Lesson 4/30/03

This was my second lesson out of the new book, Alto Saxophone Student by Fred Weber in collaboration with Willis Coggins. I must say I quite like the book. It’s very structured — each page can be divided up into a warm up, a quick lesson and a piece or two that use the new information/notes/scale/etc. The pieces are more classical than the other book I was using (The Complete Saxophone Player). I liked the other book, but it was structured more for self-teaching.

Before my lesson, Andrew and I looked at the sheet music, because I had a coupon for 20% off. I found a great book of 50’s songs, so I’ll probably pick one or two out of that book to work on this week. We also got me a spiffy new, soft-sided case for my sax. Yay! I hated the old one it came with — it was original, and the sax was made in the 1920’s, so you can imagine how stylish it was.

One other interesting thing. Fred expressed some amazement that Rudy (the adult student with a lesson right before mine) and I were doing so well. I thought maybe he was trying to say that we just didn’t look like we could do it, so I was prepared to be offended. But he went on to explain that he’s had many adult students, and most of them stick with it for about a month before deciding that they just don’t have the time or patience for it. So the amazement is more that Rudy and I have been at it now for four months.