Saxophone beginners Bad Habits To Watch Out For As a Beginner

[GCinCT]

Don’t eat, drink and blow.
Don’t attempt to fix something beyond your understanding.
Don’t ever pick up a case without checking the closures are secure.
Don’t ever tell the wife what you really paid for it.
Regards Al

Number 4 is particularly important if you want to stay married and breathing.

 

[spike]

Some very good advice above.
I'm completely self taught and as such I am aware that it's very dificult to know whether or not I have a bad habit.
It's probably better to seek the advice of an experienced teacher and take a few lessons.
I don't teach but I ocassionally help. I once had a "student" whose mother told me he was getting headaches from playing the saxophone.
I watched him playing and immediately noticed that his neck strap was far too tight and pushing the mouthpiece against his upper teeth thus causing the tension that caused his headaches. Problem solved.
Bottom line: You can learn to play the saxophone autodidactically, but it's worth consulting professional advice on a one on one basis every now and then. Bad habits are easy to develop and can be difficult to correct.

 

[hedgehog]

When you are practicing a difficult passage and find you can't play it cleanly, DON'T keep playing it over and over at the same speed. Slow down. Play it as slowly as you must in order to play it well. Then speed it up. If it's still not clean, slow down again. I was skeptical when I first heard this, but found it works for me. (I'm not sure what's going on the brain but I suspect playing something "full speed" but incorrectly is just a way of learning to play it wrong.)

 

[altissimo]

Don't pay too much attention to other people's advice - what works for them in the context of what they play may not work for you and what you're trying to do with the instrument.
We're all different, so sweeping generalisations aren't always helpful. Positive advice is often more useful than negative 'don't do that, it's wrong' admonishments.
For example, saying 'don't bite' may not be as helpful as it seems and focusing on not biting may cause other problems or distract from the things you should be concentrating on.. To me, it may be better to be aware of how much lip pressure you're using and discover for yourself how much lip pressure is optimum for each note you're playing and in so doing you may develop more precise lip control which could be more beneficial than constantly worrying that you may be biting too much.
Saxophone playing isn't an exact science and no one can define how much pressure you should apply to the reed or exactly how many millimetres of mouthpiece you should put in your mouth or any of dozens of other things. Often the language and descriptions used are vague or confusing or inaccurate, so sometimes clear explanations are difficult to find. There's a great deal of trial and error and you have to learn how to trust your own judgement and learn by experience. There's nothing wrong with seeking advice from others, but often it's necessary to try what others suggest and form your own conclusions as to whether it works for you

Watching footage of famous saxophone players you can find examples of so called 'bad habits' but clearly these things worked for them.
So it's possible that there can be more than one way of doing things and even the experts don't always know what's best.
Sometimes it's your personal musical habits that define your sound and style, whether you're Lester Young, David Sanborn or Joe Bloggs no one's ever heard of.
Exploring the instrument for yourself and finding what you can get out of it can be more rewarding than dutifully slogging away practicing stuff that you feel obliged to do because people say you should do it, or worrying that you're doing something wrong.
It's your instrument, you paid for it, now what do you want to do with it?
No one will ever master the saxophone, there are too many diverse ways of playing and too many styles and genres of music for any one person to learn

 

[jbtsax]

I think it is also important to define which style of playing we are discussing when defining what is and isn't acceptable. To produce a "classical" saxophone tone, puffing the cheeks is not a common practice since it requires the corners of the mouth to be relaxed. It is the firmness of the muscles at the corners of the mouth pushing inward against the sides of the reed that provides the control required for this tonal concept.

When playing jazz, pop, or rock styles of music anything goes that helps one make the sound(s) that fit that particular syle. Articulation is another aspect of playing that is entirely style dependent. It is just as out of place to play in a wind ensemble using jazz sounds and articulations as it would be to play in a jazz ensemble with a classical style and tone.

 

[MandyH]

It is never good practice to tell your pupil “don’t ...”
It is always good practice to tell your pupil “do ...”!

Therefore : do ensure your fingers stay close to the key, do use a gentle movement when playing the palm keys, do adopt a good posture ... etc

😉

 

[Jazzaferri]

Dont overplay. Everytime you play a line sloppily or incorrectly you are training your mind to play it that way rather than play the way you want/should.

OR As @MandyH would want it said……... play each line correctly with good tone and form each time

 

[atwl77]

I'll add one of my bad habits,

Problem: Not using the diaphragm to blow, instead blowing with the "mouth" or "throat"
Solution: Do breathing exercises, always be conscious of how I blow when doing long tones and other exercises

 

[MarkSax]

jbtsax. Sorely missed. I learnt a lot from his postings and experience.
I’ll add a few more: Trying to learn to play with a variety of mpcs instead of just one.
Biting, to get the pitch on going an 8ve up or the tempo is too fast for one’s skill level and tightening the embouchure.
It’s 99% not the sax, it’s you. Stop looking for gear, and practice. (Unless you have a real stinker frankensax that hasn’t seen a tech in a century)

 

[mizmar]

My biggest regret

Not using the metronom enough.
It may well be irritating but using the metronome (seems to me) is a learned skill and with practice becomes natural.

 

[Dr G]

Problem: Fumbling through a passage because the tempo is too fast.
Solution: In practice, play at a tempo that lets you hit all the notes. Practice at that tempo until you cannot play it wrong - then increase the tempo as appropriate. Notice that practicing at a too-fast tempo seldom results in achieving your goal.

 

[Wade Cornell]

There are other ways of learning that I've never seen on these sorts of lists. Get the very basic fingering down so that one can play all the notes via scales... NOT as read, but as one hears them. Then attempt to play very simple tunes with a given start note. This engages having to hear the rest of the notes and then play them without reference to anything except what you can hear in your head and what comes out of the horn. It's and instant feedback loop.

If only learning to read you're developing an eye to hand pathway that's the same as learning to play piano. The difference is that the piano produces that note that's in tune, and requires nothing more. Playing a sax requires that we produce the sound, the correct pitch, the initiation of the sound and how the sound ends... plus any variations, timbre, etc.

Beginning sax and violin players have both been historically taught mechanically by seeing notation and that specific notes = a finger position instead of being taught to hear what they play. Both are horrible to listen to as beginners and it can take a very long time before that changes.

Singers learn to hear the pitch they are reading. They literally hear the pitch... how else could you sing the note? Brass players also need to be able to hear the pitch since they can easily be off by any of the harmonics you get from just having a few valves.

The Suzuki school of music has great success by teaching their students to hear what they play. They teach their very young (3 to 5 year old) students to play by ear. Hear a note and copy. Hear a phrase and copy it. Hear a complete piece and play it the way you hear it. They use the instrument as their voice and learn the same way we learn language. Eventually they are taught to read and associate that with hearing the notes they are playing.

Although the Suzuki method has been primarily used for string instruments, the basic idea of starting off using your ears can apply to any instrument, especially those in which the pitch and tone start with the player.

Many of the rest of the physical attributes seen on the list can and should be incorporated by a teacher, however if the student can't hear what they are playing how can they ever progress to a level where the sound, phrasing, emotions and musicality come forward? Is it ever too early for those things to be heard and incorporated?