Posted by barb on Apr 9, 2003 in
Saxophone Tonight’s lesson went marginally well. I remembered to ask about an “open embouchure”, and Fred told me not to worry about it. He really just wanted me to know that it could be done, not that I should worry about it yet.
I’ve been working on the William Tell Overture for a couple weeks now, and I thought I had it pretty good. I still have trouble breathing, though. And, when I played it tonight, I consistently missed one of the “ba da dum”s. Weird…it sounded right to me when I played it warming up tonight. Oops.
I also played from low C to high C# using all of the half-steps, and it looks like I know what I’m doing. Yay! I’m playing pretty slowly right now, but some of the fingering feels weird.
I got a new book tonight, too. I’ll start practicing out of it Friday (symphony tomorrow).
Posted by barb on Mar 30, 2003 in
Saxophone I started my lessons with Fred about two months ago, in mid-January. I already feel like I’ve made some good progress, though it may just be that I finally have some feedback.
Currently I’m working on two pieces — “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid and the “William Tell Overture”. The WTO is fun because it makes me work on my tonguing. So far I’ve been a bit lax in my tonguing, and I need to work on being more precise, more quick. KTG is my own choice of piece, because I’m a Disney geek (to some degree), and it was the only piece in my Disney book that was in a key I know how to play (so far I only know C and G).
At my last lesson, Fred played my horn, which is an old 1920s silver horn. Apparently the old horns are notorious for playing out of tune, which is usually corrected by subtle changes in the embouchure. Fred said that mine could be in-tune (or at least close) if I play more “open”. Hmmm…I didn’t ask about that, and I’m not sure exactly what he meant, so I’ll need to remember next time.
Things to remember about embouchure: flat chin, teeth in line, relax the mouth a bit.