This may or may not be helpful to anyone, but feel free to add anything useful that works.

In terms of starting and stopping notes, Jazz players are masters of starting and stopping notes, they really do go over the top with starting and stopping notes. I’m not recommending anyone taking up Jazz playing, far from it. But some of their basic starting out exercises can do wonders.

One of the 1st basic jazz exercises, which forms the habit of starting and stopping a note with the tongue, involves only 4 notes, a full note(4 beats), a dotted half note(3 beats), a half note(2 beats) and a quarter note(1 beat, played two different ways). Then you need a Metronome set to a comfortable speed, the speed is not important, what is vital is starting on the beat, focusing on the beat, and stopping the note with the tip of the tongue.

The exercise falls into two parts.

part 1 – no sax needed, just a metronome switched on to 4/4 timing.
While the metronome is on, ticking away, 4 beats to the bar. Say the following words below, starting on the 1st beat, and stop the word with the tip of your tongue on the roof of the mouth.

Dah (full note) – starting on the 1st beat, keep a constant sound going, and just before the start of the next 1st beat, stop the word with your tongue. As you are saying the Dah word every 4 beats, keep counting 1 2 3 4 in your mind, in time with the metronome.

Dah (dotted half note) – starting on the 1st beat, keep a constant sound going, and just before the start of the 4th beat, stop the word with your tongue. As you are saying the Dah word for every 3 beats, keep counting 1 2 3 4 in your mind, in time with the metronome.

Dah (1/2 note) – starting on the 1st beat, keep a constant sound going, and just before the start of the 3rd beat, stop the word with your tongue, And start the Dah word on the 3rd beat and stop the Dah word with your tongue just before the next 1st beat. As you are saying the TWO Dah words every 4 beats, keep counting 1 2 3 4 in your mind, in time with the metronome.

Dah (1/4 note) – Start the Dah word on the start of every beat, and stop every Dah word with the tip of your tongue just before the start of the next beat, keep counting 1 2 3 4 in your mind, in time with the metronome. In jazz sheets, this is a 1/4 note with a “dash” sign above the note.

Dat (1/4 note) – this takes more concentration. Start the Dat word on the start of every beat, but stop the Dat word a third of the way through each beat with your tongue, so you hear the pause (musical rest) before the start of the next beat. keep counting 1 2 3 4 in your mind, in time with the metronome. In jazz sheets, this is a 1/4 note with a dot above the note. This works the tongue stopping the note.

Part 2: This involves playing mid B on the sax, and using the metronome.
Practice playing the four different Dah words and the Dat word on the sax. This time stop the mid B note with the tip of the tongue on the reed.

Those exercises above, may sound trivial, but in fact are crucial to developing good technique. There are a lot more harder basic jazz exercises which would makes tunes like the pink panther really simple to play. The only problem is most of the jazz tutor books i’ve looked at don’t cover the basics, but just provide lots of repetitive exercise, which assume you know how to play the various style of notes.

The better option would be to have a skype lesson with Johnny. That way you get to learn the stuff books forget to include or assume you have knowledge of.