How I PRACTICE (with my new favorite app)

[Music] hey better sax players j metcaif here from bettersacks.com in today's video i'm going to take you through some of the things i work on in my daily practice sessions to improve my own playing i hope that this video will give you some new ideas for things to work on or maybe just some better ways to work on the things you're already doing so let's begin with the three most important things you want to be thinking about actively as well as subconsciously while you're practicing those are your sound your time or rhythm and wait what was the other one just kidding but not really the third thing is your physical and mental state of being without getting too deep on you the big picture is whenever we're practicing we want to be physically relaxed and mentally engaged in order to play with a beautiful sound you need to be doing both of those things in order to play with a solid time and rhythmic feel you need to be doing both of those things so in a perfect practice session we want to focus on our sound and time feel for every single note that we play while remaining physically relaxed and mentally engaged if we make a habit of practicing this way eventually it becomes second nature and part of our subconscious and that's when you'll start to notice the effects in your performances which is where the real payoff is right so let me take you through a few of the things i practice on a daily basis now i recently got introduced to this new app which i've been using every single day for the past few months while i practice and it is such an amazing tool and i'm just enjoying it so much that i'm going to show you everything i do today along with this app it's called i practice pro it was developed by a fellow saxophone player named stefan webber from germany and if you play the saxophone do yourself a favor get this app you'll thank me later and since i have to mention it this video is in no way shape or form sponsored at all i just love the app unfortunately it's only available for ios at the moment so if you're on android and you know of some apps that do similar things please let everyone know in the comments the names of those apps now i like to begin my practice sessions focusing on sound so naturally i play some long tones and what i'll do is i'll take the app and i'll set it up to play drones and i will start on c i like to use the clarinet sound because i find it's good to match with the saxophone and i match the pitch my picture of the saxophone with the drone that i'm hearing in my headphones now i'm not using a visual reference like you would with a normal tuner i don't want to look and try to be adjusting based on what i see i'm adjusting my pitch based on what i'm hearing which is much more like a real playing situation and it's going to help you develop your ability to play in tune as well as you know your sound and your flexibility in your embouchure much much faster [Music] i [Music] now i like to start on middle c and play every note chromatically down to low b flat so i can set the app to play each drone for a certain amount of time i've got it set to play each note for 12 seconds now once i've done my long tones i move on to some overtones and again i use the drone feature i'll set the drone to play a b flat again with the clarinet and listening in the headphones i'm going to match all of my overtones to the pitch of that drone and then i'll just go through b c c sharp on a good day [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] me so this sound warm up helps me in so many ways first of all i'm getting physically relaxed while developing strength in my embouchure and air control the slow pace helps me become mentally engaged and focused while i'm working on intonation posture and finger position even though my fingers aren't moving very much i'm working on that by concentrating on developing really good habits there and for those of you wondering yes i am playing on my new better sax burnin alto mouthpiece which i love if you're looking for a mouthpiece that can play with power and warmth has edginess but also has a roundness and control and all volume levels and great intonation there's a link in the description below if you want to check it out next i'm going to jump into some sort of technical practice and that can be scales or patterns or licks what have you now i used to always practice this stuff with just a metronome which is great but now i practice it with this app because in addition to the metronome i can have chords playing underneath and that again reinforces my ability to play in tune and also hear what different notes sound like against different chord qualities now let me give you an example of what we could do i'm going to play a pattern out of my book pentatonic patterns for improvisation along with the metronome and some chords [Music] do now i love the metronome in this app and the thing i love about it most is the click probability feature the metronome will randomly leave out clicks if you lower the click probability i've got this set to eighty percent that means eighty percent of the time the metronome is going to click and twenty percent of the time it's going to be silent where there would have been a click now you notice i set my click up to to click on beats two and four this is a great way to help lay back on tempos and avoid the tendency to rush it just feels more natural so i've got this set up you can see it's got time signature and click for four and right there the option to click on two and four there are many many more sophisticated options with this i don't mess with all that i keep my metronome pretty much on two and four eighty percent click probability that's how i play everything the reason you want to do that click probability is because you don't want to be following a click you want to develop confidence in your own ability to keep time at all different tempos so by having the click randomly just not click for you you're forcing yourself to rely on your own inner time feel so if nothing else that feature alone is worth the price of this app now i can also set this app to cycle through that chord quality in as many different ways as i can really think of some of the options here are random which is challenging chromatically up chromatically down fifth down major second up major second down minor third up and so on you could take whatever you're playing through all 12 keys in lots of different ways with one tap of your screen i could also change the quality of the chord that was being played i started out playing that pattern over a major seven chord i could also play the same pattern over a minor seven chord and then there's two different modes this is the basic mode where you just got major seven dominant seven minor seven uh half diminished right but if i hit if i go here and i put this into expert mode now it's opened up a long list of different chord qualities now whenever i'm working on technique i'm always careful to practice things at a tempo where i can stay physically relaxed mentally engaged in other words not too fast now when working on improvisation i like to use this app uh to play different chord progressions you see it's got this whole section here for chord progressions and you could choose from a long list of them from your basic two five one two two five ones with tensions on the dominant seven chord to tritone substitutions and if you scroll down here you got your minor two fives if you scroll down you'll see things like ladybird honeysuckle rose bridge you know different coltrane changes tons of options to keep you busy forever [Music] now up a half step [Music] second time up a half step [Music] to work on improvisation i might take this and put it in a key that i hate to play in and just leave it on for 10 minutes and make myself playing f-sharp for a while [Music] so as you can see that app has endless possibilities and i myself have not even scratched the surface on a good day i could spend an hour on that sound and technique warm up and then i like to move into working on learning songs and i will pick a song to work on i will learn the melody i will just play the melody over and over again and you know try to get it part of me so that i can't mess it up after i've played the melody a bunch of times and feel comfortable i will play the melody but with embellishments uh which is kind of like easing into improvisation and that's also while i'm doing that now i'm working on knowing the chord progression and all the different things that are happening harmonically in that song so that my embellishments will fit once i feel pretty good about that i will have a backing track or something and play over the song for a while and just kind of have fun and try to incorporate everything that i had worked on in the earlier part of my practice session into what i'm doing [Music] me [Music] and by the time i get to that point i usually have to go do something else but if i've gotten through that routine i'll feel good and i'll feel like i've accomplished something that day so i hope what i'm doing can somehow help you give you a plan of attack for your practice sessions so you can feel good at the end of your hour and a half or however long you spend in the shed thanks for watching and i'll see you again in the next bittersacks video [Music] food you

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 88,781

Keywords: bettersax, better sax, jay metcalf, saxophone, sax, sax lessons, learn saxophone, how to play sax, alto sax, tenor sax, sax player, sax teacher, how I practice, practicing saxophone, what to practice, practice routine, practicing improvisation, i practice pro app, i practice pro, apps for practicing, best music app

Id: nY69i_OPhbA

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021