Course #1: How To Play The Saxophone – A Complete Beginners Guide
1. Welcome to the Complete Beginners Lessons |
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2. Handling Your Saxophone |
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3. Mouthpiece, Reed and Ligature |
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4. Embouchure |
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5. Breathing |
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6. Tonguing |
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7. Intro to the Major Scales (no video, click box 7 below) |
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8. Fingering |
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9. The Bb Major Scale |
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10. PART TWO (click bottom box below) |
In This Section
Handling your Saxophone
Mouthpiece, Reed & Ligature
Emboucher
Breathing & Getting Sounds
Tonguing
Intro the to Major Scales
Fingering
The Bb Major Scale
A Complete Beginners Guide
This is the standalone ebook/video course I wrote several years ago. It has been selling on this website and on Amazon in 13 countries around the world.
These lessons are where you, as a beginning saxophone student should start. They will take you from the very first lessons of putting your saxophone together to playing your first tunes. This will be a great accomplishment and will give you a real solid foundation of skills to move forward with confidence!
There have been additions and updates from the original eBook and I strongly recommend players of all levels go through this entire section!
Up Next is an 8 part Mini Course For Easy Music Notation Reading & Technique that revolves around the G major scale.
A Complete Beginners Guide
There have been additions and updates from the original eBook and I strongly recommend players of all levels go through this entire section!
These lessons is where you, as a beginning saxophone student should start. They will take you from the very first lessons of putting your saxophone together to playing your first tunes. This will be a great accomplishment and will give you a real solid foundation of skills to move forward with confidence!
There have been additions and updates from the original eBook and I strongly recommend players of all levels go through this entire section!
In This Video:
- Handling your sax safely
- Hand positioning
- Neck placement
How To Handle Your Saxophone
Getting your saxophone safely out of it’s case and putting it together will be a snap once you do it a few times. There are a few things you must know because it’s a delicate instrument with lots of parts that can easily break or bend. Grab it on solid smooth surfaces and avoid things like rods, springs and tone pads. These things once damaged can prevent a few or many notes from being playable.
Ok let’s take the sax out fit’s case without damaging it. It’s very delicate. Put your hand in the bell and lift it up just like that. The support it with your left hand outside the bell as well. Once you get it there put the body under your arm and hold it with one hand like that.
Assembling the Mouthpiece, Reed and Ligature
Wrong Reed Placement
Notice how the very tip of the reed is about even with the top ridge of the mouthpiece. Anywhere near even or above this ridge is wrong.
Proper Reed Placement
Notice how the tip of the reed is slightly lower than the edge of the mouthpiece. You should see a thin gap like this when you push the reed against the mouthpiece with your thumb, you won’t see this gap if you just place the reed there and leave it, you must push your thumb to it to get the proper reading of this gap.
Ligature Placement
Proper ligature placement is also very important to make sure the reed can vibrate as it should. Notice the top of the ligature sits a small distance from the reed line. Some reeds have a line that’s slightly U shaped so use the lower part of the U to adjust the ligature placement. This distance is around 1/8 of an inch, or a few millimeters.
More About Natural Cane Reeds
Developing Your Embouchure
In this video:
- How to place the mouthpiece in your mouth
- Teeth position
- Lip position
The Saxophone Embouchure
The saxophone embouchure is different from other woodwinds such as the clarinet or oboe embouchure. It has a unique position all it’s own.
* Embouchure comes from the French word bouche which means mouth.
* Embouchure means how you use your facial muscles and the shaping of the lips on your mouthpiece.
Playing with a proper embouchure is the only way you’ll ever be able to play your sax in its full range with a full, clear tone.
Your top teeth are resting on the top of your mouthpiece. Your bottom lip forms a cushion over your bottom teeth. Your bottom teeth are not touching the reed. So you have your bottom lip between your teeth and the reed acting as a cushion.
When you’re new at this or play many hours in a row, much the same way guitarists get sores on their fingers, you might develop a cut or sore. This is normal and you’ll get used to it and eventually will disappear.
So, to develop a proper embouchure, place your top teeth on your mouthpiece and your bottom teeth under your bottom inside lip.
Your tongue is back from the reed and shouldn’t touch the reed because it’ll constrict the movement of the reed which needs to vibrate super fast to produce a sound.
How To Breathe Into Your Saxophone
In this video:
- Right way to breathe
- Wrong way to breathe
- Air control
- Developing a big sound
The Way to a Beautiful Tone
This is the most important technique you can learn to start developing a big, beautiful sax sound, or even a mean and nasty one if that’s what you like! It’s the proper way to breathe air into your horn.
Some call it diaphragm breathing or something like that and singers use this same technique (yes, it will help you sing better to!) The change has to come from you. Literally from deep inside of you. The most important thing for getting a nice, big, full tone coming out of your sax starts from where your air is coming from… and that’s your diaphragm/upper stomach area.
Think of it as pushing the air from your stomach… when you do this, put your hand on your upper stomach. You’ll feel it pushing out. This is the only part of you that should be moving while the air is being pushed out. Don’t worry, you won’t look like a robot every time you play your sax cause eventually this technique will be 2nd nature and you’ll do it properly AND move around at the same time… I do!
Getting a good saxophone sound depends entirely on mastering this breathing technique. Practice while playing your sax and also try it without the sax until it comes naturally.
Beginners always do the exact opposite of what is the proper way…
When someone is asked to blow into a sax they automatically blow air from their upper chest/throat area and it sounds week and wavers. The air supply from here is not strong enough to properly fill the sax with the right amount of air. So, practice by putting your hand on the upper part of your stomach and blow long, slow and hard breathes.
You can feel this with your hand, and you can push your hand down against your stomach to really feel how this works. No air should be coming from your throat. Your throat is merely a tube or channel for this strong, deep down diaphragm air to pass through.
As your technique for doing this improves, so will your tone. Don’t worry, if you work on it a little each day it won’t take very long and before you know it you’ll be doing the technique %100 right and not even thinking about it anymore and your tone will be nice and more in tune than ever!
This stuff seems like a lot of work and you gotta hit it a bit each day, but when you start to notice and feel a difference and then other people tell you “hey, you sound better than last time I heard you”… well, then it’s all worth it!
Tonguing
In this video:
- Proper technique for tonguing the notes on your saxophone
Below is the musical example referred to in the video:
This is called phrasing or articulation. It’s how we treat the individual notes of a scale or phrase. Notes with nothing over or under them are each tongued individually.
Notes under a slur line are not tongued at all, only the very first note of the group. This technique is called “legato” Notes with a dot above or below them are tongued quickly for a short sound. This term or technique is called “staccato”.
The Major Scales
Understanding the Major Scales
If you don’t know too much about reading music yet then the information on this page might be a lot for you to take in at one go. If this is the case, refer back to it as you progress with your lessons. The basic theory here will eventually make sense even if it doesn’t right now.
Some basic music theory
As a musician, the saxophone is my best friend. My second best friend is the piano keyboard. I highly recommend you become familiar with the keyboard as well, if you’re not already.
Why? When talking about things like intervals, whole steps, half steps, flats, sharps, and the notes of a scale etc., we have a perfect visual on the keyboard that we don’t have on any other instrument. So, whether one plays a keyboard instrument or not, there can be advantages just by understanding it visually.
Our western musical system is comprised of 12 notes. If you look at a piano’s C note and count all the proceeding white notes up to the B you will have counted 7 notes; C D E F G A B. Now include the 5 black notes and there’s the 12 notes.
Understanding the keyboard is simple because when we look at a piano there are a lot of notes but after that stretch of 7 notes it’s just repetition.
Sharps and Flats
Sharps and flats are the black notes on the keyboard. Which ones are sharp and which are flat? Well, both. Look at the two white notes C and D. There is a black note that sits between them. If we play from C up to this black note we would think of it as a C sharp. If we play the D and go down to the same black note we would think of it as a D flat. It’s the same note but it has two names. Same goes for the rest of them – the black note between the F and G can either be called an F sharp or a G flat. In musical notation sharps are noted by the “#” sign and flats by the “b” sign. So, F#, Bb etc.
Every one of these notes has it’s own chords and scales that follow the same set of rules which make each one different from the other as far as the number of sharps or flats they have. For example, G major has one sharp and F major has one flat. These rules are what makes the system work so every scale has the exact same familiar sound to it, making it possible to have an established system in place.
There are eastern musical systems that have different rules and therefore a different sound. For example, an eastern scale has smaller intervals than our smallest quarter note interval and therefore gives a very different overall sound. A scale can also have more notes than our eight note scale. It’s things like this that make for a very different musical sound.
The cycle of 5ths determine the number of flats or sharps in a key.
We start off with C because it’s the only one that uses just the white notes on the piano (no black notes which are sharps and flats) to make a proper and complete major scale: C D E F G A B C. The number of sharps and flats a key has is determined on something called the cycle of 5ths – count up 5 notes on the keyboard from C to G, then D etc. Each time a sharp is added: G has one sharp, D has two etc. Five notes down from C is F, which has one flat, 5 down from F is Bb, which has 2 flats and so on.
The number of flats or sharps a key has will show in the key signature, which is at the beginning of any musical notation and you will see an example of this in the scale exercises coming up a little later. These are important things that a musician must know when attempting to read a piece of music: the key it’s in, and the time it is to be counted in (key signature and time signature).
Introducing The C Major Scale
Coming up in the next lesson will be our first playing exercise; the C major scale.
Just as the single easiest note to play on the sax is the C# because there are no fingers involved, the C major scale is the easiest to play because it’s the only major scale that has no flats or sharps. To make it as easy as possible for you since you’re just starting out, we’ll do this scale backwards, meaning we play it top to bottom, from middle C down to the low C.
Why is playing it backwards easier?
The reason for this is because starting on low C can be difficult at first. So by starting on the middle C and coming down we’ll likely be eliminating some frustration right from the beginning. Playing the middle C is easier to play than the low C, especially in the beginning.
C Major Scale Descending
I highly recommend you go through all the fingering lessons even if you already know some or most or all your notes.
Along with the very first lesson we cover some very basic and important musical theory which is just how to read musical notes, or as it’s commonly called by musicians; notation.
If you’ve come from learning experience via another musical instrument you might already know how to read music and therefor know about some theory such as key signatures, the difference between clefs, relative minors, chords etc.
If you’re just as new to the musical theory stuff as you are to the saxophone then this is definitely for you. Take this opportunity to finally learn how to read music. Even if it’s at a very easy and basic level. This will ultimately open up more musical possibilities and experiences for you.
Welcome to the First Saxophone Fingering Lesson
You may have heard it been said that the saxophone is a very easy instrument to learn. Well, this is partly true, and that part is the fingering system.
While being able to produce a beautiful tone may take some time, it’s quite easy to learn the fingering. Also note that all members of the saxophone family have the same fingering.
Your first note
The good news is that to play your first note on the saxophone you don’t need any fingers at all, and as I mentioned earlier, this is the C# (C sharp).
How to play middle C#: (quick recap of what I mentioned earlier regarding your first blowing attempt)
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- hold your sax firmly and comfortably in front of you
- put the mouthpiece in your mouth, taking in consideration the
embouchure position, especially regarding top teeth resting on your
mouthpiece and bottom teeth resting on your bottom curved lip. - have the tip of your tongue on the reed to start, then release it with the
“ta” sound to take it away from the reed to start the note while taking a big breath from deep down in your diaphragm and blow!
When you check the chart below you will see an alternate position for C# as well, but the no finger position is the most common. Next, study the fingering charts below and then watch the fingering video lesson to learn all the notes on your saxophone.
While you’re learning the notes you might as well learn How To Read Them!
You can refer to the note fingerings and music notation as you learn each note in the video lesson.
The C Major Scale
What you see here is the musical notes for the C major scale. They are written on music lines which are called the staff.
Starting at the left, there is the musical sign you might recognize. It looks like a fancy “S” with a line through it. It’s called the treble clef. There are several other types of clef’s used for different instruments but us sax players read only in treble clef.
After the treble clef there are the 4’s on top of each other… that means the time signature for this piece of music in in 4/4: that’s 4 quarter beats in each bar. Count 1 2 3 4 and that’s one complete bar.
Notice the second C scale on the right side that has the black notes closer together… these are quarter notes and you play one on each beat as you count: 1 2 3 4.
The first scale that doesn’t have the notes filled in consists of the exact same notes but because they are hallow and not filled in they are called half notes. This means each note is worth half of the bar, so they last for 2 beats, while the black quarter notes only last one beat.. very easy math eh?
Let’s Recap All These Musical Terms We Just Covered:
- Staff
- Treble Clef
- Time Signature
- 4/4
- Quarter Beats
- Quarter Notes
- Bar
- Half Notes
WOW! That’s a lot to learn in one session but if you learn these terms you’ll be well on your way.
Don’t forget, there is a complete saxophone fingering chart with full video demonstrations in the fingering section:
In this lesson:
- Fingering exercises without blowing
- Rhythmic exercises
Fingers Only!
You can practice saxophone fingering technique without even blowing air into your saxophone. This is a good way to just work out the rust in your fingers and develop smooth fingering for the scale patterns.
Even though the end result has to be total co-ordination between your hands, brain and embouchure this fingering only exercise will let you focus entirely on developing the rhythm in your fingers and ultimately will help with the big picture.
I got the idea of practicing without blowing into the horn from a biography I read on John Coltrane, one of the greatest saxophonists that ever lived. The guy who wrote the bio was taking a few lessons from him once in a while and so one day he showed up while Coltrane was on the road. He was invited to the hotel at 9am to have a practice session.
When he walked in the guy asked Coltrane if it wasn’t a bit too early to make noise in the hotel? Coltrane answered that he’d already been practicing for an hour… and so he showed the guy what he had been doing… just fingering, no blowing, a bunch of different exercises he had been working on.
Well, Coltrane was addicted to practicing on his sax. But I saw a value in this lesson because when you practice that way, you don’t have to think about all the things that happen while you’re blowing, just work out the knots in the fingers! Of course you have two put them both together eventually but it really helps doing it this way for a while.
The C Major Scale
In this video:
- 2 new notes: F# and C#
- Learning the D major scale
- Learning about the octave key
The D major scale:
Welcome to the Complete Fingering Lesson Videos
For your reference:
Fingering Lesson 1 – middle C# to low Bb
Fingering Lesson 2 – middle D to high C#
Fingering Lesson 3 – high D to high F#
If you haven’t done so already, make sure to go through the other fingering lessons which also include some basic notation and theory:
The Bb Major Scale
Start off by playing this one backwards too!
Just like the C scale, playing the Bb major scale descending will make it easier because starting on the low Bb can be very difficult at first. As you come down the scale and approach the lower notes you might start to lose control of them.
If this happens it means your sax is not getting enough air to make those notes, so increase the air support from your diaphragm. In other words, gradually get louder as you approach the lowest note.
The first thing to notice is the key signature – Bb and Eb. These are the two flats of the Bb major scale. The rest of the notes are not new up to this point because we’ve used them in the C and G major scales already.
Getting familiar with high notes above the staff
So far we’ve only gone as high as the G note which sits on the top of the staff. It’s time to get familiar with the remaining notes that go above this. We’re going to do some exercises in the key of Bb and so have a look at the notes below. It goes from middle F to high F. All notes are labeled with the appropriate letter which you can use until you get familiar with the musical notes.
Notice that all the notes above G have either a line going through them or are sitting on a line, just as the notes on the regular staff do. Play these notes as an exercise eventually trying to memorize the notes without looking at their letter names.
You may notice that as you get higher, the sound of your sax might get thin or you may even have a harder time producing these higher notes. To prevent these things from happening make sure you work harder in producing more air flow and support from your diaphragm… in other words blow harder! Yes, just like the bottom notes need more air support, the higher notes do too.
*Tip – As you go up slowly from the middle F, notice which note starts to sound thin or gets harder to play. Then go back down a step or two and hit it again, this time try things like opening your throat and oral cavity more along with increased air support from your diaphragm.
Don’t be intimidated by a long row of consecutive eighth notes, especially the high ones, they’re just part of a scale and you can play it very slowly. Only increase speed as you get familiar with the notes and their smooth fingerings
Using the Bb major scale to develop the full range of your saxophone
Bb Chord Two Octaves
Part Two starts with an 8 lesson Mini-Course focusing on building technique and reading basic music notation
Following are 8 lessons covering exercises based on the G major scale. These will improve your technique.
At the same time you will learn basic music notation and how to read music!
Click HERE for Part Two
© 2020 How To Play Saxophone. All Rights Reserved
Hi teacher My question is, where can i find the 6th video of the first beginners course? It is about the the tonguing subject. Can you share the link? Thank you teacher
These lessons are valuable , not just to the beginner but also to the Sax player who may by just a little more advanced, like me. Thank you Johnny
The major scales improvisation course link only goes to an order page for music tracks.
You don't mention tuning the sax anywhere here, or I haven't found it yet?? Is that something that is too advanced and we'll get to it later? Thanks.
Johnny, I need to replace my mouthpiece. I have an Ebolin which is 3 3/4" long and I like it but it didn't have a teeth protector and I'm wearing it out . I bought a replacement which is an E. Rousseau and it is about 4 1/4" long, OMG, I can't get a sound out it to save my soul. I would like to get another Ebolin which I'm used to, do you sell those? Or, maybe a different one that is the same length? Oh, this is for a Tenor Sax by the way. And, maybe one of the black plastic screw-type ligatures too. Thanks
Johnny, I need to replace my mouthpiece. I have an Ebolin which is 3 3/4" long and I like it but it didn't have a teeth protector and I'm wearing it out . I bought a replacement which is an E. Rousseau and it is about 4 1/4" long, OMG, I can't get a sound out it to save my soul. I would like to get another Ebolin which I'm used to, do you sell those? Or, maybe a different one that is the same length? Oh, this is for a Tenor Sax by the way. And, maybe one of the single screw-type ligatures too. Thanks
Video #7 of Course #1 displays "Video unavailable: Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner Watch on YouTube". I'll watch it on Youtube, but I'd prefer staying on the course site to watch all videos 🙂
covers the basics pretty well
What brand of reeds do you recommend?
when I started out I played on Rico reeds, then Rico Royal. These are cane reeds and are quite good. These days I play on Fiberreed synthetic reeds (mostly Onyx and Copper). I would recommend them as they are more consistent and last much longer then cane. You can find my review videos on these in my Blog.
played clarinet in grammar school but like a lot of kids I found other interests in high school. Fast forward from 1965 to today, I'm hoping to play sax with my grandson some time this year. I'm finding some small success on my very first day
alright, way to go Patrick, to play with a grandchild would be very cool....let me know if you run into any issues.
So far so good. The Bb needs more repetitions, but it will come in time.
lesson 1 is the intro video. the content follows in every lesson after that. please watch the videos and follow the lessons, that's how we learn.
can play Bb scale from middle B up to high F and back down to low Bb no problem on the Alto. After playing the Tenor for 5 years I still struggle to get the low Bb but have no trouble getting up to high F#. Jonny I am in awe of the way you get down to the low Bb so quietely in your version of Heartbake Hotel.
Mike, thanks, takes more air than practically anything else on the tenor! of course your reed and mouthpiece can help but mostly it's up to us.
thanks Mike. the tenor requires a bit moire air than alto so it's understandable. also, the right equiptment such as reed and mp can make a difference and last but NOT least, make sure your tenor has absolutly no leaks. even a minor one can make you struggle down there.