Beginner’s Saxophone Lessons

What you see here is the musical notes for the C major scale. They are written on music lines which are called the staff.

Starting at the left, there is the musical sign you might recognize. It looks like a fancy “S” with a line through it. It’s called the treble clef. There are several other types of clef’s used for different instruments but us sax players read only in treble clef.

After the treble clef there are the 4’s on top of each other… that means the time signature for this piece of music in in 4/4: that’s 4 quarter beats in each bar. Count 1 2 3 4 and that’s one complete bar.

Notice the second C scale on the right side that has the black notes closer together… these are quarter notes and you play one on each beat as you count: 1 2 3 4.

The first scale that doesn’t have the notes filled in consists of the exact same notes but because they are hallow and not filled in they are called half notes. This means each note is worth half of the bar, so they last for 2 beats, while the black quarter notes only last one beat.. very easy math eh?

Let’s Recap All These Musical Terms We Just Covered:

• Staff
• Treble Clef
• Time Signature
• 4/4
• Quarter Beats
• Quarter Notes
• Bar
• Half Notes

WOW! That’s a lot to learn in one session but if you learn these terms you’ll be well on your way to reading music and that will be very valuable.

Here Is a Basic Transcript of the Above Fingering Lesson Video

In this lesson I’m going to show you all the notes with close ups on my hands so you can see everything nice and clear. Also you can refer to the charts on this page here on howtoplaysaxophone.org so lets get right to it.

The saxophone fingerings system is one of the easiest to learn. I’ll show you everything you need to know about it from proper hand poisonings to all the notes that make up the normal saxophone range which is from the low Bb to the high F#. Now I say normal because the saxophone is capable of a much greater range then this normal 2 and a half octave range from low Bb to high F#… but those are lessons for another time, way further down the road.

Starting form the very top of the saxophone, your left hand goes on these notes and they start right there. there’s 1,2,3,4,5, 5 notes right there. We’re going to put 3 fingers on 3 of them and leave 2 opened, so leave the top one alone. put your index finger on the second one, the third one is the small one, leave that alone. Put your middle finger on the third one. and the fourth one, your next finger goes on that. Your pinky doesn’t go on anything right now.

Those are the first 3 notes, that’s B A G. Now those cluster of notes right below that, we’re going to get to those on another lesson. Going down, you wanna take your right hand and put them on those 3 notes, your fingers on your right hand. Your index, middle and fourth finger.

Now behind those notes of your right hand, is a thumb hook and you put your thumb right in it like that and thats actually used to support your horn up. Down at the bottom with your right hand you have your 3 notes, D E F as we went over, now that one by itself with the top left hand all down as F E D and then bellow that you have 2 keys with rollers between them, these rollers are so you can move from those notes back and forth easily but right now were just interested in just the very bottom not, so don’t worry about this one right now just the very bottom one, depressed with all the other notes of your 2 hands makes a low C.

Now coming from the top, everything from down here, your low d, and that one, now you’ve got all your fingers that we’ve covered so far all down to make the low C. If you’ve never played a sax before, fingering this low C and trying to hit it might be kind of difficult because of your air support and embouchure and all those things, which we will be covering later, but were just covering the fingerings right now.

Now the middle C on your sax is a note you’ve already had your finger on, and thats your middle finger. It was to form the A with the first 2 upper notes. Now you’re going to let go of the B which is your index finger and your just going to play that middle note on your middle finger so its your 4th note from the top. Let’s recap again: we’ve got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 we’ve got 10 fingers and we’ve learned 8 notes. There’s still some to go but this is your first scale of C major and it covers a lot of the notes on the horn, on the front face anyways.

So lets recap: you’re putting down your 3 notes of your left and your 3 notes on your bottom hand and your low C with your little pinky on your right hand on the very lowest note that’s C. Remember the middle C was just your middle finger, everything else was up, so just your middle finger, lets start there… your middle finger, your index finger, to B so C B A G F E D C, that’s the C scale going down.

Call it backwards if you’d like but up would be starting from the low C going up, C D E F G A B C and going down is  C B A G F E D C. learning the C scale on the saxophone is a great way to start because it incorporates most of the notes on both hands and you’re also learning the 8 notes of the C major scale so that’s really 2 lessons combined, a sax lesson and a musical theory lesson. So remember to look at the scale that’s written out and read what I have to say about it. You’ll be learning some theory, musical notation, as well as learning to play the saxophone. Ok? Check it out.