Many students may have more or less doubts after learning saxophone for a period of time, for example, why my performance ability has been stagnant? Why did my teacher say that my basic skills were not solid? How should I practice my basic skills? I have no music foundation to learn saxophone but why do I study hard while the music I play is always boring? How can I solve it? I have music foundation, but why is my performance always lacking in the face of saxophone? How can I plan my practice and study?

  If you also have the above doubts, you can read this blog carefully and follow our follow-up sharing. I believe you can get an answer to your doubts in our blog.

  I believe you must have heard such words when you first learned about saxophone: If you want to play saxophone, you must first lay a good foundation! What are the basic skills of saxophone? How can we practice?In fact, the basic skills of saxophone include many aspects: mouth shape, breath, spit, fingers, music knowledge, body coordination, etc. For example, the questions of mouth shape, breath and tonguing have been introduced in great detail in the previous blog, and the correct practice methods have been pointed out. Those who have not read the previous blog can read the previous blog.

Saxophone|The Skills of Breathing that Beginners of Saxophone Should Masterhttps://www.sixmonthsrebellion.com/blog/posts/the-skills-of-breath-that-beginners-of-saxophone-should-master-1

saxophone|Analysis of the tongue skills of saxophonehttps://www.sixmonthsrebellion.com/blog/posts/saxophone%EF%BD%9Canalysis-of-the-tongue-skills-of-saxophone-how-to–play-the–saxophone–tongue-skills–play-a–clear-tongue

Saxophone|Deep analysis of saxophone playing embouchure – learn the four methods to solve problems of embouchure easilyhttps://www.sixmonthsrebellion.com/blog/posts/deep-analysis-of-saxophone-playing-embouchure-learn-the-four-methods-to-solve-problems-of-embouchure-easily

 

 

Long Tone Practice

 

           

 

 

  After you have mastered the correct pronunciation of saxophone, you might as well try playing long notes. We can regard long notes as a warm-up before each performance or an accumulation of basic skills. Every student who learns saxophone should know the importance of long tone practice. Although people always think that playing long tones is a very boring thing, even professional saxophone players will warm up by playing long tones before performing.

 

 

How to practice long tones?

 

Saxophone Long Tones (as a Meditation)https://youtu.be/lFv3Y7STvvE

 

  We must not think that long tone practice is simply to play one sound. If we do a good job in long tone practice, it can help us stabilize intonation, timbre and breath. We need to think about and experience each sound carefully while practicing.

 

 

1. Follow the metronome to practice

 

                                                   

 

 

  When practicing long notes, we must turn on our metronome and play with its help, and we should not justplay for a few seconds but as long as you can. During the practice, we need to adjust the metronome to 4/4 beats of 60bpm before playing. We need to play the low, medium and high tone areas of saxophone, and try to play more than 8 beats for each note. If you still have some breath, you can play more beats. More long tone practice can improve our timbre. Is this better than simply replacing the mouthpiece and other accessories? At the same time, it can also stabilize our mouth shape and help us stabilize the rhythm.

 

 

2. Follow the sound calibrator to practice

 

                                         

   In addition to individual solo, we also play instrumental ensemble or perform with music accompaniment. Therefore, if our intonation is not accurate enough, we cannot cooperate with others. Even if we only play solo, it will destroy the pitch concept of our ears. Therefore, in addition to the metronome, the sound calibrator is also an indispensable good helper in our practice.

 

 

We can use the tuner to detect the pitch of different tones:

   When playing saxophone, randomly select a note from the low, middle and high range to play. While playing, pay attention to the changes of the sound calibrator, and actively control to find the strength that suits you and remember.

 

 

3. Practice strengthening and weakening

 

   Many students are very distressed that their performance is always out of control. Obviously, there are many emotions in their heart that they want to express, but they are always suffering from being unable to make it. In fact, for wind instruments, the simplest and most direct way to express emotion is to make a comparison between the strong and the weak.

 

   You can add the process of getting stronger or weaker when practicing long notes. For example, when playing a certain note, if we play eight beats, we will gradually strengthen the first four beats and then weaken the fourth beat. This order can also be distributed according to your preferences. This exercise can help us strengthen the coordination and change of our mouth and tongue, adapt to the pitch change in the music, reduce the occurrence of performance errors, and make the performance more smooth and natural.

 

10-minute Alto Saxophone Long Tone Exercisehttps://youtu.be/M-15gNHDI08