Your sax fingering chart is wrong – here’s why

Most sax players absolutely love fingering charts.

A sax fingering chart is a great resource for beginner players as you’re learning all those new notes. And even when you’re an advanced player, they’re really useful for looking up alternate fingerings .

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But what if I were to tell you that the fingering chart right in front of you is lying to you a lot of the time, and is not actually what most pros play?

That’s what we’re going to talk about today. And also stick around and I’ll tell you how to get a load of free video resources that you’re not going to want to miss. So let’s get into it.

Understanding Saxophone Mechanics

So we’ve all seen videos of great players –Parker always springs to my mind – when their fingers barely seem to move when they’re playing. Now there are a lot of things that go into having great technique on saxophone. It’s the hours you spend in the practice room, it’s being relaxed in your fingers and your body as a whole.

But there’s also a deep understanding of the mechanics of the saxophone. That really helps these players be so fluent and play so fast with so little effort.

Now, if you look at your standard sax fingering chart, which is where we find most of the technique, where to put the fingers, and what buttons to press, then it tells you very clearly how to play each note. And that’s absolutely fine. And from that point of view, a fingering chart is generally correct.

However, in context, when you’re playing a scale or a certain passage in a piece of music, they don’t necessarily stay true to the reality of playing the instrument.

So we’re going to look at a few examples today that show you some of the things that the pros are doing that the sax fingering charts are not telling you to do.

Example #1:  B flat Major Scale

So let’s take a really simple scale. We’ll take a Bb major scale. Now, there are a couple of ways of playing the note Bb. If you look at a sax fingering chart, one is using the side key. So that’s like an A fingering with the bottom right side key.

However, the usual fingering for Bb in scales that contain that note is to use The B flat bis key. That’s that little button below your B key. And what you basically do is you play a B and then you move your finger down in parallel, so you’re covering both the B key and that little button B flat key – the bis key. That means that when y0u play that fingering, instead of getting a B like you normally would with that first finger on your left hand, you’ll actually get a B flat.

And that makes it really useful, because you don’t need to remember to play that accidental in a piece of music. Every time you play a B, you’ll get a Bb, and that makes it great. 

So we’re going to look at this Bb major scale using the Bb bis key. And to me, that’s how it should be played.

What your fingering chart will tell you

Here are the general fingerings you’d find in a fingering chart for each note of this scale, over one octave.

And for all those notes out of context, those fingerings are absolutely correct.

B flat Pro finger hack

However, in the context of playing this scale, and numerous other scales that contain the note Bb, you can actually keep your finger on that button all the time.

Now the fingering charts don’t suggest doing that. As you can see on the note D, then it’s just a D. The bis key isn’t highlighted. And on the note Eb, or the note F, the bis key isn’t highlighted.

However, you can keep it pressed down for all of these. In fact, out of this entire scale, only two of the notes are written correctly in a sax fingering chart. And that is the bis key Bb for the note Bb, and the note C, where your finger isn’t on that button anyway. However, even in that instance, you should be hovering just above it to get back on.

So let’s have a look at what the actual fingering for a Bb major scale would be. 

Fluency in Playing Scales

So you can see, for every single note, I’d be holding down that Bb bis button, apart from the note C. And this gives us lots more fluency. It means we don’t have to take our finger off and put it back on.

It just means we’re ready and prepared to play that note. And particularly if you’re an improviser, you might be jumping around in different ways to actually get to that note and move your finger into that position in time. It’s not going to happen a lot of the time. So, this is why it’s so useful to know that you can hold down the Bb bis key all the time and it doesn’t affect any other notes.

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Next Scale: A Major

So the next scale we’re going to look at is the scale A major – another really standard scale.  Once again, we’re just going to look at it over one octave.

Now, here are the fingerings for a normal A major scale, as you’d find each of those notes in a standard sax fingering chart.

However, once again, in the case of this scale, some of these notes fingerings are wrong.

If I were playing this scale, in my right hand for the notes D E and F sharp, I would keep that G sharp key held down in preparation for playing the note G sharp. It doesn’t affect the sound of any of those notes. And it means when I get there, I’m not trying to whip on that G sharp key and whip back off it as I come back down.

That’s’s really hard to do. It’s actually done with your little finger, obviously, and the coordination there is tricky at the best of times. But there’s no need to do that.

So as soon as I started off and I played A, B, C sharp when I got to that D, I would play that D with a G sharp finger down. And I keep it down on the E, the F sharp. So then I’ve already got my G sharp in position before I get there.

And if you were playing a really fast passage, there’s actually nothing stopping you from holding down the G sharp all the time, even when you’re playing the A, B, and C sharp notes. And that can really help for those tricky passages in a piece of music.

Fingerings are contextual

So what you’re hopefully beginning to see is actually fingerings are contextual. They’re not just individual notes on the saxophone, although that’s maybe how we first learned them. Actually, it really depends on what key you’re in, what notes are going to be in that line or passage in that piece of music that you’re playing.

It really does matter, because it really adds to efficiency in your technique. And efficiency equals speed and fluency. 

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Exploring the C Sharp Minor Scale

In this next example, we’re going to look at the C sharp minor scale. This is the relative minor, with the same notes, as an E major scale. And we’re going to do it in the lower octave, starting on that low C sharp.

Now, we look at a low C sharp fingering from a standard sax fingering chart and that’s completely correct. 

However, did you know that you can keep that low C sharp down as you move on to the D sharp and the E and the F sharp? And if you keep it down when you get to the G sharp in this, you will get a G sharp. That’s because that low C sharp key is both a low C sharp key and a G sharp key simultaneously.

And that’s really efficient. Because, as you move up the scale, instead of having to come off that key and get your little finger up to that G sharp, you can just keep it down in that position. And I keep it down all the way up to that point. And I maybe release it once again, like A major when I get to the A and the B and the C sharp. However, you could just keep it down even then, particularly if you’re playing a really fast line in a piece of music.

G sharp alternative

So this key doesn’t affect anything apart from low C sharp, and G sharp, and it makes it really useful. It also works in the upper octave. And for those of you who have got a particularly long pinky finger and find it quite awkward getting it on that normal G sharp key, you can use this C sharp fingering all the time for your G sharps. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the lower octave or the upper octave, it works. And if you look really closely at a lot of great players, you’ll find quite a few of them only using this fingering and never using the G sharp key at all, which makes it really useful.

Recap of Key Fingerings

So let’s do a quick recap.

So first of all we’ve looked at the bis key that can be held down absolutely all the time when we’re playing the majority of scales that contain a B flat.

We’ve got the G sharp key which also can be held down all the time in preparation for playing that note.

And now we’ve got the low C sharp key which is really useful particularly if you’re playing over your range a lot more and you’re going to go down to those low notes and up. It’s also useful if you’ve got an extra long pinky. And it works as both a low C sharp and a G sharp key. And once again, it can be held down all the time if we want to. This just gives us less to remember and more efficiency of movement across the saxophone. 

More G sharp fingerings

Now, while we’re talking about the low C sharp key, it’s worth noting that the low B key and the low B flat key also are auxiliary G sharp keys. In fact, if you need to jump from low B to G sharp, just keep the low B key down.

If you need to jump from low B flat to G sharp, then you can just keep the low B flat key down.

 So all those bell keys and the G sharp key, are all G sharp keys with a secondary function of low C sharp, low B, or low B flat. And that’s really worth knowing because it can get you out of some really tricky situations.

Something you’ll notice on the saxophone is that there’s no roller between those bottom bell keys and the G sharp key. And there’s a reason for that. You don’t need one because they are all G-sharp keys.

Importance of Context in Music

So, the sax fingering chart that you use to look up and originally learn every one of your fingerings is a non-contextual document. It’s showing you fingerings in isolation. Music’s never in isolation. It’s always in a context, whether that be a key, or a chord. It’s always in a context. And that means we need to think about the way we practice these structures in music, to give us the ultimate fluency we want.

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So try out some of these methods we’ve talked about today. And remember, think through the scale or shape you’re practising and see if  you can make efficiencies with your fingering choices.

Are you already using some of these methods when you’re playing these scales? Or are they are new to you? Let me know.  And if you’ve not, let me know how you get on when you try it.