The LAST Altissimo Lesson You'll Ever Need

[Music] if you work through this book and you can do everything in the book then you're going to be a very good autism player that's ben wendell who by any measure is one of the top sax players in the world today he's been voted the saxophonist with the best haircut nine years in a row and he has developed a particular mastery of the artisan range he's got a new book out called path to altissimo and in this video ben's going to share with us some of his secrets for how he learned how to shred up there like a monster if you've ever wanted to improve your high notes you're going to want to watch this you know everyone wants to know how to play altissimo this is this thing everyone wants to know on the saxophone there's no quick answer there is this path you have to go down this path to get there i'm a i'm a sax nerd you know i'm a sax nerd for life and uh i remember being 15 years old i had a selmer series 2 saxophone and it had a high f sharp on it and i i just thought this was the most amazing thing that i could go higher than high f and i had this special key altissimo to me was this just this this magical art which was it's like these notes that are not built on the saxophone that somehow you can just magically create so i even back then i was really fascinated by by this technique and i remember specifically finally figuring out how to play a high g the effort it took to just get to that point you know and um i just i just never stopped working on this technique and and i've learned so much over the years you know a couple decades in i felt like it was time to kind of share some of the things that i've learned in a way i wanted to write a book that would was for two types of people the first person would be the 15 year old me so you know like a resource that a 15 year old could open up and actually understand but then i also wanted something that would be for like an advanced player and i thought it would be really fun to write material that would be you know something for a player that's kind of maybe has a grasp of it and really wants to push themselves further it's been a journey it's been it's definitely path talatissimo felt like the right title you know because it's it's a really specific um direction and and the way i built the book it's really like here's where you start and here's where you finish you know it kind of increases in difficulty and it's meant to really be this thing that if you if you work through this book and you can do everything in the book then you're going to be a very good altissimo player for someone who's already practicing overtones you get in this book and you're right away you got some maybe familiar things but there's also some new likely some some new exercises things you haven't really explored and so for me right away it was it was great because i'm someone who likes to play overtones and i work on them every day and i was like oh great this is several new ways to kind of to to work on it it's great to get your perspective on all this stuff because uh you would be arguably maybe the best altissimo saxophonist out there or one of the top altissimo uh saxophone i'll take who better to write this book really and if anybody's watching is unfamiliar with ben and is playing he's got several albums out and it's not all out to someone notes you play you play some of the other notes too but i encourage anyone who's watching to go listen to ben's playing his recordings and you'll hear everything that he's teaching in this book turned into actual music so it's not just exercises for the practice room it does have a point somewhere [Music] autism honest exactly has come a long way with a lot of players and and various recordings and now is a good time for this book that you've written because it's bringing for me it's bringing that autism study into the 21st century i put the book together in the way that i would want to learn which is i just really appreciate things that are just clear people at many different levels would understand and i'm including 30 minutes of video footage that of me demonstrating these things just like what you're talking about which i think is really helpful it's like it's one thing to kind of read about a concept and think about it and then it's really helps to also see someone just demonstrate these ideas i really like how you've you're working through this one overtone at a time so like the first overtone exercise and you're playing it much higher than i would normally play and then the the lipstick is going down which is also kind of different than what most people are used to now a quick word from the sponsor of today's video what there's not really a sponsor apart from you the viewer if you enjoy this sort of content with some of the world's best saxophone players one thing you could do to support the considerable amount of work that goes into making these videos is simply click the like button subscribe to the channel and leave a comment below i love reading your comments and replying to as many of them as i can also check out the description below where i've put links to ben's new book path to altissimo as well as lots of other things that saxophone nerds will enjoy clicking on now let's get back to shredding high notes in the book i i think i literally call overtones you know the key to altissimo and i can't emphasize this enough you know the the this thing that we call voicing which is which is how we manipulate our throat and the position of our tongue this is called voicing this is this is what overtones make really make us good at the ability your skill at doing voicing is is everything if i'm going to put down an exercise for the first overtone i really wanted to write down the full range of what's possible so that people can really experience what it means to do you know what what you'd call advanced voicing let's say when you're when you're just really high on the first overtone because it's a different feeling the higher you go the more challenging it is the the window of accuracy that's demanded it just gets smaller and smaller and smaller and it's the same with altissimo the higher we go with the notes the more we want to place the notes in the pitch at the the room that you have to place it just right it gets real small and so all of the overtone exercises that i put in the book i'm i'm really just trying to create opportunities to really explore voicing from like every possible angle so that when you get to the altissimo you're really armed um with a kind of a level of accuracy and control that will just make that experience easier this is the part that is abstract for a lot of people when they're first people like oh what's the fingering just give me the fingering you know it's not that it doesn't matter the fingering yeah it's all done here and and you know in your ear i really believe that the your voicing muscles are like 80 of any altissimo note that the fingerings are are really not super important um you know they're they're important i mean they're relevant but they're not they're not as relevant as you think and so to demonstrate that i play an altissimo high a and i literally just start scrambling my fingers and i just hold the a [Music] when uh mr sax created the saxophone he was not thinking about altissimo fingerings and you know that's that's kind of the the mystery of that art which i love which is that there are no correct fingerings it's all fair game that was kind of a big lesson that i learned in the in the beginning years even through college you know i i just had 10 people show me 10 different fingerings for hive b and actually in fact they all kind of work as long as my voicing is really strong and now it's just really more like which one feels the most comfortable and which one kind of creates the best uh path for me in the best scale the similarity with the rasher book is that you're just like okay the fingerings they don't matter i'm putting them in there but don't even look at that part like i think in the rapture book he says like don't skip to the fingerings you know you'll never get it yeah well you know and it's it's really interesting to talk to um other advanced players that are really strong i mean that are great at autism people that have inspired me you know uh of which there are so many people like joshua redmond mark turner sheamus blake you know i've the being the sax nerd that i am i i've literally you know asked them what fingerings they use for all these high notes and and it's so interesting to just see these different paths and and see what they've figured out and i i love that there's many many different ways you can go the vast majority of what's going to get you your high notes is how good you are voicing and overtones knowing that i basically created a fingering set that has very very minimal movement and and and is not something that feels really complicated you know because most of the control is going to be right here if your voicing muscles are strong if you're advanced to that you can basically push through almost any fingering on almost any horn on any model even if you've been playing out the small and overtones for a long time if you're convinced that a certain fingering is the one that works it's almost like you're psyching yourself out totally accepted this thing like you know what multiple fingerings can work just as well it allows you to rely on the voicing more one thing you might run into a little bit with fingerings is maybe for whatever reason on your horn an altissimo note will generally come in flat generally speaking voicing up the pitch is is a little harder to do so what i like to do is like if if there's quote unquote a problematic note is i'll just try and see if i can find a way to play that note where it's kind of running a little sharp you know it's kind of running a little high and i'm able to just relax and pull pull the pitch down [Music] that's why i always warm up with with overtones long tones and overtones because it kind of like it kind of gets me in the space and then and then altissimo just feels a lot easier if i were to just pick up the horn and then just shred high notes for you know 20 minutes straight without any warm up like i i could definitely hurt myself i don't recommend that anyone practices overtones for more than 30 minutes a day the beauty of this is not just for the autism notes it's for all the notes it's the same process of playing a beautiful note in tune anywhere on the saxophone it's the same thing you need to trust your ear and your voicing and absolutely it's all interconnected i mean for for me overtones have led to not not just control of altissimo but tonal production um you know embouchure strength like i mean i really remember the better i got it at overtones really getting advanced that i just suddenly noticed wow i can i can practice four hours five hours you know i noticed my my chops weren't getting as tired as quickly it really helps you be efficient with with your use of air and your in your embouchure you know you discover oh yeah i don't actually need this much strength to produce this volume or to play high notes you know i think a lot of people get into this thing where they think when i play low notes my embouchure is looser when i play high notes it's really tight you know but you know you discover over time as you get really good at these overtones that that's not the case at all and in fact there there can be in a good way there can be very little difference uh between the embouchure strength you use in the low range of your horn in the high range of your horn you start to get this more uniform way of playing the range of your horn i don't know if the order of these exercises is was done on purpose but i find you know by the time i get to the major scales i'm nicely warmed up because it's that major scale that sound we're so familiar with that really supports the you know using your ear trusting the voicing and then you know okay i'm gonna put those fingers down and that no it's gonna come out so it's those are really great where they are in the book i find i definitely tried my best to create a really logical progression in terms of this book like it really goes from left to right you start you start with overtones then you start to discover you know you start to work out the fingerings and then you get to the exercises and even that you know with the scale choices and the types of exercises i have basic exercises and then more complex sex it's really a progression when you first told me about this book and i said to you oh you know i hope you're going to do a print version because for me i just envisioned because like that rasher book that's one i bought you know 25 years ago i don't know when however long ago i bought that book and i still have it and every now and then i might look in there for something you know and it's a nice reference to have and while digital references are great some things it's nice to have this physical copy well jay literally because of you i'm doing a print version after you checked out the book and you said you know this would be so great to just be able to have this on a music stand i think that specific range of the horn you know whatever you want to call it the break you know like the the place where you go from built no built in notes on the saxophone you know high f maybe high f sharp depending on your model and then suddenly you're in l2 someone that's the hardest part because i i found that from for most people like once you can get a high g high g sharp kind of in that range if you can really get that and just nail it and pop it out of thin air the notes above that are not that much harder you know so that's sometimes easier yeah sometimes they're easier totally i tend to use the front e the front f as my way as an entry point in into altissimo you know i haven't used my high f sharp key all my saxophones have it but i haven't used it i can't remember the last time i used that key it's interesting you mentioned that because i feel the same way it's it's it's a weird thing it's i mean i was so excited when i had my first saxophone that it had a high f sharp i just thought it was so cool but but yeah in fact the deeper you get into altissimo eventually like having that high f sharp or g key like built into the horn you end up kind of not using it i don't do a lot of just practice up in that range um so this is one of the things i really liked about your book is you you put in a lot of exercises you know once you get to that point where you can do your overtones you've got your set of fingerings that work for you okay the next step is okay now you have to make this part of your range has to become something that you can play and i liked what you wrote don't save that work for a particular time or project just start incorporating it in everything you practice i keep saying i'm a sax nerd but it's it's you know in terms of altissimo uh i just love that range of the horn i love how it sounds having that extra octave very early on i just decided even though it is this special technique and even though it's not technically was not intended on the horn i decided this is part of the horn if you imagine it that way then it's going to be a natural thing that you'll just start including it and everything you do so when people ask me you know like yeah how did you get good at altissimo how did you advance that's usually my answer you know it's every day if i'm shedding scales or or patterns or language or kind of anything i just include that octave and and over over time and that's the thing it takes a long time over over time then it just becomes natural you know and i and i don't i don't think about it too much but of course it's it's not i'm not i'm not talking months as you well know it kind of demands that repetition because when you're playing up there for real and you're improvising you just don't have time to think about those fingers they're so they're so strange [Music] you're an accomplished classical musician as well as jazz and something that occurred to me in this book is that this is a book that can appeal to both groups of saxophonists yeah absolutely you know i i started off as a classical bassoonist and saxophonist i feel like those two worlds more and more have come closer and closer together it's just such a straightforward um study of just the fundamental thing it's just it's universal regardless of the style of music you're going to play [Music] totally [Music] [Applause] somebody who's already knows how to smoke and overtones is going to get a lot of information out of it that they're going to be able to use right away someone who's starting from the beginning is going to get a lot of information that's going to that they're going to have years of of work but a really good plan of attack for this yeah that's why it's it's the sort of book that everyone should get mean i but i really mean that this is the book when i when you first sent it to me i remember i texted you right away i said this is you've written the new altissimo book for the 21st century and foreign thank you man i really appreciate that [Music] the goal with getting better at this technique is all of course always music you know and and not just be able to scare off you know dogs or something you know so but you know but but i thought it was important to include just actual pieces of music at the end so you can actually apply this idea and see what that feels like what i love about working on this technique is it's everything is fair game you know so i i put some bach in there i i talk about how um transcriptions are a great option too i'll take i'll often do often do transcriptions of player famous players that didn't play altissimo because they're perfect candidates to take up an octave like a lot of a lot of charlie parker solos like he doesn't he doesn't really go above high f very often so he's like it's perfect you know it just fits really nicely and then i decided to just write some really hard ones of my own just just just for the sake of doing it i'm going to be working out of this book for a long time and i'm going to get one of these buck pieces down you know i'm gonna do it i can't wait to hear it man well you might have to wait a long time [Music] thanks ben for writing this great book and uh helping me and so many people i'm sure are going to get so much out of studying path to altissimo and thanks for being our guest here thank you so much jay man such a pleasure to hang and and and thanks for spreading the word and and and checking out the book i really appreciate it [Music] bye

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 40,340

Rating: 4.9625373 out of 5

Keywords: bettersax, better sax, jay metcalf, saxophone, sax, sax lessons, learn saxophone, how to play sax, alto sax, tenor sax, sax player, sax teacher, ben Wendel, altissimo, how to play altissimo, high notes on saxophone, altissimo lesson, how to play altissimo G on saxophone, Advanced saxophone techniques, saxophone shredding, altissimo alto saxophone, altissimo tenor saxophone

Id: H_1z785FDA8

Length: 21min 48sec (1308 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021