Taming The Saxophone the ultimate sax site

Pete Thomas Taming two saxophones — Pete Thomas: Taming not one, but two saxophones
Photo: Simon Warren
Concept: Marcelle Ben Haque

Play the saxophone, don’t let it play you!

Learn about the saxophone: how to start out if you are a beginner or how to improve if you are already more advanced. Learn how to speed up your fingering, control your tone and gain versatility.

Find out about extending your range into the stratosphere with altissimo or how to amaze your friends, family and neighbours with special effects. You can also learn the nitty gritty about jazz theory, improvisation and composing.

About Pete Thomas

Pete is a professional session player and TV/Film composer who has featured and recorded for REM, Elton John, Joe Jackson, Richard Thompson, Fats Domino, Jimmy Witherspoon and many more.

More about Pete

What you can buy:

Pete devised and presented a saxophone instruction DVD for Virgin Music (over 20,000 copies sold worldwide). You can also buy his hand made mouthpieces, CDs, sheet music and the now infamous Taming the Saxophone books of saxophone techniques.

All profit is donated to charity More Info

Big discounts when you buy more than one! See here.

“Thanks for your Taming the Saxophone book. Great stuff myself and my students – I wish I’d had the book fifteen years ago!”
– Dan Forshaw

Why am I in a different key to the rest of the band?
This is a very common question, especially from anyone who has just bought a saxophone, taught themselves a little bit and then decides to play along with some other musicians. It can be a big shock to discover that the piano player, guitarist, bass player are all playing in the key of C, but when you join in on your alto or tenor, YOU ARE IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT KEY AND EVERYONE IS GIVING YOU DIRTY LOOKS. Welcome to the world of saxophone transposition.

Saxophone Vibrato

The aim of this exercise is for you to be able to control the rate and depth of the vibrato. To achieve this control over the vibrato, it’s necessary to start with an extremely slow vibrato, in fact so slow it’s not really a vibrato, in the same way that a drummer learns to perfect a roll by starting very, very slowly and gradually building up speed. This takes a long time as it is very important to get the first stage as even as possible (it should be done over a period of weeks rather than days).

Beginners Instruction DVD

In this program, Pete introduces beginners to the alto saxophone: the parts of the saxophone and how to assemble them, fitting the reed, posture and breathing, saxophone embouchure, holding and blowing into the saxophone, tuning, fingering, notes and intervals, tonguing and slurring, bending notes and vibrato, the rudiments of reading music and keeping time, scales, triad arpeggios, how to improvise simple songs, and playing the blues.

CafeSaxophone.com

This is one of the biggest, liveliest and friendliest online forums. It’s a meeting place for players and enthusiasts from beginners to advanced. Here you can read or chat about saxophones, find out about the latest news and contribute to the community. You can just say a quick “hello” or ask about something that’s been nagging you (no question too stupid!).

Or you can help others by sharing your saxophone experiences or by writing an article.