Beginner (playing) warming up your alto

N

neil

Member
72
Hull
hi folks...i`m pretty much a beginner ..playing the tenor for about 18 months.
I recently bought a gear 4 music alto from ebay for £70 ( 3 months old)...when i tried to play the thing i have to say i didnt really get on with it...harder to blow..didnt like the higher pitch etc ..so it has been stood on the stand for a couple of months....my teacher has been asking me to bring it along for a lesson but i resisted prefering the tenor...anyway...last night i gave in and took it along...as usual for the first ten mins or so i wasnt enjoying playing the alto..BUT...when it warmed up a bit (its never had the chance to warm up before as i give up after 5 mins usually) the sax really changed out of all recognition....the sound was warm....it became much, and i mean much, easier to blow...all in all i really enjoyed the lesson much to the amusemrnt of my teacher...(smug git)...i have read a few threads on here about altos being `stuffy` etc...what i`d say is persevere a bit and you might find a change when it warms up
ps it came with a vandoren v16 mouthpiece...i now think i have a bargain rather than a nice ornament

happy blowing
neil
 
Sounds like a breakthrough! :welldone

Useful to know actually because I played my TJ Classic Horn Alto happily for 18months knowing nothing else - it was no effort. Now I have been "spoilt" with the ease that my TJ tenor plays I find the Alto really hard to blow - maybe I just need to persevere for longer instead of giving up after 2 mintues! after all it used to be fine!
 
ArtyLady said:
Sounds like a breakthrough! :welldone

Useful to know actually because I played my TJ Classic Horn Alto happily for 18months knowing nothing else - it was no effort. Now I have been "spoilt" with the ease that my TJ tenor plays I find the Alto really hard to blow - maybe I just need to persevere for longer instead of giving up after 2 mintues! after all it used to be fine!
Click to expand...

Yeah, keep at it Arty, I recall Art Pepper said something along the lines of "playing the tenor is easy, it's being able to play alto well that takes real skill".

Of course he spent most of his life playing alto (very, very, well) and as an alto player of course I agree with him!

That'll cause some comment, no doubt.

Phil
 
Hi. I don't know if this applies to you, but I was surprised when my Yamaha 62II changed somewhat when it was new. After a few months I had to have some minor tweaking. The tech said "It's just a baby. You're just seeing the normal breaking-in process." So perhaps your alto isn't broken in yet and some pads are beginning to seat well or something like that. The same tech told me that the metal doesn't change, so I guess the the levers and pads can simply require some breaking in. Good luck.
Andy
 
I play Celtic whistles and have found that the metal ones really do need warming up before they start to play and sound well, I think it may have something to do with the moisture content inside the instrument. Maybe it adds a little friction to the passage of air through the instrument body and adds a little touch of "distortion" to the sound, which as many sound engineers know can be very pleasing to the ear when subtle. Who knows maybe its because an Alto has a narrower bore to the body than a Tenor it may be more pronounced. Ive never tried a Sop, but I can imagine the same principle applies too.

Happy blowing

Flipp.
 
neil said:
as usual for the first ten mins or so i wasnt enjoying playing the alto..BUT...when it warmed up a bit (its never had the chance to warm up before as i give up after 5 mins usually) the sax really changed out of all recognition....the sound was warm....it became much, and i mean much, easier to blow...all in all i really enjoyed the lesson much to the amusemrnt of my teacher.
Click to expand...

It is now the cold season where I live (we call it winter), and my practice area is unheated. I have noticed that it seems to take about fifteen minutes for the instrument to warm up and then perform much better than right at the start (that is, once I have done long tones and perhaps a scale or two).

What I wonder is whether warming up the instrument really makes a difference, or whether it is simply a case of warming up in the sense that athletes do before a eace or whatever.
 
I think it can be quite a challenge going from Alto to Tenor or the reverse, partly due to pitch, partly due to air needed, and partly due to different sized embouchure. Since getting a Francois Louis Spectruoso Tenor mouthpiece, which is almost alto sized, the transition is a doddle. Similarly with my trumpet and trombone playing. The trombone needs lots of air and has larger mouthpieces, but the bore of the instruments are close in size (0.485" on trombone and 0.460" trumpet), and the mouthpieces are a much closer size wise than some (24.7mm trombone & 17.75mm trumpet).

Unless you practice each instrument quite regularly you may be better off making more obvious equipment adjustments.
Kind regards
Tom😎

BTW you could easily have paid £70 just for the mouthpiece - I like V16's very much.
 
Nick Wyver said:
A semitone! Is "just north of Munich" a euphemism for the South Pole?
Click to expand...

lol, Nick. Gets really cold here in winter.

As part of another project I've been doing some research into how pitch is determined. Seems that 10C change in instrument/air temp gives a difference in pitch of 1/3rd of a semitone. Mean temps of instrument during playing are in the 25-28C region, with something like a 10C drop down the length of the instrument. Now take a cold instrument out of your car in winter...... It also implies that as the temperature drops in an instrument, the further away from the mouthpiece you are, the lower the speed of sound is, and so the instrument builder needs to compensate for that as well.....

Part of the change may well be me tightening my embouchure as I warm up 🙁
 
Hi
I remember reading or seeing on U tube cant quite remember which, but an easy way to warm your sax is to put a cloth in the bell and just breath through the mouth piece a few times.

Hope this helps

Regards

Bill
 
This is an old thread, I know, but it's about warming up the instrument and I'm wondering about that.

What exactly happens to the horn when you warm it up? And why does the sound change? For me, the pitch changes some but absolutely the bell notes speak more easily. This is on tenor. Sometimes I start the day with low Bb because someone suggested that's a good place to start.

Anyway...is it the reed? Or temperature of the air? Or temperature of the brass? Or is it the player, getting more embouchure stability? Maybe engaging the diaphragm muscles more? All of the above?
 
Maybe the bell notes speaking relate to you relaxing as you warm up. But the pitch changing corresponds to the temperature of the air column in the horn. The physics (ignoring other factors like rigidity and density) is basically,

Speed of sound = frequency * wavelength * temperature

Low and high pitch sounds travel at the same speed. Otherwise it would sound really weird (not just plain weird) when you listen to that tuba and piccolo duo. So low frequencies have longer wavelengths and high frequencies have shorter wavelengths for the same speed. On the saxophone wavelength relates to air column/tube length, i.e. what keys you're pressing.

The speed changes with temperature. Warmer air molecules move faster so the sound wave propagates faster. Higher speed corresponds to more vibrations per second at your ear, which means higher pitch, and correspondingly for lower speed.
 
wakyct said:
Maybe the bell notes speaking relate to you relaxing as you warm up. But the pitch changing corresponds to the temperature of the air column in the horn. The physics (ignoring other factors like rigidity and density) is basically,

Speed of sound = frequency * wavelength * temperature

Low and high pitch sounds travel at the same speed. Otherwise it would sound really weird (not just plain weird) when you listen to that tuba and piccolo duo. So low frequencies have longer wavelengths and high frequencies have shorter wavelengths for the same speed. On the saxophone wavelength relates to air column/tube length, i.e. what keys you're pressing.

The speed changes with temperature. Warmer air molecules move faster so the sound wave propagates faster. Higher speed corresponds to more vibrations per second at your ear, which means higher pitch, and correspondingly for lower speed.
Click to expand...

This "equation" is very confusing and if the * symbol is supposed to represent multiplication, then it is just wrong. Yes, there is a dependency on temperature, but simple dimensional analysis will show that the units are not correct.

Look at Wikipedia for an introduction.

Rhys
 
hedgehog said:
I start the day with low Bb because someone suggested that's a good place to start.
Click to expand...
Dr. Wally Wallice certainly recommends that. His exercise Zero
View: https://youtu.be/lKr5d7T05iQ

hedgehog said:
Anyway...is it the reed? Or temperature of the air? Or temperature of the brass? Or is it the player, getting more embouchure stability? Maybe engaging the diaphragm muscles more? All of the above?
Click to expand...
Probably All the above! And I'd add - for me - getting my ears activated.

Despite the garbled physics above, yes the tuning changes some with temperature -but if that's important to you depends on your ears, just how warm/cold things are etc. for me, unless I'm practicing with some backing or such, the absolute tuning actually doesn't matter. I try to get it right out of best practice, not because it sounds better to me
 
The metal of the sax warm up or cool down the airstream in the tube. Warm air is expanding and cool air is compressing. That's goes for the air in a saxophone tube as well.

To keep your sax "warm":

  1. Store your sax, mouthpiece, reeds in the same room where you use to play.
  2. If you store your sax the case open the case some minutes before you start to blow.
  3. Buy a "winter" case or have the case winter insulated. Thin sheets of styrofoam in the bottom, side and top of your case and wrap "bubble-plastic" around the sax. This helps a lot.
  4. I/we , my wife and daughter help me", made a "snake" (coarse linen fabric, and filled the "snake" with wheat kernels, it's like a pulll throgh swab but it ends just before the body octave pipe) that I warm up in the microwawe owen. Keeps my saxes nice and warm.
When I lived in Lund I used to walk for 30 minutes to the rehearsals. The cold months were hell to my B&S Blue Label and my King Super 20. The cases were not well insulated, That's how I started to think about how to make it more comfortable for my saxes and avoid too much glaring eyes when I played sharp.
 
wakyct said:
Speed of sound = frequency * wavelength * temperature
Click to expand...
Just to be clear - at least for future generations - the above is wrong, not only because of what rhysonsax said.

In science, if you write something like that it implies that all three things on the right hand side are independent. They are not, in this case. Worse, it implies that the speed of sound is given by / dependant on the frequency, wavelength and temperature. Also not physics.
 
Last edited:
I'm gonna assume @wakyct is a coder or has coding experience... because * is typically used to represent multiplication in a programming language.

Yes, from a purely mathematical standpoint, * may not be the correct symbol... but eh, it's second nature for many coders. I have seen similar arguments online not just on * but also ^, !=, >=, <=, etc... but eh, we're on the Internet, this is the digital age, so it's fine by me (even though I know others may not agree).
 

Similar threads... or are they? Maybe not but they could be worth reading anyway 😀

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