Hello From Wisconsin

[Mel]

Hello From Wisconsin-

My name is Mel and I am 60 years young. I always wanted to play the Saxophone. Better late than never – right? I currently am renting a new Selmer Soloist TSOL300 Student Tenor Saxophone. I have been blowing some notes for a couple weeks now. This is a lot of fun! Looking forward to the journey ahead.

Mel

[Mark Kiziuk]

Hi Mel and welcome to the club! I am almost 54 years young and I started playing about 3 or 4 weeks ago myself. I own an Armstrong 3008A that I purchased from eBay. It was broken when I bought it, but I fixed it all up all by myself! I practice on my lunch break at work and I practice when I come back home. I practice everyday because you need to build your embouchure (I think they are the muscles in your mouth that you use when you hold the mouthpiece or it’s something like that) so far I can play the beginning of two songs, I can make the Alto sax growl like in the song “TEQUILA”, and I’m also working on my Gliss (Glissando) not trying to brag, just trying to point out that if I can do it then you should be able to do it to! It’s a lot of practicing and a lot of dedication to do this thing right! Johnnys beginning courses are excellent and and I also learned a lot from this site and from YouTube. So welcome!
Mark

[Michael Bishop]

Nice to meet you Melvin. That’s cool that you’re picking up the Sax. Johnny has a great ebook here on his homepage that will take you through all the basic of getting started with the Sax. I put the link for it below. When I went through that ebook, I combined it with all of his free lessons that you find on the bottom of the homepage. In the beginning, taking lessons from a qualified instructor is great too. Welcome aboard and hope to hear more from you!

How To Play The Saxophone – A Complete Beginner’s Guide

[Anonymous]

Hi Melvin – welcome to a great site. My advice is get a sax teacher staight away, the sax and most wind instruments are far too complicated to teach yourself unlike guitars and keyboards.

Most people i know personally have regretted not getting a sax teacher in the 1st year in terms of having completely wasted several years of their time. By all means buy the e-book and any other books about the sax (preferebly past sax maestros) thats what i did, Johnny’s e-book is well worth buying for starting out.

good luck and have fun (less stressful with a teacher – my tip)

[Mel]

Thanks for the welcomes so far. I have a good friend who plays the tenor well. I have had one lesson with him and looking forward to another one this evening. I did order the first E-Book.

Mel

[Mark Kiziuk]

Looks like your starting out just right! It takes some time but if you stick to it, you will get it. Like I explained before, you and I started out about the same time and we are around the same age. You are NEVER too old to play the sax! Many, many times I got discouraged, but I found if you put the sax down and come back to it later on in the day it somehow gets better! Stick with it! Hang in there! And you will be playing some basic songs like “Oh McDonald or “come all ye faithful” these are the two songs that I keep practicing over and over again. They might seem basic, but you have to start out basic before you can play songs like “Careless whisper.” Enjoy!
Mark

[john]

Keep us posted Mel!

[Mel]

So- had my second lesson last night.

When I got my Sax I was supplied with a Ricco 2 strength reed. After that one I put on a Ricco 2.5 reed. In the E-Book I bought on this site Johnny says new people on the Sax should use 1.5 or 2. Well he definitely was spot on! My friend before we started asked me to put on a 1.5 before we started and being new to this I could still tell how much easier it was to blow a note. So 1.5 and 2’s for me. No sense making it any harder than I have to. My friend had me work the C Scale down and up on the Sax. That is my practice for the next two weeks. That is exactly where Johnny has me in the E-book. So being the good student I want to be I will be working this C scale until I can do it the way Johnny says it needs to be done. It is a very valuable asset to have this E-book. Thanks Johnny!

[john]

way to go Mel, you’re on the right track.
I don’t know if you already can read music but…if you are terrible at reading musical
notes make sure you learn the scales by looking at the notes first.
this is a good way to get onto reading musical notation. reading the notes of the scale and
the simple rythmic exercises you’ll come to later on are baby steps in reading but will
provide you with a solid foundation as you grow.

[Mel]

Thanks for the tip Johnny. I have to learn to read music all over again.

Now- my friend believes one should get good at playing the Sax with the Basic set up that came with it. My Sax has a basic Selmer mouthpiece ( hard rubber or plastic ) and 2 screw ligature. Well, I cheated. Musician’s Friend had a 15% off sale and I ordered a Yamaha 4C mouthpiece and a Rovner Versa ligature with one screw. ( I liked the one screw because I have arthritis in my hands and I thought it would save me some fumbling around getting set up on the mouthpiece ). Then I was reading reviews and found that it is actually a really good ligature. Well, today I got them and put it on. I likey! Good sound and don’t have to blow as hard. The 4C mouthpiece is just a little longer and just not quite as wide. So I have to either blame Johnny because he mentioned the Yamaha 4C and Selmer S80 6* or I can just blame the Musicians Friend sale and I couldn’t help myself.

One always wants to be farther along but this definitely is going to be a journey.

[Author]

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