Any books for excercising the lower reaches?

[h4yn0nnym0u5e]

Hi folks

Still not doing enough practise, but when I do, I'm finding most books rarely get much below C, and even then only briefly. This is a bit frustrating, especially on the bari where it's probably quite a good idea to be fairly slick with yer LH pinky!

I know I could just noodle about, make stuff up, or play a few bari parts, but the first two are unlikely to get me much out of my (limited!) comfort zone, and the latter is fun for a while and then palls.

So, does anyone know of one or more books that exercise this particular area with some fun to play tunes? The sort of level I feel I'm at is Niehaus "Developing Jazz Concepts" and James Rae's "20 Modern Studies" - around Grade 4 to 5, I guess.

If not, I'll ask Mr Rae at the next ACE Foundation Clarinet & Saxophone day - maybe he'll do a set, if he hasn't already...

Cheers

Jonathan

 

[jbtsax]

Paul DeVille's Universal Method for Saxophone has some good exercises beginning on page 67. You can download and copy the pages of exercises from this website. Since the work was published prior to 1923, the copyright has expired.

You have to be older than dirt to know about this method book. 🙂 It used to be called the "saxophonist's bible". It still can be purchased in printed form and is an excellent method---although a bit cumbersome to use for lessons because of the format.

 

[Pete C]

You could just practising everything from the bottom of the horn to the top, could be scales, chord arpeggios, licks, whatever. e.g. say you were practising major triad inversions:- for Bb maj you could start
:low Bb D F Bb F D:
then: D F Bb D Bb F:
then :F Bb D F D Bb: etc
until you get right to the top of the horn with :F Bb D F D Bb: or whatever altissimo note you can comfortably get that falls within the arpeggio.

So for Bb maj the first triad you play is in root position. If you had got to say Eb maj triad then you still start on low Bb i.e. :Bb Eb G Bb G Eb: but in this case you are starting with a second inversion of the triad. By the way in this post : means repeat marks so you can cycle each inversion e.g 135853.

I adapt lots of the things I practise in this way so that I get to play the extremities of the horn both top and bottom. Just doing stuff in G maj Ab maj A maj very often forces you to develop your playing right at the top of the horn.

 

[h4yn0nnym0u5e]

Thanks for those, guys. I'm sure when I'm in a diligent mood those exercises will be all well and good, and do me no harm at all. But what I was hoping for was some exercises/etudes that are practical, fun-to-play tunes, that happen to use the lower reaches.

As an example, quite a few of the books I have contain tunes that I could in principle play an octave lower than written, and others that contain only one or two phrases that can't be so played. Now try that an octave higher - just not possible without altissimo. I think this is a neglected area...

Cheers

Jonathan

 

[dubrosa22]

I play stuff an octave lower all the time to work up my lower technique - obviously it has to be within the realms of the horn - 'St Thomas' is fun on alto starting on low E (in key of A for alto).
Also 'Night Dreamer' by Wayne Shorter starting on low G# (in key of C for alto) is really fun.

 

[Two Voices]

You could get Pete's book Taming the Saxophone Vol 3. That would keep you going for quite a while.