Great Exercise

[jake]

I was trolling the internet after watching the Dave Liebman video and overtones. I found this exercise that is really good and uses overtones. I will be putting this into my daily practice routine for sure. I just recorded this so its not perfect but you should get the point.

I am playing a Bb major scale using overtones. Start by fingering the low Bb but play the mid Bb. Then play mid C by fingering low C. I played the D and Eb by using the standard fingering but do not use the octave key. The mid F uses the low Bb fingering again. Finger low C for the G and finger low D for the A and back to the low Bb for the high Bb.
Then go back down the scale and end with the appregio. As you can tell n the video I didn’t hit all the notes at first but focused until they came in. In this exercise it is extremely helpful if you take a moment and hear the note before you play it as Johnny strongly recommends in his altissimo course. Give this exercise a try, I think it should help with overtones and overall playing.

[jake]

The octave key shouldn’t be used at any time during this exercise.

[Anonymous]

all these various exercises are great, but try and remember when doing overtones – the object isn’t to develop good fingering techniques moving around on the sax, or whizz around the keys.

The main focus when playing overtones is to get a great smooth transition between overtones. So when you play a low Bb fundamental, you need to smoothly change up the 1st overtone (sounding a mid Bb) and back down to the fundamental. This is why you would spend a couple of weeks just trying to smoothly go change from the fundamental to the 1st overtone.

The final objectve is to play on the low Bb and smoothlty move up through all the overtones and back down to the fundamental. So you develop the back of the throat to gear change up and up and gear change back down and down smoothly. You just need to do that on the low Bb, low B, low C, low C# and low D.

then when you’ve mastered this smooth back of the throat gear changing – you can kill the altissimo. You can jump on the high D (palm key) and play the 1st overtone which will give you a 6th above high D (altissimo B) the 2nd overtone will give a 9th above high D (altissimo E) – do that for the rest of the palm keys D#, E, F, F%..

try playing the 1st overtone on every key.

[wayne wojnarowski]

Jake i was fishing where you were , did you try the octave drops yet? sx poet like Jake said without using octave key finger low f but blow the high f than lower it to the low f using your throat, It’s like fingering the bis Bb than pressing low Bb but getting that higher Bb tone I’ve been doing those types of exercises for a short time but I think it’s going to be good for my ear ,and tone.

[wayne wojnarowski]

How do I talk about this??? We know in theory what works what sounds good or what is supposed to sound good ….bla bla bla what is important is to play and listen to yourself , we have to use what we are learning come out in our playing .. if no body hears us how good are we ?

[Anonymous]

all good points – at the end of the day you can have two separate goals, one just use overtones to improve your sound and tone embouchure or two just use overtones to master altissimo.

my point was aimed at the people going for the altissimo, its only when i read liebmans book last year that i realised that you can use overtones to improve your sound even if you dont want to play altissimo

[jake]

Thanks for the input guys. At first I was correlating the overtones to developing the altissimo range but after viewing the Liebman video, overtones are beneficial for tone and ear development as well.
We all do various exercise and different warmup routines. There’s no way we can do everything so we have to pick and choose what we work on and most likely it is going to be something that interests us and something that is effective in helping us achieve our goal. That’s the purpose of this exercise for me. I just wanted to share it with others that may want to add an exercise or change up their routine a bit. This is helping me strengthen my embrochure, develop my tone, and help with my ear training. A great exercise. There are many of them out there, just was adding my 2 cents to the mix.
Great exercise even if you are not aiming for the altissimo notes! I agree Wayne, at the end of the day it is important to play and listen to ourselves. What is the point of learning the sax if we aren’t doing that?? As with different genres of music, there are different flavors of sax. What I like others may not and so forth. I personally am playing the sax for fun. I don’t see myself becoming a professional on the sax! Little to late in the game and not enough time to put into it.
As long as I am getting enjoyment, making the brain work by learning, enjoying the chats with fellow members, then we have a thumbs up!! If I can get decent sounding then BONUS!!

[Anonymous]

excellent points Jake – i’m in exactly the same situation.
Time prevents me from doing every thing. This is why i found JF’s daily practice routine beneficial, it provided the basic exercises to get a good workout without having to do xtra unneccesary exercises.

variety is the spice of life, so its great to throw in someone elses exercise and see if it works for me , or if its just another variation of what i’m already doing.

No matter what you play, you are continually listening to it and judging what it sounds like.

long tones are the best exercises to improve sound/tone – if you look at longtones they are played slowly – why? because by slowing down your playing, you give your ears a better chance to concentrate on the sound. If you start out playing longtones at 240bpm – waste of time. Thats a speed exercise and harder to listen to in terms sound quality.
This is where a lot of inexperienced players playing faster start sounding flat or sharp.

Like you say its all fun! Its even more fun standing in front of a teacher who disciplines you to play more correctly. Then years later you will look back and say -hey if it wasn’t for that guy…..

[wayne wojnarowski]

I hate to sound like a clone but i agree with both of you Jake and sx poet, I LOVE PLAYING THE SAX , but I don’t know if I’ll ever make money on it? The psychological plus it gives me is tremendous, I like to say it is my Prozac Zanax , etc. It sounds corny but just starting these overtone exercises has made me feel better in playing my tone, Hope springs eternal,
some wise man said do what you love and the money will follow.

[jak Swift]

Great Jake !! Jak

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