Studies Universal Method for Saxophone by Paul Deville

[lennieh]

This cropped up in another thread and I downloaded the PDF and had some fun last night doing a whole bunch of the exercises..

One question arose, at the very beginning of the book when he is introducing the notes with some long tone exercises, he says to play D2, E2 and F2 with the octave key open. It's hard to do with the D but for the E and F I found it pretty easy, actually its the kind of thing that happens by accident anyway ...

But I was wondering why, when every modern fingering chart I've seen says to use the octave key for all notes from D2 to C#3... Is it something to with the keys being different back then, he mentions different key arrangements and I think somewhere it says the sax has two octave keys???

 

[kevgermany]

You'd usually play all these notes with the octave key open. Unless you're thinking of D2 as being a palm key note, which it isn't. D2 is octave plus fingers 123 down on both hands. What can be useful is to add the LH palm D to this if the normal D2 is stuffy - perhaps what you're describing is the stuffy D2, a feature of some saxes, especially older ones.

Older saxes (roughly pre WWI) did have 2 octave keys, one for the neck pip and one for the body pip, later replaced by the automated octave of today.

One exercise which is useful is to learn to play the notes you'd usually play with the octave key without it and vice versa - really helps develop embouchure/control.

 

[lennieh]

I think the wording is 'keep the octave key open for this D and the E, F and G." Which I think means to not press it.... while may be useful to be able to do it like this I.e. play the overtone seems odd to suggest it in the preparatory exercises....

 

[Justin Chune]

I think he means to press the key and keep it open for those notes.

Jim.

 

[kevgermany]

I think he means to press the key and keep it open for those notes.

Jim.

Yes, me too