Wayne – you raise an excellent point.

I’ve raised similar questions in the past – if i only want to do x, y & z then whats the point of doing unrelated exercises, which i feel are pointless and a waste of my time?

A lot of people want to play altissimo – it’s like the guy driving the flashier car. I’m better then you Pal! lol

The main reason i wanted to play altissimo – i have a collection of piano sheets and after i transposed them for my alto, i often found they went s few notes into the altissimo range. So i couldn’t play along to the exact notes on the piano – ended up moving the transposed notes down an octave and then found i couldn’t play a low A on the slto. Result – i had to abandon the song as i couldn’t play altissimo G etc..

At the moment i don’t do improvisation to backing tracks, so anyone doing improvisation will benifit from being able to play in the altissimo range.

For transposing purposes, i only need to go up to altissimo C, anything above C doesn’t sound suitable for melodies – mainly good for screaming …

Because altissimo notes are basically playing overtones, then obviously you need to be able to play all 7 overtones from Low B to Low D.

Once you can play all 7 overtones – trust me altissimo notes are a breeze.

10 minutes a day is the max time to spend on overtones, when you start struggling – STOP, start again the next day, above all stay CALM. It is the most frustrating exercise to master, its like passing a brick through your anus. lol

Wayne i’m 58 time, isn’t on my side, so i can’t afford to dilly dally.

You want to know what to practice? to get you where you want quicker?

That’s a vague question! you need to be more specific!
What is your main goal? is it sight reading? ir playing without sheet music? What type of music do you want to play? is it Jazz? the blues?
good old rock & roll? classic music? etc. Do you want to play in a band?
on the street corners?

Narrow down the list and then hopefully JF can come up with
some suggestions.

my main goal is just to play sheet music, i’m way too past it to
start playing songs from memory. So i practice tone building exercises,
study music theory, take weekly lessons to get feed back (like holding a mirror in front of me), and then i want to get back playing in a band like i did with my acoustic guitar years ago.