sax lessons : Volume I

First lesson today!

Looked mainly at embouchure, breathing, tenseness (of throat, lips, hands - anything that can be tensed really!) & therefore at SOUND!

Sophie gave me a starter pointer on tonguing too, so I don't get into bad habits!

Interesting that all the same (or their equivilent) technical problems are the same across the board on all the instruments I play - tension & unawareness of where any parts of my body are at any particular time!

There's moments when I find a decent tone, but then it's gone - so I'll be exploring what I do when it works and trying for consistency in the sound (as opposed to consistently awful!) over the next fortnight.

Sophie said I'm not sounding as bad as some of the beginner saxists she's heard...
Please, O Lord, preserve us all from any sax-players sounding worse than I do!
...maybe she's just being nice!

She's good at describing things simply. I think I must be a terrible pupil, because I'm one of those absolute nightmare adult pupils who has to think about things and thinks lots about stuff all at once. If, next time you see me, I have a saxophone-shaped neck, Sophie has finally succumed to ramming the thing down my throat in frustration!

Introduced Janet to my new toy today en route back from lesson when I stopped off in the Office to get a wee bit done there - she makes a much more consistent & nice noise than I do, once she finds the sound she seems to be able to reproduce it... oh for a brain, eh? Still, you can take the girl away from the viola, but you can't take the viola away from the girl!

so...
to-do list, before next lesson (on Monday, January the last)
1) long notes going up & going down
2) slurred stuff - imProVIsE a bit
in both of the above, when I find a note that sounds nice, stop [in the name of love?] and find out how that happened & try to do it again!
3) pieces from the "Unit 3" page of "Learn as you play Saxophone" - as above.


the mechanics of the fingers aren't that hard - it's the mouth / reed thing that's rather alien to me!