Jean-Yves Fourmeau, a renowned saxophone player

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnny

Following your advice on glissandos, I’ve been practicing the chromatic scale with the metronome
and just reached 208.

I have the goal of being able to play Baker Street properly with glissandos.

I was looking at the Yamaha website and came across this video.

It certainly raised the bar for me, regarding what is possible to play
on the saxophone.

Cheers
leigh

[Michael]

Hi Leigh,
Practicing those chromatic scales with a metronome is one of the best things that you can do on the Saxophone, it helps to improve in so many ways! One of the things I like to do is to play them softly, quitely because it takes so much more effort to supply air from our diaphragms to play them softly; especially in the lower registers. But we need to practice them loudly too LOL and tonging, slurring, and so on. Baker Street is a great choice of song, everyone loves to hear it no matter where we go.
That is very beautiful music on this video, great choice in picking Yamaha Saxophones like he plays, they’ve been putting out fantastic Saxophone for years. It’s really something to see just how versatile the Saxophone is and all the different kinds of music we can play with the Saxophone; I don’t think there’s another instrument that is as versatile as the Saxophone is. Thanks for sharing and would love to see a recording from you here on the “Member’s Videos” sometime!

[Anonymous]

when i was playing in an orchestra recently, before it kicked off, everyone was doodling away on their instruments, i just sat there and played a random bunch of long tone very soft notes up snd down the sax, i was staggered to hear from surrounding sax plays that they couldn’t play as softly and clearly as that, even though in terms of finger technique they way far more advanced than me.

So the yamaha i have even though its an intermediate model is quite good!

i’ve read s lot of comments – after a couple of years if you don’t get a pro model, then you are delaying your development, i suppose its like entering a motor race with the wrong car.

another thing i noticed, the bassoon players had noticed my tone on the sax – all down to Johnny’s daily sax routine & the 1st 2 lessons of the altissimo course

Cheer JF

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael

I’m very much a sax novice at 53y, as I bought my Yamaha Alto YAS-26 in December 2013.

I’m loving the instrument and playing it quite a bit, it is an excellent instrument
for it’s price, and looking at other entry level brands the Yamaha seems to be a much better build.

Although now I wish I had gone for the professional range, as the sound quality and playability
increases quite a bit from the entry level models.

Here is another video from the website.

I bought ‘The Best of Dave Koz’ ISBN: 978-1-57560-846-4 an excellent selection of his tunes.

Another book which I am really enjoying is Bob Mintzer ’15 Easy Jazz – Blues – Funk Etudes’
the tunes are great, very playable for beginners and sound really good.
ISBN-10: 0-7692-9792-7

Cheers
leigh

[Author]

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