Posts Tagged ‘technique’

OK, now we’ve covered how to practice (see my earlier post on practicing), how to take care of the horn, and how to setup the horn. Now let’s cover what to practice. As I mentioned above, I think a great way to divide up your practices is to use four core components. These are Sound Production, Technique, Ear Training, and Tunes.

Of these four components, sound production is of utmost importance. If you don’t sound good, no one will want to listen to you. Listen to the great tone, intonation, and sounds of the masters: Stan Getz, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, Hank Mobley, Paul Desmond, and on and on. It is just so crucial.

Next is technique. The saxophone is a mechanical device, and playing notes needs to come effortlessly. Thus, mastering your scales, arpeggios, and intervals are a must. We’ll look at some great ways to do this.

Third is ear training. Eventually you will want to get where you can hear the key of the tune, and be able to jump right in and improvise. So you need to train your ear and mind to be able to do this.

Finally, there are tunes. The great masters literally have thousands of tunes memorized. So you’ll want a process for learning, memorizing, and improvising over tunes. This will greatly help you at gigs and jam sessions. And you’ll find it will even help you when your playing from charts.

Each of the sections that follow cover a specific core practice component. The sections begin with a discussion of the component, followed by discussion of exactly what to practice, and end with sample exercises. There’s lots of material in each section, pick only a couple of things in a single component to focus on during a twenty minute practice session. It’s always better to dig in really deep in fewer areas than to cover a lot of areas with a very broad brush. By digging in really deep in a few areas, you’ll find that somehow you improve faster in other areas as well. On the other hand, if you spread yourself out too thin in many areas, you’ll just never seem to make much progress.