Video transcript
The Arts Unit @home Art Bites - Beginner saxophone

[musical tones]

SAM WELLER: Hello, everyone. My name's Sam. And as you can see, I play the saxophone. Like many of you, I started playing the saxophone in my school band program in about Year 3 or maybe 4. I can't quite remember. I was also a member of the New South Wales Arts Unit. And we had lots of fun touring overseas, also around Australia, and that really helped me with my passion for this instrument. I encourage you to get involved with as many of those Arts Unit activities when you can.

Since then, I've gone to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to study the saxophone. And I'm now a tutor at The Arts Unit. So, today we're going to be talking about some, I suppose, hot tips to make sure you're making the best sound you can possibly make, as well as making sure that you're making your life easy, so that you can maximise your saxophone playing. So, we'll get stuck into these pointers, and I hope you enjoy.

The first tip to making sure you're making a really great sound is making sure that your reed, which is a piece of cane, and your mouth piece are set up correctly. If these things aren't working together, you're going to have a real hard time blowing or making a good quality sound. So, here's some tips. The reed should be relatively in line with the mouthpiece. Now, I'm going to come closer to the camera shortly to show you.

When you're putting it on, it's quite tricky at first. It can be quite confusing. Make sure the flat end of the reed lays flat on the flat end of the mouthpiece. That's a good tip. And then make sure that the reed doesn't come far over the top of the mouthpiece, or come too low below the mouthpiece. Now, I'll show you what I mean by that.

The reed should be relatively in line with the tip of the mouthpiece. It shouldn't hang too far over and shouldn't be too low. So, it's a bit of a case of 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' here. This is just right, I imagine. I hope you can see this. So, as you can see, it's hanging a little bit over the top of the mouthpiece.

Then, the tricky part, I find, is putting the ligature on. Hold the bottom of the reed with your thumb. And gently - be careful not to break your reed, because that's a nightmare - gently place the ligature over the top of the reed like so. Then you can tighten your ligature. So, ideal position for the reed - making sure that it's not overlapping too far on the tip of the mouthpiece and making sure it's not too low. So, here is a good example here. Please excuse my gross mouthpiece. I hope that makes sense.

Hot tip number 2 - making sure you have good posture when you're playing. This is really important in helping your sound. I'm going to put my mouthpiece back on, being gentle as to not make my ligature or reed wonky. So, the cork on the neck of your saxophone, make sure you have some cork grease on it, so it's easy to put your mouthpiece on. You don't want to be jamming it on.

Now, some people like to sit down with the saxophone. Some people like to stand up. I'm going to show you both. In band, you will, of course, be sitting down mostly. And there's 2 ways you can sit with the saxophone. Some prefer to sit with it to the side, and some prefer to sit with it in the middle.

Now, the most important thing is that your body is not bent or crooked when you're sitting playing the saxophone. This includes your head as well. Often, I see a lot of young musicians who play with their mouthpiece a little bit crooked, which makes it a little bit hard to play the saxophone. You sort of end up playing the flute here. Not so good. We want to make sure that our mouthpiece is straight so that we're able to keep our head straight and our body in line.

I'm going to show you first with the saxophone in the middle of my body. This is how I prefer to play, but it doesn't matter. So I'm checking that my mouthpiece is straight. So, it means I can put it into my mouth without having to bend my head. That's good. Now as you'll see, my torso, firstly, is straight. I'm supporting from my abs and my lower back. Sitting up nice and straight on the front of my chair. If I'm sitting back, I'm sort of hunched.

I look lazy. Maybe I look a bit cool, but it's not going to help you with your sound. You need to sit on the front of the chair. It's cooler if you have a good sound. Sit on the front of your chair. Make sure your head is straight. And the neck strap helps the saxophone come directly into your mouth. We're going to talk more about the neck strap soon.

If I'm playing on the side of my body, I'm going to sit slightly to the side and my legs pointing to the left of it, or the right, depending - no, the left - definitely the left. Now, the mouthpiece is going to need to be adjusted, because we're now wonky. So I'm going to adjust my mouthpiece to make sure that my head is still straight while I have my saxophone to the side.

If I left it in the position that I was using to play in the middle, I'm going to be wonky. Not so good. You're going to end up with a really bad neck before you're 18. Boo. So, straightening the neck, making sure your saxophone is adjusted to help that, that means we're ready to play. Very good.

So, now we need to talk about standing up with the saxophone. When I'm playing solo, I like to stand up. Or when I'm practising as well, because I feel like it gives me more freedom to move and breathe. It's important that we have our legs in the right position. You wouldn't think that your legs help you play the saxophone, but they do, actually. I haven't yet seen someone who can play the saxophone with their toes, but I'm sure there's someone out there.

But the legs are important in helping us breathe and play naturally. If our legs are too close together, we've become a bit too wonky, and we don't have a good centre of gravity. If you're in the middle of busting out a wicked solo, you're not going to be able to stand still or be able to stand up, for that matter, if your legs are too close together.

If they're too far apart, we get a bit locked. And we don't have any room to move. It also feels a bit weird standing here like that. We want to put our legs sort of hip-width apart so that we have room to move and we can stand comfortably and easily.

We say that our knees are soft, which means they're not locked. So, they're not pushed in. And we're not standing up directly straight. We're just standing nice and comfortably. We can move our knees. We can bend our knees if we need to.

Again, the mouthpiece needs to be straight so that our head isn't wonky when we play. And our neck strap needs to be at a good height so that the saxophone guides directly into your mouth. That way, I'm ready to take a nice breath and play.

[playing saxophone]

Now, the neck strap. It's quite important. So many times, this still happens to me. I get confused about which way my neck strap needs to go. It's all wonky. It's all twisted. It's a pain. But we need to make sure the neck strap is our friend, because it's the reason that we can play saxophone so naturally and so freely. And also, if it's our enemy, it's going to make our body not feel very good.

So, I'm just using a standard neck strap, or a sling, some people call it here. The important thing is that it's at the right height here. And you also want a neck strap that doesn't dig into your neck, because then you end up with a really red neck.

Here, the saxophone comes easily and directly into my mouth without me having to push it up or pull it down. So if it was too low, I'd have this problem.

[plays a note]

Already, you can hear my sound is bad. If it was too high, I'd be playing like this all the time.

[plays a note]

Again, not a great sound. I need to have it just the right level, so I can make the best sound possible.

[plays a note]

You might like to try it. Experiment with different heights on your neck strap. See how it affects your sound and also how it affects your posture. Remember that it needs to be guided gently and easily into your mouth without you having to lift or pull down the saxophone. Now, some of you might have different straps. I've got a couple.

The one I usually use is called a saxophone holder. And it looks a bit like a claw. This takes the strain off your neck and spreads it more evenly around your core. So, if you are playing saxophone many, many hours a day - which when you're in quarantine, you should be practicing lots - no, if you're playing the saxophone many, many hours a day, this is really useful to distribute the weight. Make sure that both shoulders are clipped in. And again, it's the same as the neck sling. It needs to come directly into your mouth. I prefer this one, but it doesn't matter.

And then, if the saxophone is really big on you - when I was younger, I could barely hold my saxophone. So, I used the harness, which distributes the weight all over your body. I always get confused with these harnesses. There are too many cords. But the shoulders or the shoulder pads, obviously, go on the shoulders. And the clips come around the back. I think this harness is a little too small for me now. I'm not really going to be able to use it well. Oh, that's tight. So yes, this harness is way too small for me now. But as you can see, this is how it would look using the harness.

[playing saxophone]

Let's talk about the saxophone sound. So, what should a good saxophone player sound like? I think saxophones, in general, should sound round, golden, and have a really beautiful, lyrical quality to the sound. But, the beauty of the saxophone is that it has so many different variables that we can change to manipulate our sound.

We can play harsh and loud. And we can also play extremely quiet, and melodically, and beautifully. Unfortunately, the saxophone has a reputation for just being a loud honky instrument. But, in fact, it's not. We can play so quietly on the saxophone.

[playing saxophone]

It has a really mysterious quality to it. We also can play loud and raucous.

[playing 'Baker Street']

You might know that tune. So, how do we make a good saxophone sound? The most important thing is our breath. If we don't breathe properly, we have no hope of making a good sound.

We need to breathe in a relaxed manner and in a controlled manner. Let's do some breathing exercises together to relax our breath. We're going to breathe in for 4 counts, and out for 4 counts. When we breathe in, we don't want to hunch our shoulders. We want to make sure that our body is relaxed, and we have good posture like we were talking about before.

[snapping fingers]

So let's breathe in. Out, in, out. So we need to be filling up from the bottom of our lungs all the way to the top, making sure our body stays relaxed. When we go to play the saxophone, we need to make sure we do the same. Let's do that one more time.

[snapping fingers]

3, 4 ...

Now, we have a really relaxed breath. We need to breathe deeply so that we are able to sustain big, long phrases and not have to take a new breath every couple of notes or every couple of bars. A good way to practise breathing is scales. And I know we hate scales. Scales can be very boring, but they are so important.

And, a good friend of mine says they're like eating your greens, like eating your broccoli. You don't like it, but in the long term, it's good for you. So we do need to practise our scales. And, we can use breathing exercises to help us do this well, and to help us breathe better, I guess.

Let's take a look at G major. All right? Let's play the first 5 notes slowly, all in one breath, taking a really deep, relaxed breath beforehand. You're going to breathe in for a full bar.

[snapping fingers]

1 ...

[playing scale]

How about you try that with me now? This is the first 5 notes of the G major scale with a 4-beat breath beforehand. Here we go.

[snapping fingers]

[playing scale]

Good work. Now, I think an important thing to think about when we practise is think about what we don't want to be doing, because it's all well and good trying to achieve something, but we might not necessarily know how that fits in with what's good and what's not. So, let's experiment with a bad breath. Let's breathe out for 4 beats, and then breathe in really narrowly and raise our shoulders like that, a really shallow breath. And then let's try and play the same 5 notes. So, I'm going to breathe out for 4 counts, and then breathe in for 1 beat, a really small shallow breath, and then try and play my G major scale. So breathing out.

[snapping fingers]

[playing scale]

Oh! I could barely do that. How about we try it together? So, breathe out for 4 beats and breathe in shallowly for 1 beat. Shallowly? I'm not sure that's a word. Correct me if I'm wrong. Here we go. 4 out.

[snapping fingers]

[playing scale]

How did that go for you? Doesn't feel great, does it? Let's go back to our good breath. It's always important to reference the good parts about playing and keep practising those good parts. We've just discovered that we can breathe in really relaxed and make a beautiful sound. So, let's try that again.

Let's go back to that and compare the sound between the really shallow narrow breath. Here we go. Relaxed breaths. So breathing in for 4, playing 5 notes of a G major scale. Here we go. Breathe in.

[snapping fingers]

[playing scale]

How much better does that feel compared to our shallow breath? Let's go the other way now. Let's take in a really uncontrolled ugly breath. And then let's use our air in a really uncontrolled manner. Here we go. Breathing in for 4, hunch those shoulders, being wild. And then blow. 1 ...

[snapping fingers]

[playing scale]

So, using our air like that gives us a really unfocused, perhaps, raw and ugly sound, right? So, the first example that we did, for me, is the ideal sound. Now, that's not going to come just from our breath. It's also going to come from our air control, making sure it's steady. So, let's still stick with G major, but let's use a steady air stream all the way through the scale, and all the way down. Up and down. Now, a steady air stream should, in theory, be like this.

[snapping fingers]

Absolutely consistent, OK? It's like my old teacher used to say 'it's like turning on a tap and a column of water comes out. You don't see any gaps in the column of water.' That's how our air stream should be going. Another teacher told me it was 'like a light sabre, our sound should be like a light sabre coming out the bell of our saxophone,' a big boom of sound, I guess. And that's going to come through really consistent air.

So, it's going to take some practise to get a consistent air stream. We can do breathing exercises like we were doing before, but it's also good to keep playing and really listen to yourself while you're playing. Ask yourself, were there any gaps? Was it as smooth as I could play? Did my sound stay the same the whole way? Let's try a G major. About this tempo.

[vocalising]

And then we'll go down as well. Let's play together, making sure it's as smooth as possible. 1, 2, 3 ...

[playing scale]

Good job. Now, that's going to take some practise. Try and do that a few times by yourself on G major or your favourite scale. You need to get used to the feeling of consistency and ease. So, always try and relax when you're playing saxophone. I know it can be so frustrating when you're dealing with a really difficult scale, or a really difficult passage in a piece, but you've got to stay relaxed. Because, otherwise, our sound is going to go out the window.

So let's put what we talked about with our breathing and breath control into practice in a little piece. This is my favourite tune to practise breathing exercises on. It's 'Frere Jacques,' but in a minor key. We're going to play it in E minor. How many sharps does E minor have? 1 sharp. Or, if you didn't get it right, rewind the video and try again. E minor.

Now, the important thing is that we take a relaxed breath in at the start, and we keep our breath control absolutely seamless throughout the piece, and we breathe only when needed. I'm going to breathe in little bar chunks so that I have a lot of breath. And I advise you to do the same. I'm going to mark the breath marks in your path as well. [vocalising]

Breathe. [vocalising]

Breathe. Or if you need, you can go ... [vocalising]

Quick breath after each bar. But make sure it doesn't interrupt the sound. So, we don't want to hear ... [vocalising] [gasps] [vocalising] [gasps] All right? That's not quite musical. Now, our air needs to stay absolutely consistent so that we have the most gorgeous, beautiful, lyrical sound. Let's try together. Here you go. So grab the music out from the attachment. And let's play together. E minor. 1, 2, 3, 4.

[playing saxophone]

Good work. Let's do it 1 more time. We can also do this as a round if you would like. Let me start. [vocalising]

Now, when I reach the next part - [vocalising] - I'd like you to start playing at the beginning of the piece. That way, we're playing in harmony with each other. This is a great way to practise ensemble skills. So, you can do a little duet with me in your room with your computer. So, either we can do this as a round, or as just playing together. It's up to you. OK? I'm going to play it through twice. And I'd like you to join me. Here we go. Practising good breath control and a consistent air stream. 1, 2, 3 ...

[playing saxophone]

Good job. How did you go? Sorry, I was just waiting for those that were doing a round. If that was a bit tricky, and I imagine it will be, because it's quite low on the saxophone - and the lower we go, the harder it is to blow - but that's why I chose this exercise, because it's good to be challenged. If it was a bit tricky, practise it at your own tempo, making sure that there's great connection in between the notes. Make sure your air is always consistent and that you're always breathing in a relaxed manner. I hope these tips were useful in helping you get the most out of your saxophone playing. And I hope to see you again soon.