Question about Altissimo Course–getting it tomorrow :)

[Michael]

😎 Hey Johnny,
Signing up/paying for Altissimo Course tomorrow and I had a question regarding the fingering positions on your course for Alto and Tenor Saxophones–On the description of the course you mentioned the importance of finding/developing the technique we need to hit Altissimo notes before worrying about the fingering positions. I was just wondering, when the time does come to learn the fingering positions, are they all the same for both Alto and Tenor Saxophones? I remember when I was browsing around online some months ago, trying to find some kind of a comprehensive course on Altissimo—which you have now 😀 , but some of the fingering positions they would talk about were specific to alto/soprano saxophones and they would comment that it may be different on the Tenor. Thanks, so much, Johnny for working hard to make this possible for the rest of us who have looked so long and hard to find something good on Altissimo and kept coming up empty 🙂

[john]

Once someone masters the concept, technique, and fingerings for the altissimo range he/she can, with a little work and experimentation come up with their own fingerings for many if not all of those notes. So, you can look for these fingering positions in several books and online and find many of them, some can work for you and others maybe not. In my course I offer 2 positions for many of the notes; A well-known long-time standard which I learned many years ago, and another which is what I have been doing successfully for many years as well. This is a combination of what has worked for me and many other professional players I have known and worked with over many years…there are some things that seem to be unanimous and work for most everyone that I know.
Both my fingering positions you will see in my course work equally as well on tenor and alto. I went through all of them on both saxes (the alto was a Trevor James that I had never player before) and the notes came out equally as well on both saxes.
As you will learn, there are some notes that have a “Basic” position with an option or 2 added on such as a side key etc which can adjust the intonation in case the basic position doesn’t produce a perfectly in tune note on a particular saxophone.

PS
the first and original standard fingerings are published in Rasher’s book “Top Tones for Saxophone” which I do include as one of the 2 best options I know of that work well for everybody and all the saxophones.

[john]

All of Johnny’s courses are excellent, i’m into my 6 month as a learner and was fortunate to stumble on Johnny’s website in the first month.
My instructor recently started me on learning Jazz songs from a sax book “Jazz Ballads” and he told me he shouldn’t be letting me anywhere near these for someone whose not been playing very long. But by crafting in Johnny’s lessons along side my instructors lessons i’ve managed to make rapid progress.
Like the Rolling Stones song, ‘time is not on my side’ compared to someone starting in their teens. So thanks to Johnny sharing his knowledge, assimilation is the name of the game. If only i was a borg!

[Author]

Posts