate and the more advance students play through their practice exercises as fast as they can.

It's almost as if they hate the sound of the individual notes coming out of their instruments! 

But, those individual notes are the only tools that we have to work with, and our gig is to make them ring. 

For example, listen to any major sax players you like - say, John Coltrane, Hank Crawford, or Tom Scott.  Notice that when they blast through a run of 16th notes, each one is clear and tone-centered.

The way it's supposed to be. 

And you get that by practicing slowly.  You must sound each and every note.

Speed appeals. But when you practice a piece faster than you can handle it,  you've robbed your future. 

Why?

Perfect practice makes perfect. Sloppy practice makes, well, you get it. 

Practice everything slower than you humanly think is possible. Go for clarity and beauty of tone on each and every note, and do not increase the tempo until you can play each measure perfectly.  A good rule to follow is to never play a piece faster than the most difficult measure, the one that slows you down each and every time.

Yeah it takes discipline, and yeah, it's way more fun (and ego-satisfying) to scramble along at break-neck speed, but slow it way down in the beginning. 

It's the best way I know of to get fast. 

speed up your sax playing, tricks, practice tips, private lessons, saxophone

What To Do When  Having A Bad Sax Day

First, let me apologize for lagging on the posting of new stuff. It's been a busy teaching and performing schedule lately, and some things had to go on the back burner. 

It occurred to me that playing any musical instrument has its good days and its not-so-good days, especially for those of you who are performing out in public on a regular basis. 

I have them. And sometimes, I find myself obsessing over having played wrong notes or a flat line or repeating my own musical cliches. Whatever. I can find myself going dark for days on end after giving what I consider a poor performance.

You feel me? 

But this is part of the experience of being a musician. We all have off days.  Next time you have one, run down the following check list and see if any of this helps you :

1. I try not to have any expectations when I go to a gig. If I do show up with expectations, I am almost always disappointed. I've learned to take things as they come, control what aspects I can control, and live with the rest.

2. I try not to dwell on complements. I learned this from a sax teacher of mine long ago. He said that if anyone complemented him, that meant he had to practice an extra hour. I don't think he actually did that, but I got the point: getting hooked on praise will hurt your playing just as badly as does the next item.

3. Criticism. Especially un-constructive criticism.  When that happens, I try to take it in stride, consider the source, and if there is anything behind it, correct as best I can.

4. Negative self-talk. Oh man, this one's the worst of all, because we are our own worst critics. Again, what I've learned to do is objectify and apply: is there something I can do or practice to improve my perceived shortcoming on the bandstand, whatever it may be?  If need be, take it to your sax teacher for some deeper ideas.

Finally, you've got to put it behind you and move on to the next gig. When you catch yourself going back and re-thinking it all, remind yourself that the gig in question is over. What's done is done. Pick up, and move on. 

You'll do better next time.

performance psychology, saxophone playing, private lessons, how to practice, best practices

YOU NEED TO PLAY MORE

I've been spending a lot of time lately, studying and listening to Lester Young. Considered by many to have been one of the main architects of what we now know as jazz tenor saxophone, Mr. Young had a detached style and an approach that was all his own and in the day, considered highly original. 

He was a working sax player and all accounts say he was always up for a jam session, even if it meant losing sleep.  He, like every other musician in his era, played long hard hours. It was an expectation first, but also a deeply ingrained part of their culture. For example, listen to Young's solo in this Count Basie recording from 1928. It was made around 10 in the morning -- after the band had played a 9 pm to 5 am gig and then jammed before the recording session. 

And still, they played the session with energy and verve.

Most of us don't play nearly as much as our saxophone forebears. And that is precisely what we need to be doing -- playing as much as is possible.  We don't play nearly enough.

And by that, I mean playing, not practicing. Jamming with others, playing gigs, one-nighters, whatever. 

Play more -- and everything about your own musicianship will improve.

sax lessons, count basie, lester young, jam session, practice, improvisation

The Two Worst Words a Music Student Can Say 

Last week, I counted how many times a student said the two words during a lesson: seven. 

It took a lot of energy, but each time, we figured out a way to work around her words and find a means for her to achieve. 

But she's not the only one. In fact, most all of my students (and prospective students) chant these two words as if they were a mantra. 

Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but consider the alto sax student who brought Chick Corea's "Got a Match?" to her lesson, along with a time limit to learn it all and at 220 bpm. 

She said those two words, but by the end of the 30 minutes, she had the head memorized and was well on her way to perfecting the rest of it.

If only we hadn't had to spend so much energy dealing with those two words.  You already know what the two words are, because I'm guessing you've used them yourselves. 

Here they are 

I can't. 

Some of you are laughing right now, but, those two words are deadly. The negative response kills creativity. Those little words have the power to keep us stuck in place. And if we say them enough, we begin to believe them.

I spend a lot of time dealing with student/performance psychology with my private and group students, and I have come to learn that our mindsets determine our outcomes in so many cases. 

So don't burden yourself with 'I can't.' Instead, make it a habit to say yes, to frame your various concerns about your musicianship in a more positive way, and you will  hear the results in your playing.

Yes, there's a Part Two to this, and I'll get to that in next week's blog entry.

private lessons, saxophone instruction, positive, attitude, learning skills

Breaking it Down for Better Soloing

If you really want to hear where you’re at as a soloist, try jamming with either a bassist or a drummer – but only one, or the other, and never both together for this exercise.

That’s right, just you on sax, with bass or drums for accompaniment.

Don’t just free-form it. Work on an actual melody from beginning to end. Play the head, the bridge, and then the solo. Go back to the head and finish the song, as if playing with an entire band.

If possible, record the session.

On playback, listen and ask yourself: was the melody recognizable? When you soloed, did the playing reflect the changes and the melodic/harmonic structure of the song? Or, did your playing veer off into left field somewhere? Did you work the changes, and hit the tone centers and the 3’s and 7’s on downbeats?

This exercise is a skill-builder because there are no other instruments to hide behind. Working without a net shows how structured your solos are in terms of melodic technique, instead of just blasting away using scale-based runs or your own stock riffs.  

It puts the entire burden on your shoulders.

You are the soloist, and as such, you alone have to give the entire song its melodic shape. There won’t be a guitar or a keyboard to do that for you. You will be carrying the heavy weight here.

How to get started: take it slow and easy at first. Pick something with a strong melody and few changes, a blues for example like Tenor Madness or Blue Monk. It may be frustrating in the beginning for newcomers to improvising, so allow for that (without allowing yourself to feel like a failure.)

Keep coming back to the melody in your soloing and in your explorations. Play just the chord tones on some passes, and just the 3’s and 7’s on other passes. You should be able to 'feel' the melody of the song in whatever you play, even with just those two notes, okay?

And as always, have fun.

sax lessons, improvisation, soloing hints, improvisation exercises, jamming

LISTEN, AND MEMORIZE

Think about it for a moment – how did you learn to speak?

By listening first, then, by repeating what you heard as best you could, and finally, by memorizing.

Nobody handed you a book or a page with words printed on it and said here – now go learn how to talk.

That’s not how it works.

You mimicked everything you heard as a baby and as a toddler. Your adults also helped by saying words and encouraging you to repeat them. They were happy when you got it right, right?

Well, maybe you don’t remember how it went for you, but when my daughter said her first word (31 years ago!) her mom got on the phone to everybody in the family with the big news. We laughed, we celebrated, and we got her to say it again, and again....

By the time you got to kindergarten, you were well on your way to being fluent.

Unfortunately, this is rarely the way we teach anyone to play music. Instead, we give students an instrument and a book and a fingering chart.

Yes – those tools are totally necessary. But what we leave out is listening, then mimicking, and remembering.

Granted, the job of any fifth-grade level band teacher is complex. And there is probably no way a teacher can get an entire class of beginners on various instruments in shape for spring concert by having them sit around and listen/mimic/memorize.

We shouldn’t toss out the other sensory input in exchange for classroom management. But we do, and it is often years (if ever) before a student begins that far deeper and more rewarding work of listening and finding the same notes on one’s instrument, repeating them, and then memorizing.

So how do you do this?  Simple. Start with a song you really like. Doesn’t matter what kind of music. All that matters is that you really like it. Get a copy of it via download or CD or whatever so that you can listen to it several times. Then, find the notes on your horn and learn the melody.

Little steps. Go slow at first. You’ll get it eventually. Memorize the tune, and incorporate it into your daily practice. Then, learn another. And another, and another.  My promise to you is this: the more you do it, the easier it comes.

 Jazz improvising, tools to improvise, music memory, composition, sax lessons

My Sax Equipment and Setup

The choice of saxophone/mouthpiece is highly personal. In effect, the saxophone (or any instrument for that matter) becomes a working partner in the creation of music. The equipment needs to synch with the player and allow her or him to express ideas without impediment. 

I tend toward gear that many consider to be less than ideal, which probably dates back to my formative years as a musician. In the fifth grade, at the age of 10, I got a Conn student alto, clunky as all heck, and stiff, but which I would play in many student rock bands before throngs of adoring 11 year old classmates. 

Later, in high school, the band teacher put me on their bari sax. It was an ancient piece of metal that leaked and was in bad repair.  It stunk. But, that's the horn I was given to play in an award-winning jazz band that made waves and would produce Grammy Award winners and famous bands like Fattburger. It was that, or nothing -- then, I was not a soloist. And so I made that stinking bari work, and likely with the same reed all year! Possibly this is why I tend to favor the uphill battle in my choice of instruments as you will see in today's blog post. 

There are many many fine brands of saxophones being made today; consider them all before you decide on purchasing a horn and a mouthpiece. Better yet, try every combination possible. Many music stores, Sam Ash for example, will let you do this to your heart's content. 

Today, my main tenor sax (I own two of them) is a Buescher True Tone that was made somewhere between 1923 and 1927, judging by the serial number. Satin silver finish (now vastly blemished) with the remnants of a gold wash bell. (The one pictured is not mine, but is nearly identical.)

My mouthpiece is a wide-open Otto Link Super Tone Master 10* that I found in a box full of used mouthpieces in a seedy old used instrument shop one day. I replaced the standard Link ligature with one made by Rovner. I added a couple of cardboard shims to the inside of the ligature.

I use Fibracell 2.5 or Legere synthetic reeds. With the STM, they are quite bright. Baffling with the modified Rovner helps tone that down a little. The benefit of this setup is the ease of playing in the altissimo range. I can also push this setup as hard as I want to get a full overblown Texas tenor sound, and I can lay back and get something closer to an acoustic jazz sound or a thick pop R&B sound.

  

I also fashioned a little homemade wedge and positioned it inside the STM, right at the point where the roll-over baffle falls off. I made it out of that sticky clay you can use to post things like photos on walls.

I got the idea for the wedge from listening to a fine sax player named Ernie Watts. I experimented with various shapes for years before settling on a design that resembles a step-baffle.  The little wedge speeds up the air flow and adds a little bite to my overall sound.

The True Tone blows freely and remains in tune through the octaves. It has a darker sound, possibly due to the age and manufacture of the horn. The older metal resonates and buzzes at a different frequency than my other tenor. I can feel it. 

For years, I played on a tenor sax made by the Olds Company in Fullerton, California. It has low serial numbers that make it very old in the company history. No one really knows how old, because Olds's records no longer go back that far. Olds was known for selling student-grade instruments, especially brass. 

I had the tenor re-padded, but even then, it still blew sharp or flat on so many different notes that it was work to keep it in tune on a gig. That said, I still love that horn to this day, mainly for the strong, focused, buzzy sound that it makes. It is not unlike that of an old Selmer cigar-cutter. In fact, many times on gigs, people have confused the Olds for one. 

But now, the True Tone is becoming my horn for all occasions because being of better design, it opens my playing up to more possibilities. So many sax players complain about the Buescher’s ancient ergonomics (key-work,) but that doesn't bother me in the least.  This is among the kinds of horns that our forebears in music (like Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young) may have played in their time.

The True Tone has wide-open key work, and with the STM 10* piece, it makes a huge shock wave of tenor sax sound. Everything is in this horn, every tonal/sonic possibility. 

The added cachet is that I restored the True Tone myself. It came to me from a storage unit that I’m sure had flooded. The horn reeked of mildew and crabs. On a whim, I bought a set of very small screwdrivers, and I took it apart and discarded the old rotted pads. I soaked the works in buckets of machine oil for weeks and gently scrubbed away the crud buildup. Buescher’s snap-on pads made the job of replacing them much easier than seating modern pads with shellac would have been.

A bona fide repair tech adjusted the key heights. This is one of those jobs best left to a true pro. In fact, restoring a sax is not something you can do by watching You Tube videos.  It is an exacting job, one that requires skill and training and experience.

Still, I’m glad I did the cleaning and the restoration and the re-assembly myself. Why? Because if for nothing more, I understand this particular horn in a way that I can’t adequately describe. Having the parts spread out on my dining table for six months, and now playing it at gigs, well, that’s a bit of history I have had with no other saxophone I’ve ever owned. 

tenor sax, Buescher True Tone, Olds tenor sax, sax restoration, saxophone equipment, Otto Link  

Make Your Practice Sound as Good as Your Performance

I’ve noticed a trend among my students. It’s unanimous. They all do it.

What I’m talking about today is the habit of separating practice tone and development from performance tone and development.

In other words, my students all practice sounding one way, but when they perform, it sounds another way entirely, sometimes like two different musicians. 

Which didn’t occur to me until I started going to my student’s various recitals, where I heard tone and vibrato and phrasing that never happened in the practice studio. 

Why not practice everything as if one were performing?  In other words, play even the lowliest of scales with as beautiful a tone as possible all the time.

Break up stock patterns by playing scales and triads in three, or five, not just four/four up and down. Play them backwards. Make melodies from the triads.

Keep the air flow and the tone going at all times, even when cranking out those endless finger-busting classical arpeggios. 

Work on melodies in the same way. Not just, “well, I gotta get this done so I can get back to my computer games,” but, practice them as if in front of an (imaginary) audience.

How to get better faster:  from this day forward, make everything you play, every note that comes out of your horn in practice as pretty and musical and expressive as your skills will allow as if performing in front of thousands of adoring fans at the Hollywood Bowl.

Dig?  

saxophone lessons, best practice habits, performance, how to practice, instrumental, solo, air support 

THE ONE THING

No, I didn’t come up with the phrase ‘the One Thing.’  That came from that old Billy Crystal movie, the one with Jack Palance, where the guests at a dude ranch spend most of the movie pondering what, exactly, the one thing really is.

In this case, the one thing is that single phrase or turnaround or scale or passage that, once perfected opens up the doors to smooth sailing on everything else.

For me, it was mastering the F# M scale through the octaves in both directions with triads and inversions and arpeggios. For some reason, after I learned that one, everything thereafter in terms of playing scales seemed easier.

Another recent example: a student of mine was facing end-of-school-year juries. There was a simple eighth-note phrase in a particular song she was scheduled to perform that included a note she was weak at playing – - low C#. 

What I noticed was that her performance stalled both before and after the phrase with that C#. In other words, she choked in anticipation of its arrival in the chart, and, she flubbed almost everything after.

The solution? We isolated the phrase, and she practiced it over and over, starting very slowly and gradually building speed until she arrived at a place where she could NOT make a mistake.

And after that, after mastering that ‘one thing,’ the rest of the song came together.

As students, we all tend to get caught up in the big picture and we fail to see that there is usually one thing we can work on that will have the greatest impact on the entire spectrum of our playing.

So, what is the One Thing for you? 

saxophone lessons, private instruction, soloing, effective practice, instrumental

Stage Fright

Last night, the old gang returned to a tiny pub in my hometown. By old gang, I mean all of the musicians who performed there at an open mic night that got fairly popular before the host shut it down.

And so, when that same host revived the open mic, it was a reunion gig. I smiled as I looked around at the familiar faces, and I thought about how much change had taken place in my own life since then.  There was a time when this little neighborhood open mic was not such a happy place for me. In fact, for a time, it was my own little house of terror.

 

This pub was the first time I played out in public as a soloist with a band. I remembered being terrified back then, scared witless on most of those open mic nights, pacing behind the club in the parking lot in the dark, trying to shake my wicked bad case of nerves.  

Or maybe hiding in the bushes.

But last night, I laughed at those memories. So what happened between then and now?   I played out every chance I could over the coming years -- country, jazz, rock, soul, whatever, wherever, and whenever.  I was just awful. I blew many clams. But in time I gained confidence and I got past the nerves that kept my brain plugged and my hands shaking and my embouchure locked into bad muscle cramps. That’s all gone now. 

I broke down my old stage fright and saw that it came from three sources:

1) Fear of future consequences

And

2) Not being prepared

And

3) Trying to impress others

#1. By fear of future consequences, I mean this: we create our own imaginary scenarios of doom. We imagine ourselves crashing and burning and being chased from the stage in shame.  But this is all FICTION. That’s right. This stuff only seems real. We make it up in our heads. We imagine things that have not happened, and likely never will happen. Stage fright is an extension of our imaginations.

#2. Not being prepared. This is a big one. When I was starting out as an improviser, almost every key was challenging. And coming up with solos, let alone getting around the melody in, say, F# or Db became a brutally frightening experience in front of an audience.  But did I really practice the chord changes I knew were coming? Did I learn the melodies to the point that I had them down cold? Or, did I noodle around for a half hour before the show (and then again behind the club) and figure I’d just wing it? 

You guessed it --- in the beginning, when I needed to practice the most, I did not.

#3. Trying to impress others is pure poison. This act alone will throttle any creative ideas you have and throw them under the bus of “I’m not good enough. That other sax player – man, he/she’s way better than me,” and on and on. Sound familiar? Of course it does, because we all put ourselves through this.

The antidote for me was to stop focusing on everything else, and to focus instead on the music and what I might add to it, to listen and hear what the other instruments were laying down.  In other words, being present in that moment on any given bandstand.  How did I get from stage fright to confidence?  Time. 

Stage fright is normal. It is not a condemnation of your ability. It’s a universal thing, this fear of performing. 

Yes, deep breathing helps. So does good posture, smiling, wearing nice clothes, having a great reed, and keeping your horn in good repair. Get to the gig early. Warm up. Don’t play cold. Common sense, right?  There are many resources available for dealing with -- Bulletproof Musician is one of my favorites:  http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/

But if your focus is anywhere but on the music, if you don’t actually know the music cold to the point that you can sing it, and if you worry your brain with thoughts of how much better the other players are than you, well, nothing will help. Take those dragons out of the game first.

And now, get up there and blow every note like you mean it.

performance anxiety, stage fright, self-image, confidence boosters, fear of failure 

THE BEST ADVICE I EVER GOT AS A SAX PLAYER

I was at a festival years ago, listening to a big-name (but rather boring) blues band grind through the usual standards.  I wouldn’t have given them two minutes but for their sax player.

He was a tall, elegant man, graying, wearing a black suit. He played a tenor sax. When it came time for him to solo, he literally changed the band’s energy. He lifted them – and the audience - up and out of the doldrums.  His tone was pure and gorgeous, and every note he played fit. I wandered back stage after the band was finished.

I introduced myself and told him how much his performance had moved me. The sax player was kindly. He smiled. But when I asked him if I could pay him for a lesson or two, he seemed embarrassed. He told me he didn’t think of himself as any great tenor player. It would take two or three phone calls over the next couple of years before he finally agreed to talk to me.

  

This is what he said -- five simple sentences that changed my life as a sax player :

1. Blow enough air into your horn to make it vibrate, enough air to make the metal itself buzz.

2. Keep your tone the same all the way through the range of the horn.

3. Play with attitude. Conviction. Intensity. Every note means something. So, don’t be lackadaisical about anything.

4. Soloing is not about playing fast and pretty notes. It’s about people believing what you are playing.

5. Record your practice and your gigs, and listen back to it. Be honest with yourself. 

When he was finished I asked him how much I owed him, and where to mail the check. He said that no money was owed. 

Instead, he turned gruff, almost angry, and he said “No -- learn this stuff.”

I’ve been working on it every day.

tenor sax, tone, performance, technique, sax solo, mentor, sax lessons