How to Play Altissimo on Saxophone (alto and tenor)

do you have trouble getting altissimo notes to play reliably or come out at all on your saxophone you're not alone every saxophone player has struggled with this today I want to share with you the trick that helped me finally overcome the barriers to playing in the altissimo range if you practice what I'm about to show you with time you will be able to play with consistency and confidence in your autism arrange at the end of this video there will be a link where you can download this worksheet it's got your fingerings as well as the exercises we're gonna go over before we begin here are some important things to keep in mind number one you have to practice a lot to get any sort of consistency and fluidity with the altissimo notes I'm gonna show you in this lesson some of the things you should be practicing to help get you there but just keep in mind you got to do a lot of work number two the best saxophone players miss altissimo notes regularly you can hear it on recordings all the time you're gonna miss some notes that's part of it the more you work on this though the more consistency you're gonna have number three with the amount of work necessary to get good at playing out this mo you may need to ask yourself if this is the best way for you to spend your practice time if you haven't yet developed a good sound clean technique solid rhythm a thorough knowledge of your scales and all twelve keys and arpeggios you should really be practicing that stuff first and leave out to smut so later my core essentials program that should be linked up on the screen is a great place to start to get working on all of those fundamentals I just mentioned okay here's the trick you're gonna get into playing the altissimo range by using your front and front F key fingerings instead of your palm key E and F this was something that I learned from Donaldson's a-- a long time ago in a master class and when i started doing this and practicing my scales and exercises using front eat in front f I found it so much easier to just slide into the altissimo range so I'm going to show you how we can do that with some exercises on the worksheet okay first thing I want you to do is get really comfortable with these fingerings so we're gonna start one note at a time we're gonna play our front eat front either the fingering is on the worksheet here we're just gonna play a long tone on front E all right now you want to do that for a while several times until that note feels nice and comfortable you want to be playing with a nice firm embouchure but still stay nice and relaxed do not bite as we get up into our higher notes the tendency is going to be to want to bite and pinch the sound need to have a nice relaxed open throat you need to push the air from your diaphragm and support your Airstream okay so you're gonna work on that for a while once you got a good we can go on to our next exercise here we're gonna play some simple stuff that includes that front E in it so let's play the first three notes of our C major scale C da e and we're going to use that front knee fingering [Music] okay simple enough on the worksheet there's several more exercises for you to practice now we're going to move on to front F we're gonna do the same thing we're going to start with a long tone again you want to get a good sound with a nice core to it good support from your diaphragm don't bite stay nice and relaxed work on again just a beautiful sound on that front F then when you're ready we're going to move on to some of some more exercises that are just playing some scales and arpeggios and melodies with use that front F fingering to get used to using it so we're gonna move down here we've got this one it's a we can play a b-flat minor triad [Music] [Music] okay there's some more exercises and as well as the fingerings on this worksheet now before we move on one thing you've probably heard is everyone says you need to work on overtones in order to help get the altissimo nose out this is absolutely true you definitely should be working on overtones and it's going to help a tremendous amount getting these high notes out we're not going to get into overtones in this lesson again my core essentials program has the overtones exercises I practice every day and shows you exactly how to go through working on those okay now we've worked on front E and front F you've gotten yourself a really good sound and you're comfortable playing those fingerings the next step is to play our first altissimo note now a lot of people start playing the first out this amount is high G high G is one of the hardest altissimo notes to get out we're not going to start with high G we're gonna start with F sharp F sharp is one of the easiest I'll to some notes to get out it's also one of the autism in what you're going to use the most now you might be saying yeah but I've got an f-sharp high F sharp key on my saxophone well so do i but to be honest I haven't used it in about ten years that high F sharp key note is great if you just want to stop there but if you want to ever play higher than high F sharp you should be using your front F key and a finger - sharp finger and using that front F key which I'm going to show you now that's gonna get you into the altissimo range and then it's a real easy to just change one finger one or two fingers to get into G okay so we're gonna do the same thing on the next page of the worksheet there is fingerings for high F sharp as well as some more exercises on Alto if you want to go from F to F sharp it's just you're adding this just a side B flat key to get the F sharp out now that also works on tenor but that for me that the f-sharp Raziel is kind of flat so I do a slightly different fingering it's on the worksheet as well again we're gonna start with long tone on f-sharp I want that note to be consistent have a good sound and be in tune and then let's move on we're gonna play we're gonna play another exercise off the worksheet here this is our F sharp major scale starting from the v so from C sharp up and then bagnat and then back now I'm sort of [Music] [Music] okay so you're gonna practice some exercises like that on f-sharp same thing get really solid confident with high F sharp ounces mo F sharp and once you've put in some time and done the work front e front F front F sharp now it's time to play a G and I want to say something quickly about fingerings just I mean there's just fingerings on this worksheet for you to get you started but if the fingerings is not the thing that matters so much that is not the trick to getting the notes on having the right fingering and you'll see that different saxophone players use different fingerings I use different fingerings depending on what porn I'm playing the fingerings is not what it's about and don't be afraid to try different fingerings if you see in a book somewhere or on somebody's YouTube video other fingerings try them if it works better for you then great what's important here is that you get comfortable playing your front e front F and front F sharp using the those fingerings I've shown you I know you're used to playing those notes with the palm keys but you're going to find that it's much easier to connect into the altissimo range if you start with those front fingerings now once you've worked on those exercises especially the long tones and get a good sound and some consistency with those notes and feel confident now you're ready to try a G and what I want you to do is find your fingering for that practice it a few times without playing okay and then we're just gonna slide from high F sharp into high G on tenor I'm only moving one finger to get from high F sharp to hygiene I'm just lifting up my first finger here [Laughter] and when I first did that when someone showed me this and I first did that and it worked it was uh something clicked and it finally made sense and once I got that I was often running and then I was able to get all the other Altis mu notes above that now I'll let you go ahead and download the worksheet so you can get started practicing these exercises and the fingerings if you got some value out of this video please click the like button and if you haven't done so already consider subscribing with one click right here and I'd love to hear from you all in the comments section below [Music]

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 272,641

Rating: 4.9433961 out of 5

Keywords: better sax, saxophone lessons, learn saxophone, altissimo, high G, how to play high G on saxophone, how to play altissimo, tenor sax, alto sax, altissimo fingerings, sax high notes, free sax lesson, online sax lesson, how to play altissimo on alto sax, how to play altissimo on tenor sax, how to play high notes on saxophone, jay metcalf

Id: vLrAEzu0IN4

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 25 2017