Posts Tagged ‘flute’

I’m frequently asked what someone should do if they want to get back into music as an adult. Perhaps you played through college, but now have put the saxophone (or whatever instrument!) down for ten years or more, and you want to start playing again.

If you’ve read my other posts, you’ve seen that I believe there are four areas to practice on the saxophone (or any woodwind instrument): sound, technique, tunes, and ear. So if you’re just starting back, what should you do?

Well, here are a few things, in each of those four areas, that you might work on. Within each area, I have listed these things in roughly what I think is their priority of importance. So here we go…

Sound Production

• Longtones (without vibrato)
• Recording yourself and listening to the quality of the sound
• Practicing a nice vibrato on half and whole tones with a metronome

Technique

• Scales
• Pentatonics
• Major, Minor, Aug Triads
• Triad Pairs
• Learning a few keyboard basics

Learning Tunes

• Memorizing tune melodies and chord progressions
• Playing through tunes, in rhythm, with no backing track
• Playing triads or other patterns through tunes

Ear Training

• Playing along with the radio
• Transcribing
• Matching tones with a keyboard

I have covered some of the items listed above in other lessons. But if you have questions, a good instructor could help save you some time.

Practice hard, you’ll see the results!