my first confirmed sponsor!

meet Dogwatch, from Ship-of-Fools, who has kindly agreed to allow me to spool his PM onto this blog AS WELL as being nice enough to offer to sponsor my attempt!
what a star!

Best wishes for your Grade 1 project - put me down for a tenner when you succeed (you'll have to PM or email me in July).

I'm a self-taught tenor sax player, having graduated from classical flute (ca Grade 6 standard, but never took the tests). I don't get to play much these days, partly because practising is such an anti-social thing when you share accommodation (in my case with Mrs D and occasional returning pups) - so that's my first hint: find somewhere you can practise without upetting anyone or embarrassing yourself, especially with your first faltering attempts at improvisation. I'm assuming you have a teacher or someone who can advise on reeds, instrument, etc.

Second hint: play as much as you can. Your cheeks will ache and your lips turn to jelly at first, not to mention getting a sore tongue from kicking the reed into life, but until you've got the muscles toned up, it's difficult to "shape" the notes. Also, while the alto may be a bit less demanding than tenor, your ribs and diaphragm will have demands placed on them that they are not used to. Keep at it! It will improve your breathing IRL no end (so much so, I reckon I might owe my life to my tenor sax, as I recovered from a car-crash-induced pneumothorax in double-quick time because I was breathing properly)

Third hint: try to find a group of like-minded souls to play with, as soon as you can hold a tune. With your classical and traditional music background that shouldn't be too long from your first honks. It's much more fun, and the only way to learn to play jazz, rather than notes off a page.

Which brings me to the fourth hint: cut loose from the sheet music as soon as you can. Try to dump the classical musician's reliance on the printed page. Only a professional teacher can tell you how close to the notation the Board expect you to keep, but to improvise, you need to have the music in your head rather than on the page.

Hope that is of some use to you, and doesn't sound like grandpa trying to teach you to suck eggs.

Good luck and enjoy! Watch out, Ben Castle.

Dogwatch