How to Play OVERTONES on Saxophone for a better SOUND

in this video I'm going to explain how to play overtones on the saxophone but more importantly why it's important to your sound practicing overtones will help improve your saxophone sound there's no doubt about it but you've got to be doing it correctly otherwise you could just be making things worse my name is Jay Metcalf and on this channel I make videos to help you become a better saxophone player so if you're not already subscribed and you're interested in the saxophone this might be a good channel to add to your youtube subscriptions recently I made a video about how to play in the altissimo range and in that video I said you got to do lots of different warm-up exercises to be able to get consistency in the altissimo notes among those warm-up exercises was practicing overtones and I got tons of questions from people asking me to do a video on overtones so here is normally this is not the sort of thing I would expect people to want to watch on YouTube me playing overtones but you asked for it overtones are one of those slightly unpleasant things that we get a lot of benefit from but we don't really like to do like going to the gym or eating your vegetables I remember when I first started playing overtones I would ask myself why on earth am i practicing this hey I had saxophone teachers telling me you want to sound good you want to be good a saxophone you have to practice overtones sound familiar problem is the benefits of overtones are not immediately evident to the average developing saxophone player they certainly weren't obvious to me what good can honking out horrible sounding notes and squeaks do for my saxophone playing so the result of this unpleasantness was that I would just dabble in overtones from time to time I would work on it until the unpleasantness was too much to take and then I would give up it wasn't until I started practicing overtones daily for a standed period of time I'd say at least a month that I could see the concrete benefit of doing this so it's really the sort of thing number one you've got to start doing it and you got to stick with it for a while even though it's unpleasant so today I want to help you get over that hump earlier in your saxophone playing journey or at least just get over that hump better late than never [Music] so we've established that practicing overtones is unpleasant it's unpleasant for the player but also for anyone who happens to be listening if you really want to annoy your neighbors practice a lot of long tones now keep in mind that's what overtones sound like after practicing them daily for years in the beginning they sound significantly worse the basic premise of overtones is that when you play any note on saxophone or just about any musical instrument for that matter your ear is hearing a combination of the notes that you're actually playing and several other different notes above that note these extra notes that we're hearing above follow a specific pattern which we call the overtone series different instruments have different amounts of these overtones presence in their sound and it's the individual combinations of overtones that helps to make a clarinet cell like a clarinet and a flute sound like a flute and a saxophone sound like a saxophone and we play these overtones by holding down the fingers for lower notes and skipping over the fundamental pitch that would normally come out and instead shoot for the different overtones above that note when you press your octave key what is doing is it's essentially inventing a small amount of air at the beginning of the saxophone - and that results in jumping up to the first overtone in the series which is an octave higher than the low version of that note [Music] does that blow your mind a little bit now to get started I like for you to play your low B flat sometimes when we try to play these low notes on the saxophone they don't come out as we want them to this is usually because we are not putting enough air through the saxophone there is a problem with our embouchure or we've got some leaky pads or some combination of all three of those the note that comes out instead of the low B flat in this case will usually be B flat an octave higher or one of the other overtones in the series of overtones so the first thing we want to be able to do is control which note comes out when we try to play our lowest notes on the saxophone the Bell Keys we can get some of those overtones out by mistake easily enough but we really want to be able to get that fundamental low B flat to come out when we want it to first play a nice beautiful long tone on your do this several times and really lock into the sound and connect with the sensation of how the instrument resonates in your skull and in your hands this is one of those cool things about the saxophone that we don't really get so much with other instruments because of the connection of our top teeth on the mouthpiece the saxophone kind of becomes part of our body or really we've become part of the saxophone when it's being played because we're all resonating and vibrating together long tones on the lowest notes are a great way to explore this connection be sure to watch my video on how to get the low notes out on your saxophone if you're having any trouble down there now once you're getting a full sound on that low B flat you're filling the horn with air you've got a nice open and relaxed throat sing that note an octave higher go ahead and play your middle b-flat your normal fingering for b-flat so you can hear that note first then sing it [Music] we need to sing that note first because we need the sound of it in our eater before we can go to the next step which is to finger our low B flat but get the B flat an octave higher to sound [Music] this should be pretty easy to do if you follow these steps so you're going to now want to practice long tones on low B flat and B flat an octave higher but all with the same fingering go back and forth between these two notes the fundamental and the first overtone many times until you have total control over which one comes out and you can sustain the note with a nice pure sound [Music] now you may feel other notes wanting to try to creep into what you're playing your job now is to filter those other notes out and really focus on getting a pure tone on your target notes your low B flat the fundamental and B flat an octave higher the first overtone now there are a few easy ways to get these different overtones to come out you can bite your Reed you can close off your throat you can use a weak airstream but I don't want you to do any of those things for obvious reasons I want you to get this first overtone out by making an adjustment similar to what you do when you're singing and you change no do you change pitch go ahead and try that out now I want you to sing a low B flat and then a B flat an octave higher you'll notice that your throat changes its shape to get the different pitches out [Music] playing overtones correctly requires us to use our throat in a similar way just like when we sing we have to make adjustments to get the different pitches out we're going to be doing something very similar with the overtones we're going to be making adjustments in our throat to get the different overtones to sound so while hearing the target note in our ear in our head we're going to experiment with our throat and try to find this sweet spot that allows that target overtone to sound while we're fingering our fundamental pitch if you're forcing these overtones out by biting by closing up your throat by moving your jaw around or any other bad saxophone technique you're not actually practicing anything accepts bad habits there's no point in practicing overtones unless you're playing them the same way you want to play the other notes on the saxophone one of the biggest mistakes developing players make when they practice overtones is they contort their faith and mouth and throat and body in so many different ways to force these overtones out but that has nothing to do with the reason we're practicing them so please take your time with this don't try to go through the whole series of overtones right away work on the first overtone get it under control with good technique make sure you're using your best embouchure a full Airstream and you've got a nice open and relaxed throat you can see when I'm doing this the only movement is happening in my throat which is just changing its shape I'm not constricting or tightening or closing just adjusting the shape by practicing these overtones daily over time my muscles remember where to go most of the time to get these different overtones to come out I'm improving my ability to play in the extreme registers of the saxophone with good technique while at the same time improving my sound all throughout the horn that's why we practice overtones and that's why it works once you can reliably get the first overtone out you just repeat the process for the other notes in the series [Music] take your time here your priority is using correct embouchure throat and air technique otherwise you're not actually practicing anything useful there is no race to get up to the third and fourth octave of overtones like everything else with music you'll actually get there faster by going slower you can also work on the overtones on some different notes you can you can use the fingering for a low B low C C sharp even D [Music] in my core essentials course there are some video lessons that take you through my different overtone warm-up exercises so check out the link in the description if you want to dive a bit deeper into improving your saxophone sense if you found this video helpful please click the thumbs up button go ahead and share this video with anyone else who may be interested if you're not already subscribe get yourself subscribed thank you for watching see you in the next [Music]

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 198,681

Rating: 4.9540434 out of 5

Keywords: BETTER SAX, jay metcalf, overtones, series of overtones, saxophone sound, how to play saxophone, improve saxophone sound, good sound on saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor sax, sax, saxophone, saxophone lessons, saxophone tutorial, harmonics, altissimo, sound exercises for saxophone, how to get a good sound on saxophone

Id: H7MkMvfJfnc

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 18 2018