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Message: <blockquote data-quote="losaavedra" data-source="post: 621337" data-attributes="member: 27">Thanks for all these replies. Done some hard thinking today on all this and just about to settle down to an hour-or-so to figure it out with 'sax in hand'! I'll first try and acknowledge what's been said most recently ...Pete: I think the ability to play by ear is a two edged sword. Within a month of having my alto I could honk out (good choice of word!) most of several standards (21 to be exact, I just looked at the list) without the first idea what key I was playing them in ... it just depended on the note I started on! I remember moving on to Paul Desmond's 'Emily' (a tune I really like) and that's when the trouble started ... because I couldn't remember enough of it to do an 'ear' play after listening to the mp3. So I found the sheet and the fog of pencilled annotations followed ... but I still haven't got it and the frustrations have continued from there on. Anyway  was talking to my wife today and she dug out her old school recorder book. Its for children ... but that's what I'm going to go through now. Everything's in the key of C and all the tunes are very simple ... but that's where I need to start I think. On the 'bending' subject I've got two mps, one the anonymous stock thing that came with the sax and a Yam 6C. I'll take your advice and try to nail down the vibrato better ... the bends I'm getting at present (sometimes) are all accidents and unintended ... once I've got the hang of controlling them I can start putting them in the right places!!!Colin: I wanted to ask, and this is as good a place as any ... should I be worrying about transposing? It was another area I got hung up on when first getting the sax. The conclusion I came to (maybe wrongly) was that because every other instrument I play (or would try to play along with) is scored in concert pitch I dropped the 'transposed' note names completely from my fingering chart. Thus, on my alto, the 'two fingers on left hand' held down on the two top buttons produces a concert C as far as I'm concerned and it sounds the same as middle C on a keyboard. Working on the basis that I'm never likely to try to join a concert or marching band with other horn players I couldn't see the point of complicating things by referring to Concert C as being an A. Am I missing something that will cause me problems later? Bob: Good stuff! I'll try all your advice tonight and see what I can make happen. Will also look up the article you mention. Pity you had no luck with blues harp although I might say that, within my box of ten-holers, a fair number are impossible to get a bent note out of (presumably for some manufacturing reason).Stephanie: Yes, an evening with the recorder book (all in C!) should get some of it into my brain! C5 is an octave up from middle C (C4) as you say. 1.5 semi-tones sound pretty good to me (starting from nowt!). I'll try the WOAR too.Thomas: I'll try anchoring the reed in different places on the stock to see what happens.Linky: All advice will be tried, will continue to attempt getting the note down (and staying there!) initially.Mike: Appreciate I might be trying to run before I can walk regarding the 'see-it ... play-it' notion. Its just that the rigmarole I'm going through at the moment, with the fruit and cows, is so counter productive I lose interest after the first few notes and go back to 'tootling' something else entirely! I'll try the spare mouthpiece method, the dogs'll love that! OK ... now to try all this out, more later no doubt!Thanks again ...</blockquote>