Greetings! I'm pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson. This is Get Your Sax Together -bringing you high-quality sax knowledge straight from the pro stage. And on today's free sax lesson for complete beginners you're gonna learn how to hold your saxophone correctly and how to play your first three notes.
Now, make sure you stay tuned to the end of this lesson because I'm gonna share my top pro tip that will instantly give you perfect finger position every time. Or, you could just do it your own way...
"Never had one lesson”
So, just before we get into it this free sax lesson is part four of my series for complete beginners. You'll find a card up there linking to the other lessons in the series. Now, if you enjoy what you're seeing please do subscribe down below and ring the bell to be notified when my new lessons come out. I also love hearing from you guys so please do post comments down below or ask me a question.
If you want to get to know a bit more about me and my life as a pro saxophonist have a look at my Welcome To My World Vlogs linked on that card up there - full of candid back stage footage, all very fun and hilarious stuff with top pro tips and tricks and, of course, the famous blooper reel. So, without further ado, let's JUMP to it
The first thing to cover is the length of your sling, or neck strap. Make sure that when you're holding the instrument in a natural position the mouthpiece just falls naturally into your mouth. You don't want to be having the sling too low and craning forward like this, or you don't want the neck strap so high that you're pushing the saxophone up into your mouth like this. So a nice natural position for the neck strap.
So let's cover where you're gonna put your fingers. Let's do the left hand first. On your sax you're gonna have some kind of button - metal or plastic - on the back, and your left thumb is just going to sit on that button covering the octave key, but not pressing it. Now, on the front you can see that there's one, two, three, four, five different buttons. Often that front F key will be a gold flat key but whether it's a circular key with a pearl or if it's a gold flat key we're going to ignore that so your finger goes to the next button along, which will definitely be a circular button, and your first finger goes there.
Your next finger misses out that small button, which is called the bis key, and goes to the next key, and then your third finger goes on the next key. Just make sure you don't hit those side keys with your palm accidentally.
So to recap - thumb resting on the button covering the octave key but not pressing it, miss the first key and then one... miss the small one, two, three. And on the right hand, your saxophone will have a hook down here. It might be black plastic, in my case it's gold, now you're going to put the main joint of your thumb underneath that hook like that, and then, the right hand’s easier than the left hand, because there's only three buttons to push.
One,two, three. And again, be careful that you don't nudge any of these extra keys down there. And you can ignore these ones, which are for your right pinky, and you can ignore all these ones, which are your left pinky, so really we're thinking much more like a recorder at this stage. Your thumbs aren't going to do anything and your pinkies aren't going to do anything so for the moment it's only these six fingers that were concerned with.
So the vital thing about your finger position is that your fingers should form a nice curve, like this, with your finger tip on the button. Don't press this knuckle into the instrument like this. You want your finger to have a nice curve to it and the tip of your finger should be on the button like this.
So what we don't want to see is the fingers pressing down in that kind of shape. They need to be a nice curve like this. Also, very importantly, the whole thing should be very relaxed. Don't slump forward like this, don't hunch those shoulders up, especially the left shoulder is famous and sax plays for going right up here. That's going to put a lot of tension in your left hand.
So, shoulders down, nice relaxed upright posture and bring the saxophone into your mouth, then we’re ready to play our first notes!
So now, fanfare of trumpets......we're finally ready to start playing our first actual notes on the saxophone! The next video in the series is going to cover everything you need to know about reading music, written music, and the previous video covered everything you need to know about the basics of embouchure, how you have your mouth, teeth and tongue, so go and checkout those videos.
Our first note is going to be a G and it is the first three fingers down of your left hand. One, two three. So we're going to take a nice big breath in to the bottom of our torso, we've got those first three fingers down on the left hand, make sure you're not hitting any other keys, and here we go…
Great, so we've got our G. The next note we can learn is called an "A". That is two fingers, first two fingers of your left hand. So we just take off that third finger, and that sounds like this…
And finally, the third note is a B, and that is the first finger in your left hand. So now we have our first three notes: G, A and B. And on tenor those first three notes, that G, A and B are going to sound like this…
So I'm all about getting right into it and getting some tunes going straight away, so what can we play with those three notes? Well, not that much to be honest, but we can play something simple like Mary Had A Little Lamb. And we're gonna start on B. The notes are going to come up on the screen, so this is what it sounds like on alto…
And on tenor the first little section of Mary Had A Little Lamb is going to start like this, again starting on B.
OK, now remember I promised you that top tip for having the perfect hand position instantly every time? Well this is the secret - your hand should be a nice curved shape like the letter C, and your right hand should be exactly the same, so when you put your hands on the instrument if you look straight down you should see a letter C with both hands, and the way to remember it is to say to yourself "can I see a C" make sure you can "see a C", and not a weird little duck's beak!
Next time in part 5 of my complete beginner series I'm going to demystify written music for you. In the meantime if you've enjoyed the video please subscribe and ring that bell to get notifications of when my new videos come out, and I'll see you for more fantastic free sax lessons and fun vlogs next time on Get Your SaxTogether. See you later!
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