How To Hold Your Saxophone

Ok, so lets take the sax out of its case without wrecking it. Its very delicate so you put your hand in the bell just like that and support it with your left hand out side of the bell as well. Once you get it there you can put the body there under your arm, hold it with one hand like that.

You can also check out the video for how to hold your saxophone

See that ring right there, it holds the saxophone body to the bell. Its a good strong anchor. I put one of my fingers in there around to the other side were there’s no tone holes or rods to injure, and you can put your thumb as well on the body. With one hand you can hold sax very safely and firmly like that.

Now the neck, you can keep holding it like that to put it on the neck, you can also go back to this position under your arm and put on the neck. What you don’t want to do and this can injure your horn, if you tug on your bell to hold it and your fidgeting with the neck like this, one hand is pulling away and one is pulling the other way you could acutely put your sax out of alignment by doing this routine here which i have done and it has cost me money to fix, so this can safe you money believe me.

Another thing about the neck, is it should go on fairly snug. If its really really hard, you should get that adjusted by a repair man and same if its really really loose, if it just flops around in there, you should get that tightened because this nut wont be able to work the way it should work.

So putting it back in the case is the exact same way. Now as we get into the fingering lessons coming up, we’re going to talk about where to put your fingers on the notes just before we do that while we have a close up of the sax, there’s the thumb hook under that note there. Put your thumb under there of your right hand and of course up near the top here, there will be a plastic or a pearl pad depending on your sax. Its just usually a round circle, it could be a similar shape, thats were your left thumb rests.