Hi William, I haven’t tried this exercise myself yet, but I guess a soft eraser or even a rolled up piece of tape,
to raise the lever will work just as well. Failing that I suppose one could just keep holding down the octave key.
yes of course, the pencil is just the prop he chose to make it easy (or funny?)
the whole idea behind the exercise is to force you to open your throat and force more air from your diaphragm…if you don’t the exercise won’t work.
opening the throat and applying more air support are 2 of the most important things we can do to improve our sound.
this is also a big part of being able to play harmonics (as in the altissimo course) because you’re forcing notes out of your sax that you aren’t applying the proper fingering for. this makes it difficult and so it’s in that extra effort and attempt of having to do much more than you are normally doing that will add more technique you would have otherwise not discovered.
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