2012 Sax

Intro

It’s been a while since I last posted so I guess a Happy Christmas and Happy New Year are called for!

I’m still sax practising although over the New Year break I didn’t get much done – time to go places instead…

Diadic Scales

Thankfully the New Year brought my old sax tutor back (hurrah) and since I was already working on the Rubank principle my tutor has now got me on diadic scales exclusively.

So what are diadic scales? Take a scale in a given key (for example C Major) the diadic scale starts with the root, goes to the third then back to the second then up to the forth then back down to the third (up two, down one). To come back down the scale you go down two and up one.

They are pretty fiddly but more fun than simply playing straight scales.

Last week I was given the scales C, D, A, G to learn – I added E and F to those because it is always good to have a challenge.

Rather than try to think which notes to play I wrote out the diadic scale in each key so it was easier to see what to do (my latest sax book helped a lot here as it has each of them listed – that book is called Technique of the Saxophone, Volume 1 by Berklee Press)

I’ll be adding the remaining 6 keys to the repertoire this week and after all that – well I guess I’ll just have to move onto triads (root, 3rd, 5th, 3rd, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 4th, 3rd etc.) which look like fun – although your opinion may differ…

Tonguing

On top of that I also have tonguing exercises to do too – playing each note in one, two, three, four, eight or sixteen tongued beats. Now that is hard work – especially with the metronome!

Metronome

Speaking of the metronome I have found a technique that seems to work for me – now I use headphones plugged into the metronome when I play the sax – this puts the timing straight into my head and as a bonus the metronome only plays through one ear piece so you can listen to both the metronome and your saxing – I know I should be able to handle them both without headphones but this makes it easier for now