Your warm-up doesn’t need to be boring. You can make it fun! Try my Adele saxophone warm-up using a riff from “Easy On Me”.
I’ve taken the opening riff from the new Adele tune, Easy On Me, and I’ve turned it into a fun warm-up that you can do at whatever level.
Now, in this video, I’m going to demonstrate my Adele saxophone warm-up on alto and tenor saxophone. I’m also going to walk you through six different variations of this warm-up that you can use right away.
There’s a backing track and a PDF for this lesson, which you can get free. It’s available along with all of our other free resources inside our Sax School Locker.
Free PDF & backing track – sign up to Locker
Click the link above to go and get it, or you can find it on the courses page of saxschoolonline.com. You just need to give us your email address so that we can send you the details on how to log in.
Why warm-up on saxophone?
Why do we do warm-ups? But the thing is, warm-ups are super important. It’s something we talk about a lot with our thousands of students inside Sax School. And it’s probably also one of the reasons why so many of those students make such amazing progress.
A warmup is really important. It gets us set up for playing. But we need to make it fun so that we do it more often.
Now, if you need some more advice on how you can make better use of your practice time, then go check out the recent video that I did with the four essential elements that you need to incorporate into your practice routine.
To be honest with you, I see so many players lose their way with a poor practice routine.
Notes on the alto saxophone
So I’ll start by showing you the notes on the alto saxophone. This is super-easy because we’re going to use a single scale. So I’m going to show you six different variations of this Adele saxophone warm-up, but they all use one scale.
So for the alto saxophone, we’re using the D major scale. So that’s all of these notes from D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp – that’s no fingers- and then up to D again.
Notes on the tenor saxophone
and for the tenor saxophone, we’re using the G major scale. So that’s all these ads from G, A, B, C, D – I’ve got my octave key on now, E, F sharp, and then high G.
How to use this warm-up
So here’s how the warm-up works. What we’re going to do is play through each of the six variations, just a single time through. Actually, we might do the last one through twice. And what I want to encourage you to do here is just to try all of these warm-ups, but then once you’ve learned how they sound, go and download the resources and then use each of these warmups individually.
Free PDF & backing track – sign up to Locker
So you could spend a session just working on one of the six or maybe two of them. But I want you to play over each of these six warmups over and over, checking with your tuner if you need to.
Make sure your fingers are close to the keys, make sure you’re in tune, and visualise that perfect sound that you’re aiming, for so we can get the biggest fullest sound we can.
Playing the warm-ups – #1
So grab your saxophone, your alto, your tenor, soprano, or your bari sax, and let’s play through this Adele saxophone warm-up. We’re going to go through them one at a time starting with the first one.
Warm-up #2
For our second warm-up, we’re going to move in two count notes, (minims) or half notes. Keep your fingers close to the keys. Keep those phrases joined together in pairs.
Warm-up #3
In our third warm-up, we’re going to move in one count notes, (crotchets) or quarter notes. And I want you to think about joining every phrase where we go up and down in one breath, using big long phrases.
Warm-up #4
For warm-up number four, we’re going to use five-note groupings from the scale. And we’re going to move in half count notes, (quavers) or eighth notes, with a two count note (minim) or half note, at the end. Join each group of five notes together in a big, long slur,
Warm-up #5
For number five, we’re going to look at a whole octave scale in half count notes (quavers) or eighth notes, slurred up and then back down. And if you want an extra workout, swell up the volume, and then back down as you go down again.
Warm-up #6
We’re going to step it up a notch for number six, and this time we’re moving in thirds – so the first note, third note, second note, fourth note, third and fifth note. We’re going to do this whole pattern twice. Think about long phrases all away up and down.
Watch the video above to play the warmups with me.
Next Steps
Hey, how awesome was that? Now they got a bit harder toward the end there, and that last one’s a bit of a finger-buster. But it’s a great idea now to go and work on each of these individually.
And if you want to go an extra step further with this, then there is an advanced version of this lesson inside Sax School. In the lesson we use the same group, but we do a warm-up using some improvising. I show you how to do that very easily with some simple note choices and a few simple rhythms. It’s great exercise. It gets your tone going, but also gets your brain going so you can start to get those creative juices flowing. And it’s a brilliant way to prepare yourself for improvising, whether you’re just starting with improvising or whether you’re even a more advanced player, just to sort of open up some options.
Check out all the amazing resources that we’ve got inside Sax School. As well as this Adele saxophone warm-up, there are over a thousand other lessons. Plus you get access to our tutors for questions, you can join our masterclasses, get involved with our Community, our Monthly Challenges, and so much more.
Hey, I hope you enjoyed my Adele saxophone warm-up – make it part of your regular practice routine.