My reeds keep breaking

[Anonymous]

Hi sxpoet

Have a look at these overtone exercises.

PDF Overtone Exercises

[Mark Kiziuk]

That’s ok sxpoet. I confuse my own name myself sometimes too. Hehe
Mark

[Anonymous]

@Jeff – they are good overtone exercises to do!

on a good day i can play 9 overtones on low Bb. On altissimo G i can play 3 or 4 overtones higher up. In fact i have to be careful playing altissimo notes now, as i can easily unintentionaly jump overtones higher on some altissimo keys. To make matters worse i was playing altissimo G in 5 different positions. So it can get confusing.

I only spend 10 mins a day on overtones – i just run down the 7 overtones from top to bottom for each of the 5 low keys.

What i’m doing now is a lot of rhythmn exercises with a metronome and the mouthpiece connected to the neckpiece and not connected to the sax. These are great for getting the breathing in the correct places and listening for a clean pitch coming out the neckpiece.

a simple exercise is set the metronome to 96 bpm at 4/4 timeing. then toot 1/4 notes in time with the metronome for 12 bars.

Sounds simple but it gets you gasping for a new breath at the end of each bar or pair of bars.
You can focus on the quality of the sound of the pitch – which is quite hard to do for all 12 bars.

With the mouthpiece and neck only, you only toot or TA the same pitch all the time – so you get to focus on the timing, a clear TA sound, and getting the beathing in and out at the right places.

After that i repeat with 1/8 notes and 1/16th notes, and then various other common bar note combinations. eg play 1/8th note + 1/4 note + 1/8th note + 1/4 note + 1/4 note for each bar (te ta te ta ta – i don’t use counting)

another common one is a dotted 1/4 note + 1/8th note + 1/4 note + 1/4 note (taha te ta ta – again no counting) for all 12 bars with a metronome.

A good tip my teacher gave me is just set the metronome to 1/4 note beats all the time – don’t use 1/8th note metronome beats, so the good old fashioned wind up metronome is better than all the fancy bells and whistles that come with electronic ones.

So if you practice 1/8th notes, 1/16th notes / always keep them in time with the 1/4 notes on a metronome etc.

[Anonymous]

Sxpoet, I struggle with the D overtone a bit, but then I discovered that if I keep the C# table key pressed down it helps me get there easier. So now I can run through the first exercise for practice. If you really want to practice ‘fast hooting’ try playing that Moonlight Sonata version of mine – it’s a killer!!! In the beginning ‘the spit was really flying’ but now I’m beginning to sound the individual notes better, and the fingering is less hectic. When I practice on just the MP I hold it with one hand cupped around the hand holding it, to quieten it and provide a little back pressure – seems to work okay.

[Anonymous]

@Jeff – its on my to do list. for those treble notes i use the
“tat tat tat” phrasing in my head to keep time instead of counting 1 to 12. love all that classical stuff. currently practing this tune on sax

[Anonymous]

Very pleasant indeed. Your expression is coming along nicely. I shall have to give that piece a look over too. Nice one!

I presume you recorded this on your MAC. Which program did you use to record audio and visual together?

[Anonymous]

lol – Jeff, thats not me playing, its the only example i could find on utube if what the tune sounds like. I’m still practicing it, and i stopped doing videos years ago, i only use soundcloud at the moment. lol

[Anonymous]

OOPS! – LOL

Send me an email – then when I transpose a classical tune I can send it to you too. See my profile for the address.

I looked up the Clair de lune tune and came across Glow Worm which looks challenging timing wise, so I transposed that one instead.

On the Mac – is there a standard app which allows us to record video and audio simultaneously?

[Anonymous]

thanks Jeff – i’ve got a copy of clair de lune and a backing track.

[Anonymous]

@Jeff – i haven’t done videos on the Mac.
I presume what you would do is use a video recorder and video yourself while playing, at the same time recording the sax & backing track with your audio interface.
Then go into the movie ap on the macpro, copy in the video recording, then copy in the audio interface recording and dub it over the video sound.

I’m just stickng to audio recordings, imo it can get a bit boring just watching someones sax or someone playing the sax, i’m more interested in listening to what they have play than watch them standing there for 3 mins, but everyones different, so the videoing side doesn’t give me a buzz

[Author]

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