In the last blog, we explained the basic skills of saxophone and shared several methods of long tone practice. Did you follow Six Months Rebellion Music to practice? Long tone exercise is the content that every student of saxophone must master and it is the part that we need to practice every day. I hope you can continue to practice, and you will see the effect of the exercise if you persist for a long time! Below is the link of the previous blog. New friends who have not read the previous blog can click to read it.
Saxophone｜An Effective Exercise Guide for saxophone (Part one）
https://www.sixmonthsrebellion.com/blog/posts/saxophone%EF%BD%9Can-effective-exercise-guide-for-saxophone-part-one%EF%BC%89
Although it is only a week since the last blog update, have the students who have carefully read and cooperated with the exercise realized their changes and progress? This week we will continue to update the basic skills and practice methods of saxophone for you, and we hope you can cooperate with the long tone to practice. If you haven't felt the improvement of your performance yet, please don't worry! The accumulation of basic skills requires a process and a certain amount of time. As long as you stick to it, it will break through your bottleneck period and be improved!
Interval exercise:
If you have mastered the basic essentials of long tone practice, congratulations! Why do we need to master long tones before practicing intervals? This is because long tone practice generally refers to single tone practice. We can focus on our breath changes and the stability of our mouth shape. However, interval practice needs more finger changes, and our breath and oral cavity will have more rapid and subtle changes that we need to understand and master. Therefore, we need to master the long note playing before interval training. We must not be greedy for success.
How to play interval?
Today, we mainly introduce three typical interval exercises, namely, the third interval, the fifth interval and the eighth interval. Students who have just learned about saxophone and practiced playing music should have encountered the problem of cracking. Sometimes they feel that their playing mouth shape and breath are all right, but the tone is not good or the tone is very strange (Six Months Rebellion Music also has blogs about reducing the cracking in saxophone playing). Why?
The Causes and Solutions to the crackling of saxophone
https://www.sixmonthsrebellion.com/blog/posts/the-causes-and-solutions-to-the-crackling-of-saxophone-1
In fact, when we play some music or etudes with large interval span, we often encounter the problem of high and low pitch conversion, especially the high and low pitch conversion and big jump of re and sol. It is a great test to control our tongue, mouth position, mouth shape and air flow speed. Sometimes some changes, although slight, can play a great role.
10-minute Alto Saxophone Long Tone
Exercise
Third interval exercise:
The third interval is a common technique in saxophonemusic. Although the span is not large, it is often used. Therefore, we should still pay attention to some problems in the conversion of high and low tones. You can practice according to your own learning needs when practicing.
For example:
When practicing, you can adjust the speed of the metronome to 60~80, practice in turn according to the scale of natural major, or combine and choose according to your own preferences.
Fifth interval exercise:
The finger span of a fifth interval is larger than that of a third interval. Because the span is larger, the problem of range conversion will occur more frequently. When playing, you should pay attention to the conversion between pitch and range, especially the conversion between high and low pitch areas of do, re and sol.
For example:
When practicing the fifth interval, we must pay attention to pitch and intonation. Therefore, we should use a metronome and a corrector to help us find the pitch. At the same time, we need to pay attention to controlling our own air flow, mouth shape and oral cavity during the playing process, and also pay attention to controlling the subtle changes in the oral cavity to find the most suitable playing state.
Octave interval exercise:
The octave interval does not often appear in saxophonemusic. Generally speaking, we can only see it in the etude. But we still need to practice the octave interval, because the octave interval is played across an octave, and we can feel the changes in volume, timbre, air flow and mouth more directly.
For example:
The octave practice can better let us know the timbre and volume changes of each range of saxophone. At the same time, the octave practice is also a test of our control. A little carelessness will lead to cracking. We can carefully experience the changes of air velocity and oral cavity position during the practice, and remember the "state" that suits you. When you can turn this state into a habit, the playing level will be greatly improved.
