I play a couple exercises and a couple melodies just with overtones. I play my overtones over about three octaves on low B-flat, B and C and sometimes I go up to C-sharp and D. If you don’t yet know what overtones are then you really shouldn’t be working on your altissimo yet. (It’s similar to how trumpet players get several different notes out of the same fingering.) Overtones are when you finger one note, like low B-flat, on your saxophone, and you’re able to play several different notes in partials above the note with the same fingering. Then I put my mouthpiece back and I get into playing my overtones. Really I’m on the mouthpiece for about a minute or so. Once I’m done with that I take my mouthpiece off and I practice with just the mouthpiece on its own. Then I go back to the middle and do the same thing all the way up to my highest altissimo note until I don’t have any more notes. I like to start in the middle, like middle C, and play a long tone on every note all the way down chromatically to low B-flat. I start off all of my practice sessions with long tones and I play long tones over the entire range of my saxophone. It doesn’t matter, so before we get into the fingerings, check out these warm-ups that I’m doing every day.Īnd you need to understand that if you don’t put in the preparatory warm-up work on a very regular basis, you’re not going to have success in the altissimo range regardless of fingerings. With a well-balanced reed I can get all of my altissimo notes out on any of my mouthpieces and they’re all different - metal, hard rubber, large chamber, small chamber, baffle, no baffle. It’s also important to note you don’t need some special mouthpiece to play altissimo notes. What You Do (and Don’t) Need to Play in the Altissimo Range It’s what you’re doing in your throat and what you’re doing with your embouchure and what’s going on in your head that’s going to help you get those notes out. Why is that? It’s because the fingerings don’t really matter so much. Most altissimo notes have several different possible fingerings. Why Altissimo Fingerings Don’t Matter That Much I’ve got a link for you to download all of my altissimo fingerings on alto and tenor saxophone, but if you think that just putting your fingers in the right spot is going to get these notes out for you, you’re wrong. Those are the things that are going to get the altissimo notes to come out for you consistently, in tune and with a good sound. It’s the sound work like the long tones and overtone exercises that really make a difference. Everyone’s always asking for altissimo fingerings, but the truth is it’s not the fingerings that you need, it’s the preparatory work.
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January 2023
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