Johnny – Thanks for filling me in on the reason why Classic music sheets are more notated dynamically than non-classic music sheets, as this seems to be the norm in the music industry when they sell their music sheets to the public.

When i was doing my grade 2 last year, for the grade 2 stuff you only had simple dynamics – ie play 4 bars loud, or play 4 bars soft or play 4 bars normally,
and the all the bars where played at the same volume – ie no rising/falling volumes.

Then in January i started the grade 3 stuff, for the grade 3 stuff the dynamics suddenly upped their game – so now i have music sheets where in 1 bar, the volume goes from soft to high in the count of 3 & then falls in the 4th count in a 4/4 timing. Also the music is littered with p,f,mf,mp etc.

I looked at one of the sheets my instructor gave me and said hang on this sheet has 6 different music volumes, at the moment i only know how to play soft, normal & loud.
So how do i know how to play the difference in volume between mezza forte & forte? So he got me practising playing a scale of 8 notes from low c starting off very soft and then increasing the volume uniformly until i was playing very loud on the mid C, and doing the opposite loud to soft – that way i could get the feel for the different 6 volumes.

The other thing as a beginner i found it hard to play a note for a count of 4 increasing from soft to loud at count 3 and then going soft at count 4. What i found to start off with when i was playing my way through the sheet, i was so concentrating on the dynamic volumes of the notes, that i was loosing track of the counting (multitasking). Looking through my pro notes on learning to play music professionally, they say to after breaking the music into bites, learn the notes in the bite, then learn the timing in the bite, then sing the bite, then start playing the bite slowly, then when you get up to speed in playing the bite, then bring in the dynamics for the bite last of all, and then do that for all the bites, then start playing the whole piece & link of the bites smoothly etc..

Johnny – i look forward to when you have a theory section in your forum as i progress through my sax work, i’m sure more questions will rear themselves later on.
thanks for you help as a pro who knows what he’s talking about.
cheers – greatly appreciated
sxpoet

There’s lots of people on youtube who demonstrate how to play specific songs and their well worth watching you can pick up quite a few things as well, but you have to watch out as i’ve seen some of them are a bit lacking in their experience – but thats a good thing as it shows how much you know that they haven’t mastered properly.

In terms of your approach to learning a new song – the earlier you sortout your approach & apply that same routine to every new song will iron out in my case a lot of sloppy bad habits and increase the quality of your music a lot faster, as most of us are very limited to the amount of time we can spend on the sax. This will reduce a lot of wasted time believe me! So its an area well worth looking into. I’ve done some research into to this and i’ve taken that on board now and it makes for my learning a new song much less frustrating! Knowledge of chord theory does actually come under this heading – so as soon as i’ve completed my chord theory stuff then i will be able to apply that to the learning a song routine as that takes up a small percentage of it which i can’t include in it at the moment!

A lot of this stuff can get a bit too serious – but you have to bear in mind that this stuff is what all the pro’s do, so they are constantly looking at ways to get things covered in a shorter period of time as their time is very valuable too!

Hi Johnny, i can’t recommend a specific video.
I’m a learner to the sax and i picked up lots of useful tips from various sources, including watching videos, reading articles, what my instructor passed on to me, theory courses etc..

As a learner i initially just dived into the sheet & started playing the whole thing from start to end, and did that repeatedly hoping to improve on the next run through – sadly that resulted in me just getting better at repeating the errors. You were the 1st person to recommend breaking the music sheet into smaller parts & then just work on each of them – credit to you!! That vastly helped me – common sense everyone might say. But not to an absolute beginner like me.
I then had a flash back to my first driving lesson – where i was taught seat belt on, check hand brake on, gear in neutral, start engine, look over your shoulder etc..
I assumed there must be some sort of process/routine for a learner like me to adopt – in your case you’ve been doing it so long, that it comes to you naturally & you don’t even think about it?
What brought it fully to my attention was when i did my first sax grade – you have to do a sight reading test, where they give you a short piece of music you’ve never seen before & you play it demonstrate your level of experience. And to top it all they give short period of time to look it over & try bits of it out before playing through properly.
That’s when my instructor said make sure you do this & that before you do the proper run through as you’ll get a better mark.

So now i’ve broken the process down into 3 parts
1> examine the piece without the sax, so like in the sight reading test, what key is it in?, what are the 8 notes in the key? what time signature is it?
do i count it 1,2,3,4 or 1&2&3&4 or 1&a, 2&a? what parts do i play loud/soft/slurred etc? Are there any repeated sections to cut down learning?
A quick run through of mentally counting aloud each note in every bar. Is it in swing time? miss out any of these in a sight reading test isn’t very helpful.
Then comes your bit – pencil out & break the photocopied sheet down into small sections – which might be a few bars, a bar or a phrase depending on how difficult the piece is.
i can often spend half an hour doing part one depending on how tricky it is. For you all this would be plain sailing which you do without thinking?
2> this part is where you get the sax out & work each individual small piece – there must be tips you can provide on this? start slow? metronome slow?
basically get that piece played to an acceptable standard. Then bring in the dynamics – repeat process.
3> now play the whole piece, join up the small pieces, getting uniform flow from piece to piece etc. Here again you could add in more stuff that i’m not aware of?
how often to practice it? what speed to start at? what to do if things go wrong?
4> polish the final piece – any tips here?

These load of things that can be done, that i may not even be aware of? i’m sure you make 3 videos out of it?
But like i say it’s a beginners thing, and i’m still picking up tips here and there.