6 Ways To Make Long Tones More Fun

The best way to build your tone on saxophone is with long tones. But let’s be honest, they can be pretty boring.

Nigel: Long tones are an essential part of your saxophone practice, whether you’re just getting started, or you’re coming back to playing sax. So today, we’re going to share 6 ways that you can spice up your sax practice and make better progress on your sax, but also have a lot more fun in the process.

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Are long tones boring?

Nigel: So Joel, in Sax School, we’re helping thousands of saxophone learners.  And so often people come to us with the notion that long tones are really important, but that they’re also really boring. So there’s friction, because they don’t really to do it. We see that, don’t we? How do we deal with that?

Joel: Well, yeah, it’s really common. I think the first thing to go is the long tones, but they’re just so important. And I think the key is to try and find different ways of doing these long tone exercises that are fun. So switching it up and doing them in different ways, and not just sticking to one routine for years and years.  You’ve got to find different ways of doing them because they’re really important. We play lots of long tones in our performance.

Why practice long tones

Nigel: That’s the thing, you see. The reason people talk about long tones and suggest you should practice long tones is because it’s something that actually comes up in playing. And it does boost our development as a player as well.

However, I’m all about being more efficient with our practice. So it’s a great idea to think about practising in a way that not only combines different techniques but also prepares us for real-world playing.

Because, at the end of the day, we’re not learning saxophone just so we can be good at long tones or good at scales.We’re learning saxophone so that we can play beautiful music and share it with lots of other people.

So really for me all the stuff that we do in Sax School is very much focused on real-world playing, real-world progress and results.

So what do you reckon, Joel? Should we dig into these 6 ways that we can make long tones more fun?

Joel: Definitely. Let’s get into it. 

#1 Incorporating Dynamics in Long Tones

Nigel: So the very first one that I’d like to kick off with is an easy idea. But  it’s step one on the process of making things more interesting with long tones. And that is simply to incorporate dynamics with your long tones. 

So let’s say you’re working on a long tone on something easy like a middle G. Have your metronome on so that you can see how long you’re playing it for. But then think about starting as soft as you possibly can.

And let’s say you’re playing the note at with a beat going at maybe 60 beats a minute, and you’ve got a 10-count note that you’re going to try and hold it for. It’s quite a long note.

Let’s start super quiet and spend five of those counts going from the softest you can to the loudest you can possibly get to.

And then without stopping, the next five counts are from loudest back down to as soft as possible.

Now, I don’t know about you, Joel, but the first time I tried doing this, I found it really difficult.

Joel: it’s challenging, surprisingly challenging. You’ll find that your intonation goes all over the show. When you first try this, you’ll go flat and sharp as you get quiet and loud. So it takes quite a lot of control. This make it more challenging, and therefore more interesting, because we like a challenge.

But also – we use dynamics all the time in our playing. We’re going to want to make notes that get louder and get quieter and play at different dynamics because it’s one of the most important things in shaping a piece of music. So if we’re not able to find a way of practising them outside the piece, where we start playing all these out-of-tune, dynamic lines, then we’re going to be in really big trouble.

Joel: So it’s a really practical thing to do. But it’s also something to focus on while you’re doing those long tones, to make it more interesting. 

Nigel: Absolutely. It makes the time pass. Those 10 counts at 60 beats per minute seem to go a lot quicker when you’re sweating bullets trying to play that really soft note, or to keep control and get really loud.

Nigel: And the other thing is, we see some students that always practice loud and other students that always practice soft. But we need to be able to do both loud and soft.

I think the other interesting thing, Joel, is that you very much think about learning repertoire in a jazz idiom. That’s the thing you’re really into. And dynamics are super important there for expression.

But also, if you’re thinking about playing in any sort of ensemble, whether that’s a concert band or a big band, or even a function band, you still need to know how to use dynamics. Because there’s going to be times when you need to play soft and times when you need to play loud.

Nigel: So number one, playing soft to loud. What’s the second thing we can do to spice up our long tones, Joel? 

#2 Playing long tones with a tuner

Joel: Well, obviously what we were talking about there with the loud-to-soft and soft-to-loud – if you’re going to be working on your intonation, you’re probably going to want a tuner.

And that’s the standard way of working on your tuning, your intonation –  that you do long tones along with the tuner.  You get the smiley face or the green light coming on as a guide to what you’re doing.

However, there are other ways of doing long tones and other ways of working on your tuning. 

Practicing with a drone

Joel: And one that I really like to do and my students love as well is working with drones. Now there’s a thousand websites and apps that you can download that generate just drone sounds. Some of them are kind of very electrical sine waves and things like that. But there are also some really nice indian tanpura ones. There’s some really interesting drone sounds out there. 

Joel: So I like to put on a drone and then I’ll do my long note practice. And generally, I’m trying to tie the two things together.

So let’s say I was going to do some long note practice and I was going to play through a C major scale. Maybe I put a C drone on. Or maybe even a G drone, a dominant drone is always quite nice to hear. But then I’d be using my ears to try to tie in with that drone. And just listening to the interaction between my saxophone and the drone, it’s really all-encompassing.

You really get into it, but actually what am I practicing? I’m practising long tones. I may be doing some dynamics with it as well. But I’m now in this kind of droney environment, which is just so nice to listen to. And it really helps you focus on your intonation in a much more realistic way than working with a tuner. Using a tuner is also important, but I’d generally reserve for when you’ve got issues and you’re trying to identify where those issues are.

Tuners are great, but it can also become a bit disheartening waiting for the perfect green light, because tuning isn’t perfect. It’s a negotiation. It’s a negotiation with the other musicians, or in this case, a negotiation with my drone. 

A natural sense of tuning

Nigel: Yeah. Yeah. I love that Joel.  I also think that there’s something about practising with the drone that gives you a more natural sense of tuning than just watching the tuner and trying to get every note absolutely in tune I’m sure there are cleverer people than me that understand the science of all this, who will probably be writing me a letter and telling me why.

But this becomes really apparent to me if I’ve been practising a lot by myself with the tuner and then I go play with the band, versus If I’ve been practising with a drone and then go and play with a band. That always seems to be more natural.

And I wonder if part of that is what you mentioned before. When you practice with a drone through a scale, for example, you get to feel that relationship between the note you’re playing and the drone note. Because obviously, sometimes it’s going to be more it’s going to feel more natural as you’re harmonically closer to the drone note. In your C major scale example, with a C drone or a G drone. But other notes are going to be quite dissonant. They’re going to be quite a long way away from that drone note. And they’re going to be creating that tension. Which is, it’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing, but it’s about getting used to that feeling. What’s your thoughts on that, Joel? 

Joel: Yeah, 100%. I think the thing about it is, that a tuner itself is completely passive. It’s sat there, reacting to what you play.

Whereas, using a drone is completely the other way around. It’s active. You’re hearing the drone and you’re reacting to it. And that’s a very different thing. Particularly if you use more realistic drones, if you like. Then, what you’re hearing in there is you can hear the overtone series. So the saxophone is full of overtones, everything’s full of overtones. So there’s actually multiple things you’re able to match to assess your tuning, which I think is just a much more organic and natural to do.

Drones and modes

I recently did an Explore Jazz course in Sax School, which was actually all about musical structures and how we notate them and things like that. But part of that was looking at modes. And the way that I got the students working on modes was with a drone. Because as you play through the different modes, which have got very different intervallic structures, these dissonances and these changes – that being flattened or that being sharpened – against this this tonic note drone really makes the sound of it pop out. It makes it really lively and memorable.

So I think there are lots of benefits and it’s just a nice thing to practice. And I know quite a few of my students who haven’t tried it before, just become obsessed with playing with drones. Not just long notes, just having a bit of a play over one. And there’s something about it that’s very cathartic, I think. 

Nigel: Yes, cathartic. I like that word. And obviously, also, it’s really preparing you for that situation when you are playing with other musicians and you have to listen for the intonation, within a section or within a band. So it’s all very practical.

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#3 Playing Along with Backing Tracks

Nigel: So we’ve given you two excellent ideas so far, but I’ve got a third one for you. And this is something that we do quite a lot in Sax School. And it’s simply playing your long tones along with a backing track or a recording.

So there’s lots of different ways you could do it. You could probably try and put something like this together by yourself. But in Sax School, we’ve created a bunch of 5 minute workouts, where you have got a backing track with a band in all sorts of different styles. And then you play through a warm-up along with that backing track.

So we’ve got a bunch of them that are long-tone type warm-ups. And the members absolutely love them. We’ve got other warmups that work on intervals, and some that work on technique, or tonguing.

But the ones with the long tones and a groove, are fantastic, because you’re thinking about your intonation and the quality of your sound. But you’re also thinking about your sense of time, rhythm, and feel.

So it’s really practical and very much like what you would do in a real-life situation with a real-life band. So guess what? You’re working on your embouchure. You could also put it up a notch and work on your dynamics. So you can combine all sorts of different things. What do you think, Joel? 

Joel: I love it. Combining them all, I mean, this is the thing. When you think about long tones, and I think this is what in particular a lot of beginners think about, they just think about this boring, playing exercise of just blowing a long note. And that’s all there is to it. But I think we’ve already demonstrated that there are so many skills you’re working on within that.

And it’s so important to your general musicianship. As a budding musician they’re absolutely critical, because they just work on everything. Everything’s being worked on in those long tones.

And don’t forget, we are like musical athletes. So you wouldn’t run a marathon without doing some stretches. We’ve got to warm up our embouchure. We’ve got to warm up our horn itself. It needs warming up. It’s probably cold. It’s been sitting in a room being neglected for a day and it needs some love. So, there are physical reasons that we need to do this as well as kind of practical reasons. So it’s a really all-encompassing topic.

Nigel: Yes. Don’t neglect your warmups. That’s what we’re saying.

now, Joel, you’ve got an excellent fourth tip. But just before we get to that, Just a reminder that if you do want to improve your sax playing this year, don’t forget to follow the podcast because we’re putting out episodes all the time. We’re working really hard in the background, and we don’t want you to miss any of those.

But hey, if you’re feeling extra generous today, honestly, it would make our day – you’d be our hero! – if you could take a second out of your day to leave us a five-star review. That would absolutely be mega. So, In advance, thank you so much for that five-star review. Okay, so Joel, what’s the fourth way that people can make long tones more fun?

#4 Combining Long Tones with Improvisation

Joel: Okay, so just talking about combining things, here’s a great one that I do with my students who are particularly interested in improvisation or studying jazz. And this is working on specific sounds on chords. And I love this exercise, it’s one of my favourite ones to do.

So Let’s say that you’ve realized that you love the sound of the ninth on a minor chord. And you played it in a tune. Maybe it’s been the note in a melody and you thought, ‘Oh, that’s the most beautiful note I’ve ever heard. I’d really like to get that into my vocabulary, into my playing and into my improvisation’. Well, there’s a couple of things you’ve got to do.

You’ve got to learn what that ninth is. What note is it? Is it that E on that D minor chord or that G sharp on that F sharp minor chord? And that’s the kind of theoretical side of it.

But you’ve also, and this is more important, you’ve got to learn the sound of it. Because how are you going to decide that’s the right note to play, to express the emotion you want to express, if you don’t know what it sounds like?

It’s a really important side of music, to understand this. It’a why film compositions are so emotive. They pick exactly the right notes to make you feel like the scene you’re watching.

Learning specific sounds using long tones

And we need to do this in our practice as well. So if I find a note that I really like, maybe the first way I might do it is just find an exercise play along.  Let’s say it’s eight bars going through all 12 minor chords. And I’ll put it on. So now I’ve got that practical element that we talked about earlier. I’ve got a backing track that’s helping me with my tuning and helping me with my clarity and voicing of that note.

But now I’m playing a really specific sound. So I’m learning what the 9th is because I’ve got to think, well, what’s the 9th? And I’m learning it on every one of those chords, but at the same time, I’m also hearing what it sounds like. I’m getting a repetition of what it sounds like. So aurally, I’m getting repetition and learning this sound.

But what else am I doing?  I’m doing long tones. I’m working on my breathing. And I’m doing some long-tone practice. I could even do, once again, some dynamics in those. So I’m really multitasking with this. But once again, it’s interesting. The time goes past really quickly and it’s something I want to learn. I want this sound in my playing.

Practicing long tones over a melody

Joel: Now you could do the same kind of thing with repertoire itself. So I did an Explore Jazz course on the tune, My Funny Valentine. I’m just picking that one because it’s a ballad. It’s nice and slow. You could do a similar thing and just play long chord tone targets through the entire thing.

And remember long tones don’t necessarily have to just be the same tone for the duration of your breath. You can play several tones during that. Not too many, but something like a ballad would be really good. I could just play key chord notes or even roots or anything that I wanted to. And if they changed twice within that breath, that’s not a big deal. I’ve still practised my long tones. I’m still learning things and it’s still an all-encompassing method. That’s teaching me multiple things at the same time. 

Nigel: Oh yeah, I love that Joel.

Exploring Anchor Notes and Root Notes

Nigel: And here’s something, you touched on it briefly there too, about the root notes. So we call them anchor notes in Sax School. I love the idea of doing a ninth because that’s an interesting sound that so many people neglect when working through the harmony of a song.

But you could work through the whole form of a song using any of the anchor notes or root notes. And it’s a great way of learning a new standard. So it really enforces the harmony. So for example, taking a new tune you’re working on and just playing through long tones on the first degree of the scale or the root.

Or you could do it all the way through on the third or on the fifth. Or the seventh or the ninth or whatever. So spending time working through forms of songs like that is such a great way to solidify your understanding of the harmony. 

And as you hear those sounds, you get used to the way that those different harmony notes, or the anchor notes, or the chord tones, fit in relation to the actual chords themselves. It just boosts your understanding of that song. It’s really powerful.

Bonus Tip: Isolating Difficult Notes

Nigel: Hey, I’ve got a little bonus tip though. Can I be a bit cheeky and stick a bonus one in here, Joel? 

So I think your last one was number four, so this would be kind of like 4a if that’s okay. Okay, so this is a little bonus exercise that I actually do in my own practicing quite a lot. It’s a simple idea.

What I like to do when I’m learning a melody is to isolate some notes in that melody and focus on them. Now it could be because they are difficult notes, because of the way that they fit in the melody. Maybe there’s a leap up to them, or I struggle with the tuning on that particular note. Or it could just be random notes as we go through.

So what I do is, I’ll start playing through the melody. It could be My Funny Valentine, or anything really. But then when I get to that note, I’ll just sit on that note and play it as a really long tone. So I’ve arrived at it in the context of the melody, but then when I get to that note, I sit on that note and I like to make it last as long as possible. I really try and focus on the quality of the sound. I think about everything that’s going on to control that note to make it sound as good as possible.

And then I’ll flow on with the rest of the melody until I get to the next note that I want to stop. So I find breaking up a melody in this way helps me to fix any little inconsistencies that I might have in the flow of the melody. Mixing it up and choosing notes at random is a great way to come across some things that you didn’t know were going to be difficult notes.

Often in a melody there are unloved, awkward forgotten tones in the flow of the melody and practicing in this way can highlight them. The end result is that we get really confident on every single note in a melody and that makes the whole thing flow so much better. Have you ever done something like that Joel?

Combining Techniques for Better Melody Retention

Joel: One thing I would say, you could combine both of the those things we just talked about. So you could go through the entire tune doing long notes on the roots and the thirds of the chords. Then you’ve worked with the melody isolating specific notes. So by doing that, not only have you learned all the benefits of long tones and intonation, but potentially you’ve also been working on memorizing the piece.

And I think that’s another benefit of a thing like this – you’re really thinking about it. By the end of it, not only do you know the melody really well and focus on the problematic parts of it, but you’ve played all the chords and you probably know the chord structure as well. So, once again, it’s just this multifaceted attack that is long tones. You know, it’s sounding more exciting as we go on, I think. 

Nigel: Yes, we are making it fun, Joel. I don’t care what anyone says. We are making long tones fun.

Hey, it makes me think of something though as you talking about that, Joel. You know, something we hear a lot from our students who are new to learning repertoire. They say it’s so difficult to learn these songs. How can we make it easier to retain songs and learn them more quickly?

But all of the things that we’re talking about today, if you put them into practice as you’re learning melodies, it really helps to solidify your learning of a melody. So going through a melody with long tones, thinking about isolating those tones that we talked about in the melody, thinking about going through the harmony and going and digging out the different anchor notes or chord tones.

It’s like you’re really doing a deep dive on a melody when you apply all of those warm-up techniques to a melody. I find it just helps me to remember a song so well. In fact, if you do proper focused practice with all of these elements here today on a melody, you’ll get to the point where you can’t forget the melody because it’s so entrenched in your mind.

So have a think about that next time you have a challenge of learning a melody and see if you can apply some of these things.

All right, so I feel like we’re getting excited here, Joel, because, you know, who thought long tones would be such a fun thing to talk about? All right, well, I better move on to my fifth tip before I get too excited.

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#5 Tone Matching Exercise

Nigel: We’ve got six in total, but this is number five. Number five is an exercise that I do pretty much every day in my practice session. And it’s a simple exercise of tone matching. Now a lot of people talk about this online because it is such a powerful tool. In its simplest form, tone matching is where we take a note that we play in the normal way. For example, a normal Bb – first finger on our left hand with the little bis key, or two fingers on the left hand of the side key on the right hand.

We get that note sounding good and in tune. And then we swap to the overtone fingering for that note. So for the Bb, we would go from the normal Bb to fingering the low Bb but trying to get the tone, the timbre, and intonation the same. So this is a great way to start approaching overtones. Makes it very accessible.

But also, a magic thing happens in the back of your throat when you do this in a focused way. Because we start to make these little micro-adjustments in the back of our throat, in order to get the overtone pitch to be the same as the normal pitch. And I find it really boosts the sound that you’re making.

Nigel: Most people after a couple of sessions of this, it makes their sound really broad and big. So I’ll do that on a series of overtones for low Bb. I’ll do it on the middle Bb. On the octave F, and then low B flat, but getting the overtone. And then the second octave B flat, then again going to the low B flat, but getting the same note as an overtone.

I find it’s a really accessible way to do it, and it’s a great way to boost your tone. So that’s definitely something that I’d suggest everybody incorporate into their practice. It must be something that you do with your conservatoire students as well, Joel. 

Impossible overtone challenge

Joel: Yes, I do. And there’s kind of an extra that you can do with this. You can actually do it the other way around. So as you do get more familiar with your overtones, you could start off by playing the note itself. You could then play the overtone, just like you’ve described. But then you go back to the original note and you try and match the quality of the tone of the overtone with your normal fingering.

This is a really interesting one, because there’s something about the overtone sound. It’s got a really broad, thick sort of sound to it. It’s slightly different to the saxophone, but it’s kind of richer in a way. And particularly in the second octave on saxophone. When you’ve got your octave key on, the sound is always a bit thinner.

Let’s say you play a low D. So when you play a low D on the saxophone, you’re hearing the overtone series. It’s part of the timbre of that note. So you’re actually hearing very quietly the D above it, then the A above that, and then the D above that.

However, when you play your middle D, You’re actually playing the first overtone. So now that the first octave at the beginning of the overtone series doesn’t exist in that sound, and therefore it sounds a bit thinner. So by playing that as an overtone or playing a note as an overtone, where you’ve got the whole overtone sound going on, and then going to one of these notes in the next register that doesn’t have the full range in its timbre, but trying to match the full range – it really opens out your tone. Your tone gets bigger.

It’s an impossible challenge. You’ll never do it. It’s physically impossible, but from an imagination point of view, it’s really good for me. And it just really opens up your sound when you practice this kind of thing.

Also trying to match the intonation of your overtones is important as well, with your normal fingerings. That’s how instrument technicians tune up their horns and make sure it’s all set up properly. They use overtones to do that. So, it’s a great way of just kind of checking tuning and opening up your sound. It’s a great exercise to do. This is why it’s talked about by so many people all the time.

Nigel: Absolutely. We hear from students all the time where they say, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t believe how my sound is so much bigger from just a couple of weeks of doing this.’

Nigel’s bonus B flat warmup

Just one little secret on this Joel. When I’m doing this, in my own practice, I’ll actually start on the low Bb. I always start my warm-ups on my low Bb.

So the sequence I would do is low Bb, and then the first overtone, and then the normal Bb fingering to match the pitch that way, and then down to the low Bb. So I’ll either go that route, or I’ll go the opposite direction. I’ll play the low Bb, get that sound great, then the low Bb, the first octave Bb, then the overtone Bb, matching the quality of the sound, and then down to the low Bb.

Nigel: And then I’ll do that loop again, but up to the F, and then I’ll do that loop again, up to the second octave Bb, and continue working up, all the way up into the altissimo.

And the bonus thing that I get out of doing it that way, is that I’m always thinking about keeping my embouchure as set as possible. So, I’m trying to make as little movement in my embouchure as possible. And that really sets me up for being a lot more confident in my altissimo notes. And again, it really magnifies the benefit of boosting the quality of your sound. So there you go. That’s my bonus tip for the way that I do the overtone Bb pitch matching thing.

So I tell you what, Joel, just before we move on to the final one I’ve got a question for you. 

Practical ways to use overtones

Nigel: Maybe you could share with people in a practical sense how these types of overtone warm-up long tone exercises can be applied in general playing. Have you got any thoughts on that?

Joel: Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, pretty much everything we ever practice is going to be useful in a performance or playing situation and overtones are no different.

Improvising with long tones

So apart from the benefits we’ve already talked about, here’s how I would use it in an improvisation. For example, let’s say that I was in the key of E flat. And one thing that you’ll notice about the overtone series, particularly in the natural range of the saxophone, is it forms a major triad.

So if I play my overtones off my low b flat, I’m going to get a b flat major triad. So if I was playing in the key of e flat, with the dominant being b flat – it’s a good choice – it generally tends to fit a lot of things in there. I could use those overtones as part of my improvisation. Maybe I’d use them as a bass line. Maybe I’d use it as a call-and-response idea. There are loads of different ways I could use it. And it adds not only some different sounds into it, but it adds a different type of tension. It sounds like I’m playing with somebody else because that timbre of it has a different vibe. And it’s just interesting.

Joel: It’s just another sound that I can use. It’s another tool in my toolbox to generate ideas. And they sound great. If you listen to any of the modern jazz players, Michael Brecker, Chris Potter, or any of them, you’ll hear them using overtones in their solos, and they sound great.

Play in overtones

And don’t forget as well, you can actually just play permanently in overtones. So you could literally play lines and melodies just in those overtones after a lot of practice. And it gives a really haunting sort of Eastern sound. Something about it sounds like the desert to me. But you know, there are loads of things we could do with them.

Nigel: Yeah, I like that. Sounds like a desert. Yeah, it does. But again, that health warning, right? Best to practice this when you haven’t got significant others in close proximity. Because it’s probably really painful for everybody else to listen to you practising these types of things, even though they’re so good for you.

Nigel: So, hey, I also think those overtones work really well in a blues setting too. That’s one of the places that I would use in a practical sense, those types of exercises.

Rightio, we’ve got one more tip. Tip number six. So Joel, what’s the final way that we could use to make long tones even more exciting?

Joel: Well, we’ve talked about a lot of really specific things to do here. And all those things are super useful and we’ve explained why they’re good. But you could also just do some long tones because they sound nice. And what I mean by this, is just doing them completely freely.

#6 Free Expression Long Tones

Joel: We’re not doing a specific order of notes or a specific scale or anything like that. We just shut our eyes and take a breath and play the first maybe two notes that come to mind as long tones. And I absolutely love this as a long-tone exercise.

So basically I’ll just shut my eyes, I’ll play the first note that comes into my mind, and what I’m listening for are three specific elements.

• I’m listening for the attack of that note
• I’m listening for the sustain of that note
• And I’m listening for the decay of that note

These are the three areas that make up a pitch. I’m obviously really aware of the tone shaping within that as well. And I’m thinking about intonation, but I’m not really overly concerned with that side of it.

I’m just listening to what it sounds like in a very organic way. And I’ll just play one note, and halfway through my breath I’ll go to the next note. So I just listen to what my saxophone sounds like.

Meditative long tones

Now, I find you start doing this, and you can open your eyes and find you’ve been doing it for a very long time and time’s passed in a weird way. And you feel a bit strange and floaty and like you don’t know where you are. There’s something incredibly meditative to it. Just shutting your eyes and listening to your own tone, and trying to shape it almost like you’re an external force on it.

It’s a great exercise. It’s just so nice. I actually use this sometimes as a warm down rather than a warm up. It’s like the fun, free version of long tones. And it’s just great for you. It’s so good for you. It’s really cathartic and nice. I’ve used that word a couple of times, I think. 

Nigel: That sort of practice that you mentioned is meditative. And I think that’s the magic of it really. Because I think when you focus so much on the sound, you’re also thinking about your breathing, you’re thinking about your mouth, you’re thinking about your physiology. You’re checking if you are relaxed in your shoulders and all that sort of stuff. And that’s when you can really internalize the sound, the feeling in your body that you want to get back to every single time that you want to get a great tone on your sax, which is every time we play, right? So focussed practice is everything.

I’ve got a question for you though. When you’re doing that exercise, are you thinking about a pair of notes or an interval between notes? What’s your process there? 

Joel: No I’m just letting whatever my brain and my fingers decide to do come out. So no, that’s the whole point of this. It’s a completely free expression of long notes. So I’ll play whatever I feel. You could say it’s improvised long notes.

Nigel: Awesome. Love it. Love it. Okay.

Wrapping Up and Recap

Nigel: Wow. So we really covered quite a lot in this session. And when we were first talking about this session and planning it out, I thought, ‘Oh, we’ll come up with a couple of things’. And we came up with loads of things! We’ve been rambling on for ages. So you can see we’re excited about it because this is a big part of our practice and it’s a big part of how we develop our sound.

So I really hope that’s been helpful for you. I hope you will take some of these – six, and the bonus – six and a half ideas that we’ve given you today and put them into practice. Today hopefully, but definitely in the next week or so. And I would love to hear how it helps you. If you find that you’re implementing these practice techniques and you’re seeing a benefit, then send us a message because I’d love to know that all this hard work we’re doing for you guys is helping you too.

Try Sax School today

Hey, just before we go though, if you haven’t already become a member of Sax School, well, I should probably be asking why not! Because Sax School is awesome, and there’s so much in there to help you. But to help you get the experience of Sax School, we do still have a 14-day free trial running at the moment. That’s a brilliant way where you can stick your toe in the water and see if it’s a good fit for you. The lessons are helping thousands of other people every day and You never know, they might be a good fit for you too.

So, go grab that 14-day trial over at Sax School. You can explore the lessons, and get some help from Joel, myself, and the other tutors. Come along to a livestream session. It’s all waiting for you over at saxschoolonline.com.

But for now, keep practising hard, and I can’t wait to catch you next time on the next episode. See you later.

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