etude 1 – Guy Lacour

[Anonymous]

Etude No 1 – by Guy Lacour
Date Recorded: 2015 Nov 5
Sax: Yamaha Alto YAS480,
Mouthpiece: Selemar C**
Reed: La Voz med

This is how it should be played

[paddy jordan]

Hey James there is a lot of stuff in that piece that you did really good on tone was much improved notes were played for there full value, yeh a couple of rogue notes but real progress!

[Anonymous]

cheers Paddy – i’ll have another re-listen of my upload to find where the specific rogue notes are.

When i played it, i thought the low notes were all off. In the opening bars there was a build up of saliva in my mouth which i tried to get under control – so you can a hear a sort of rattling noise (spit on the reed).

Although its a simple piece to play, i’m finding playing the dynamics (rising & falling sound) a lot more challenging.

I’m not a great fan of classical stuff, but just practing etudes on there own is a great workout for covering a lot of different areas that playing straight pieces dont cover.

I the etudes book i have only covers half of the 50 etudes. Had a quick browse through with my teacher – so i should be able to play all if them.

[Anonymous]

Hi James, I like this form of airy music. Just had a quick look but this book isn’t available locally. I’ll have to snuffle around for a copy. This may be simpler to play but to sound each note correctly can be challenging.
The sound quality of your recording is very good I can hear the clicks of the keys too!

[Anonymous]

cheers Jeff – if you download scribd to your ipad
Scribd – Read Unlimited Books, Audiobooks, Comics, Documents & More by Scribd
https://appsto.re/gb/CqSvG.i

do a search on guy lacour – and print off the pages you want to play.
i found my copy in a 2nd hand book shop.
I think you can buy it on amazon as well.
The 1st 23 pieces are quite challenging (up to grade 3 standard – so i’ve got no excuse not to be able to play them).
They are great material for working out on the sax – cover a lot of areas on the sax in terms of sight reading, they are easy pieces, but challenging to play correctly in terms of timing, dynamics, technique, intonation & tune.
because there is no backing tracks to distract you, you really have to work the sax to get everything under control. Also because they dont sound exciting to play, you have to work even harder to get expression into them and make them sound good.

If you can make them sound good – you’ve cracked it. If they sound dull and monotonous then yiu know you have to work harder.

In terms of sound i was standing 4 feet away from the iTouch mike as it was picking up my breathing etc.. but i’ve changed back to my other mouthpiece (selmar soloist size D) so i might be sounding a bit off key.

Enuff about me – time you did some uploads?

[Michael]

Hi JB, nice job here and great choice of song. You have shown major improvements with your tone, very nice 🙂 You’re also tonguing the notes much more distinctively v.s. letting them fade out. All of those things show that you’re making great strides with improving your overall tone. Curious about what kind of exercises you’ve been doing in regards to improving your tone. From the sounds of it, seems like your Saxophone teacher is a pretty nice guy and I would think he can’t help but notice your Improvements too! Keep at it, you’re doing great. What kind of recording equipment you using? Sounds good. Sorry about not seeing this video before, been very busy getting settled down into our new house, we’re making good progress.

[Kevin]

James, Your tone has certainly improved on your recent uploads. Loosing that timid sound and filling out, and intonation was very good. You mentioned about practicing with runs up into the altissimo notes and how that has become more fluent. You should consider doing a short video of that practice regimen so that perhaps others like myself can be encouraged about learning those altissimo notes. My start into that has been a bit discouraging thus far. (Michael you may consider that as well…)

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