The first series of exercises are mainly designed for technical facility. Each exercise takes you over quite a wide range of the saxophone and should be practised in all keys, major and minor.
The exercises on these pages do not always show the entire exercises in all keys. Taming the Saxophone Vol 3 has the exercises written out in all keys (and more), though I would recommend that once you know an exercise in one key, you use you memory, ears and brain to play the other keys as soon as possible.
Ex 1.1
This is a great warm up exercise for the saxophone as well as being one of the best exercises for learning harmony. It consists of an ascending four-note (7th chord) arpeggio and a scale down which brings you neatly into the arpeggio built on the next scale tone. You should practice this in every key, I have written roman numerals rather than the chord name to help you get used to thinking about the function and structure of chords built on each tone of the scale. As you play the exercise, think of the root note names for the arpeggios as well as the numeral: chord I = C major 7, Chord II = D minor7 Chord III = E minor 7 etc
I shall be putting this up here in more keys soon. Taming the Saxophone Vol 3 has the exercises written out in all keys (as well as all the other exercises and more), but I recommend that as soon as possible you practice this from memory or by ear. This will help you get an understanding of the chord shapes rather than just exercising your fingers and sight reading
Play Audio
Video demonstration:
Articulation
Try this with various articulations:
legato
legato tongued, (soft tongued)
staccato
bebop
You can use straight quavers (8th notes) or varying amounts of triplet feel. Any speed but you must keep a steady tempo throughout. Don’t slow down for tricky passages then speed up, you should start at a slower tempo. Practise any difficult bits on their own until you can play them as fast as the easy bits.
More Warmup Exercises From taming The Saxophone Vol 3
This exercise is good once you know all your scales, it’s a useful way of playing the scales but with short 4 note groups that are less boring to practice and often more useful for improvising. Practice this in all keys, you will need to adapt slightly to fit, but try to cover the entire range of the instrument not just from tonic to tonic. Try it with harmonic and melodic minor too. When practising the melodic minor it's more useful for jazz to use the ascending version for both up and down. Makes life easier too.
Practice this in all keys, where possible play over two octaves or else adapt to fit the whole range of the instrument. This is a particularly useful pattern which sounds good in improvisation.
This pattern is based around triad arpeggios, but with the diatonic note above and the chromatic note below each chord tone. This is useful for tonic areas of chord sequences.
NEW! TAMING THE SAXOPHONE
All these fingering exercises & lots more!
Discounts when you buy sheet music as well!
All the fingering exercises are available in book format. These contain expanded versions of the online exercises (many of them in all keys) and also a section on tone exercise. 144 pages of fun!
