Eight tunes on Soprano

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys

This is only the third day on my brand new 2nd hand ‘Blessing’ Soprano.
Here’s a sample of 8 tunes to give you a taste of her sound.

Sophie’s 3rd day

Cheers

[Anonymous]

Sounds great Jeff!! Recognize some of them by sound but can’t remember their names.

If you are playing from sheet music – these are good exercises for practicing sight reading, my teacher would say use the metronome all the time regardless of how good i think i am in terms of timekeeping (thats about me, i’m not refering to your playing).

3 days is early days, eventuslly you will get a stronger, steadier sound – overcoming the change in embouchure must be more difficult?

The best exercises apart from long tones, is practicing playing the 1st 3 overtones from Low Bb to Low D. When you can hold a steady sound on these overtones and be able to slur between them – the knock on effect is it makes you start playing the normal keyed notes a lot louder, and more tonal, and more steadier in sustaining the pitch! Eventually you csn start belting out the notes…

[Anonymous]

Thanks man! My biggest problem right now is not having enough lung pressure required for the high notes. You could probably hear my notes tremble when a little more push was required. Just because the sax is smaller does not mean that it doesn’t require a good pressure behind the reed – LOL!

I bought two ‘Blessing’ saxes last week this soprano, and the alto which my friend took possession of has a wonderful tone. I couldn’t hear it until we played the same note together last night. My Yamaha has a clean tone while his has more of a ‘dirty’ complex jazzy sound. We only paid R4000 = #170 = $250 for the Alto, a fantastic bargain!!!

I’ll work on my overtones along with my loud, long tones, thanks for the tip.

[john]

good Jeff. I’m glad you are aware of the high note tremble which is very common and a combination of air support and a more developed embouchure. sxpoet’s recomendations are spot on to help this.
I also used to play octaves: middle C for a bar to high C for a bar, C# to high C# etc
this will help your embouchure up on top because you will relate the high note’s pitch and tamber to the more controlled middle octave, forcing you to make the higher note more even and fluid and closer sounding to the middle one (which should be more solid and not trembling right?).
make it a daily exercise, starting with the longer bar pattern then do it using just quarter notes…this forces you to make the adjustments quicker.

[jake]

Nice one Jeff. I just got a new soprano myself. Yea, quite a difference in mouth pressure. Those higher notes are def more challenging to get out. I find the intonation is a little trickier up there as well. The octave exercises would def be a great help here. Thanks for that Johnny.

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnny, thanks for the tip. I am going to dedicate the first 15 minutes of my practice to these long tone and octave exercises. I’m in a hurry to play these saxes properly. I recently heard that one must play approximately 10000 hours to become a professional player. If one only plays 10 hours a week that will take me about 20 years – but I want to be an expert by 2020 – LOL! So I’ll have to put in quite a few more hours per week.

Hi Jake. It’s nice to be part of a group of people all striving for the same goal. After listening to a new video or recording by you guys, I’m motivated and encouraged to go and practice some more. Cheers

[Anonymous]

I don’t know why I didn’t post this sample instead yesterday, as it gives a good idea of the Soprano’s range.

The tune is called ‘In the garden’ I first play at the normal pitch then an octave lower.

In the garden

[Anonymous]

didn’t realise that it went as low as that!

[wayne wojnarowski]

Johnnie whats up with right hand on soprano solo?? your pinky goes out on 3 than full hand than in on 4 ?

[Marc Justiniano]

Very nice Jeff, heard it’s much harder to play a soprano. Must try one for myself.

[Author]

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