I reckon I'm reasonably in tune and my teacher doesn't moan about it - mind you she may be adopting the 'lesser of evil' approach!
I don't have a tuner, should I get one and if so which?
I use a rather splendid wooden pyramid metronome so don't need that facility.
Thanks in advance.
I have a Korg CA30 tuner (about £10) and I bought a contact mic (also about ten quid) to go with it and it is invaluable for my situation...
...I play in a band which has six members, we make a lot of noise. When we first start playing or rehearsing my sax is cold. I tune with the trumpeter as we duet (duel) a lot and need to be in tune. As the sax warms up, the tuning changes on top of which when playing loud I sometimes hear as if I am playing flat (that's a subject for another thread, why does that happen?) even though I am not. The tuner with the contact mic allows me to check tuning even though I can't necessarily hear myself playing that well and allows me to change things as the sax warms up. The contact mic attaches to the bell and can only pick up what it's attached to.
Before anyone asks the question...no, you can't use a contact mic as a cheap sax mic because not only does it pick up the sound of the sax it also picks up the noise from the pads hitting the tone holes. Trust me, I tried it thinking 'sax mike for only ten quid!!'. Forget it.
Note that this tuner, and probably all tuners, give the key in concert pitch. Not really a problem as you can tranpose or put the mouthpiece in roughly the right position and fine tune using the readout on the tuner taking no notice of the note displayed.
Moz