TOP 10 MYTHS about Learning SAXOPHONE

these days there's so much information out there it's hard to know who to listen to in today's video i want to try and debunk some very common myths and misconceptions about learning to play the saxophone some of which might be holding you back and slowing down your progress [Music] hey there j metcalf here from bettersacks.com before i take you through the list of the top 10 myths about learning to play the saxophone i want to let you know that i've put links in the description below to two absolutely free courses the first one is my beginner course or refresher course for anyone who needs to go over the basics of how to play the saxophone and the second one is my playsax by ear crash course be sure to check those out if you haven't done so already now as we're rapidly approaching the 200 000 subscriber mark do me a favor drop me one of these right now and make sure you are subscribed to the channel we're going to be doing a big giveaway contest to celebrate this milestone together and i don't want you to miss out on that now let's get started with my top 10 saxophone learning myths after you watch this video be sure to let me know in the comment section below if there's anything else i could have added [Music] myth number one you need to practice a lot of long tones in order to develop a beautiful sound actually that one's true you do kind of need to practice long tones i know there are plenty of players out there that say they've never practiced long tones and yet they have a beautiful sound but i consider them to be outliers most people get a great sound by working on it and part of that work is almost always some kind of long tone practice and yes i did shave don't worry i'm gonna let it grow back [Music] myth number two you need to start at a very young age to get good at music while starting early will clearly give you a nice head start not all great musicians started early and the rewards for learning to play music are not limited to feeling like you're great at it first of all few people ever reach that point of feeling like they're really great the best musicians in the world are still working to improve their playing every day and second it's the process that delivers the most rewarding experience even if you start learning music late in life you can immediately start enjoying the benefits of the process myth number three you need to practice for 10 000 hours in order to master the saxophone i'm not going to lie if you want to master the saxophone you're going to have to practice a lot but you know you could practice for 10 000 hours and maybe not even accomplish your goals especially if you're not practicing the right stuff in the right way you can also practice for many fewer hours and still get very very good especially if you use your time wisely and efficiently it all depends on your approach again it's better to focus on the process and not hold yourself to a specific timeline i hear from students all the time telling me how they can't believe how much progress they've made in such a short period of time and then other students tell me how frustrated they are with their lack of progress i think this is really a matter of perspective those students could be potentially progressing at the exact same rate but holding themselves to different standards the best thing anyone can do is establish a consistent practice schedule and stick to it always introducing new material and thinking long term [Music] myth number four you need to learn lots of scales and music theory to start improvising not true you can improvise with one note you can improvise on a drum you can improvise by tapping your hand on the table or just with your voice getting started improvising is easy and anyone can do it if you don't think you can go ahead and sign up for my place acts by ear course it's linked in the description below thousands of people have taken this course and i've never had someone tell me they couldn't do it having said that improvised music can have many levels of complexity and if you want to access some of the more advanced ones you are definitely going to want to know your scales and music theory i recommend starting out improvising on a basic level and hopefully this will lead you down a path of discovery toward the more complex and sophisticated possibilities but whatever you do don't be intimidated by improvising it's really not as hard as it sounds [Music] myth number five you need to play fast improvised lines to sound good this is a very common misconception and it's understandable very often when we listen to great improvisers we hear them play very fast lines fast tempos a lot of notes but if you listen carefully you'll also hear those players playing less dense more melodic phrases with fewer notes and simpler rhythms if you don't have the technical ability to play fast double time lines that's fine focus on playing melodic lines that are more rhythmic and more accurate first instead of trying to force speed before the technique is there one of the things that makes great solos for me is how accurately the musical ideas are executed i think it's always better to play more accurate simpler ideas than to attempt to play beyond your own technical level to meet some unrealistic expectation even if you can play fast lines that doesn't mean you always should either it's one of those things that once you've put the enormous amount of time in to develop techniques so that you can play fast you have to make a conscious effort to kind of turn that off or rein it in sometimes to balance things out this is something that really great players do very well [Music] myth number six you need to practice fast in order to play fast this is not entirely true of course you do need to practice at fast tempos at some point in order to play at those tempos but at least for me i get a lot more mileage out of practicing slowly if i want to push the speed of something i'm playing faster the more i practice it slowly the faster i'll be able to play it for example if i want to play something relatively fast let's say 16th notes at 120 beats per minute i'll actually practice it at half speed i'll put the metronome on 60 beats per minute and practice those 16th notes this is going to be at a nice tempo that i could control and play with accuracy good finger position and solid rhythm now instead of increasing the tempo incrementally little by little to eventually arrive at 120 beats per minute what i'll do is once i'm feeling good at that slow tempo i'll just jump to playing it twice as fast i won't even touch the metronome i'll leave the metronome at 60 beats per minute and i'll just jump to double time and often it's there and ready to play if i'm having trouble at the fast tempo i'll jump back to the slow speed really focus on getting it clean relaxed and accurate and then once again when i'm feeling really good i'll attempt it at the double time speed i found this method to produce much better results and allow me to play faster and more accurately than always practicing at my speed limit try it out yourself and let me know how it goes myth number seven you need to do long practice sessions of at least a couple hours every day in order to improve of course long practice sessions can help us improve a lot but shorter ones that are consistent can also help us make a tremendous amount of progress don't fall into the trap of thinking i've only got 30 minutes to practice so no point in bothering since i can't really get any better in such a short amount of time you might not get that much better in 30 minutes of practice but if you did that every single day for a year you would make significantly more progress than if you practice let's say one two hour session every week we all have to make time for practicing and every minute of that time is precious just taking that half hour break from the world to play music can have such a positive impact on our lives regardless of the musical progress we make in that time myth number eight you need to practice overtones in order to be able to play in the altissimo range sorry this one is also not a myth you do need to practice overtones in order to play comfortably in the altissimo range one thing that is a bit of a myth though is that you need a high baffle mouthpiece in order to do it i have always played low baffle mouthpieces on alto and tenor and i've never had a problem getting up into the altissimo range in fact i sometimes find it easier to get altissimo on my low baffled mouthpieces that's probably just because that's what i'm most used to the bottom line is that any good mouthpiece is going to be able to play in the autism range but practice your overtones [Music] myth number nine you have to perfect a concept before moving on to something new this is something i've been guilty of in the past and i know a lot of my students do this as well this approach might work in some other disciplines but in music it's a sure way to slow down your progress conversely i also find a lot of students think that they've mastered a topic after learning about it once and then just want to move on to new things the best approach i think is a mixture of the two i encourage my students to learn a new topic and spend some time on it until they get a somewhat solid grasp of it but then to move on to the next thing with the idea of continually going back and revisiting each topic over an extended period of time so in my pentatonic foundation course for example i tell my students go through the whole course and do like the easy version of all the exercises the first time through once you get to the end the best thing is to go back to the beginning and go through it all again you're going to get so much more out of it the second time through i know that's how it works for me i've been reading books about the same topics and taking lessons and going to master classes on the same musical concepts for many years but i still managed to take away a somewhat deeper understanding of even basic things with repeated study i've also never fully understood a concept the first time around and i don't think very many people do so i strongly encourage students to avoid getting bogged down practicing the same thing for far too long it's better to move on to new material and then go back and revisit some stuff that you worked on earlier and keep going through that process as you progress [Music] myth number 10 conflicting information from different teachers somebody is wrong over my many years of studying the saxophone i have come across very different approaches to the same saxophone concepts by very accomplished and respected teachers if you've been watching a lot of youtube videos you've probably come across some seemingly conflicting information on everything from embouchure to altissimo fingerings to articulation and what to practice and more somebody's got to be wrong right well not necessarily often there's more than one path to get to the same place and what may at first seem to be conflicting information is actually complementary or just another way to say the same thing my advice is for students to listen to the teachers whom they respect and like they're playing even if what they're teaching you seems to go against something you've already learned in the past i have found that some concepts that may have been difficult to grasp at first become much clearer simply by being explained a different way see what works best for you as an individual in any case getting multiple perspectives on the same topic or concept is just going to help deepen your understanding of it i'm not saying that everyone who's teaching saxophone out there is always right about everything but there are clearly multiple approaches that work well and each student should gravitate towards the ones that work best for them keep an open mind and instead of trying to figure out who's right and who's wrong try to understand the different approaches and why they may or may not work for you i hope you got some value out of watching this video and some of the many others here on my youtube channel now might be a good time to go get your horn out and practice thanks for watching and see you soon [Music] oh

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 57,111

Rating: 4.9827666 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, saxophone myths, saxophone lessons, top 10 saxophone learning myths, improvisation, jazz improvisation, jazz saxophone

Id: zjW4JLnz3cY

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020