Part 1: Gotta Start Somewhere

Choosing to learn the saxophone was pretty much no brainier for me. When I sit behind the saxophones in jazz band practice on Wednesday nights, I have to admit that I am jealous sometimes of what they can do on the instrument. The sax section always gets the most soli sections (where a whole section is featured soloing together), and it seems to be easy to solo on the sax because the instrument is so versatile. I’m not saying that the trombone can’t do cool things too, because who could forget about the iconic “sad trombone” sound effect.

I come from a musical family where it is valued heavily, so it is natural that one of my passions is music. I think I have the musical capability to learn it, making significant progress in reading notes, learning finger positions, and playing short songs. The materials I need to work on the basics of saxophone playing are easily accessible. My mom is a music teacher and she played the sax growing up. She still has her instrument, and she has let me use it for this project.

 Also, many of her beginning and intermediate lesson books are still in the house for me to use. Yes, some are from the 70’s, jeez 40 years ago when my mom first learned, but they will still get the job done. I have looked through them, and they are at the beginner’s level. I should be able to progress through them methodically. If I need help with my embouchure (mouth position), or other nuances of sax playing I can use my mom as a resource, because she is a beginning band teacher. It is her job to teach kids how to play instruments, including the saxophone. Overall though I want to try to learn the instrument on my own as much as possible. I think it will be an interesting experience to teach myself something as complex as the saxophone.

                                      

 

Last night I took a look at some music written in treble clef. Prior to choosing to learn the sax I think I underestimated how difficult playing treble clef would be. It is a complete overhaul of what is natural to me now while reading music. In all my musical experience I have only read bass clef, and saxophone music is written in treble clef. So basically notes are in totally different places in these two clefs. For example, the note A is located on different lines depending on what clef you are playing in. Since I have never read treble, I will be stumbling over myself when I try to read music. combine that with not knowing what keys to press, and you get a frustrated musician named Joel.

Here is a chart showing the difference in notes from Treble Clef to Bass Clef.
 (Treble being the symbol on top, Bass being the symbol on the bottom)

After school today, on the 14^th, I sat down with my new sax, and learned how to put it together. With the book, and a little help from my mom, I learned the embouchure by playing just on the neck of the saxophone. I was surprised by how much air, and lip strength it takes. My mouth was pretty sore, and it got tired very quickly.

After I worked on getting a nice sound out of neck, I attached it to the full saxophone and learned the finger positions for three notes, B, A, and G. They simply involve 3 fingers on the left hand. I played each note, and tried to get a consistent solid tone. 

I am confident I can expand on my young saxophone skills by my next post. I hope to learn new notes, gain more stamina in my lips, and progress through my lesson books to play longer and more complex songs!