What's the highest note on an Alto?

[Lisa]

May seem like a dumb question - so apologies in advance.

What is the highest note on an alto?

I taught myself high F and E last night and was just wondering if there's anything above top F

Lisa

 

[Pete Thomas]

More modern altos often have an F# key and sometimes G

However there are fingerings that allow you to go much higher than the conventional fingerings. These are called altissimo notes and if you look on my main site in the saxophone lessons section there are some fingerings there.

It takes a fair amount of practice to get these notes.

 

[fecklesseric]

Not daft at all Lisa.



You can get higher than that by blowing overtones of existing notes. This is called the altissimo range.

It's an intermediate / advanced technique and is quite tricky.
There's a good book called Top Tones (by Sigurd Rascher) that has excercises designed to help learning these higher notes.

EDIT: Pete wins the typing contest that time!

Lisa wrote:
May seem like a dumb question - so apologies in advance.

What is the highest note on an alto?

I taught myself high F and E last night and was just wondering if there's anything above top F

Lisa

 

[philthd]

in theory theres only the limitations of your technique to stop you reaching silly silly high notes. hamiet buiett gets octaves of harmonics out of his baritone for example

(my harmonic technique is so poor its never allowed out in public)

 

[Jules]

I once saw (heard) a baritone player make his baritone sound like a soprano- in quite a clean, controlled way. A very slick bit of playing indeed....

philthD wrote:
in theory theres only the limitations of your technique to stop you reaching silly silly high notes. hamiet buiett gets octaves of harmonics out of his baritone for example

(my harmonic technique is so poor its never allowed out in public)

 

[Linky Lee]

because the baritone is larger, it seems to be able to produce the higher harmonics easier than a smaller instrument like the alto.

For example.
I can play up to the D chromatically on alto in the altissimo register. If I were to go higher I'd have to improve my embouchure and technique.
If I apply this to the baritone I can go about a fifth higher than I can on the alto if I remember the fingerings.

 

[Saxlicker]

Lisa wrote:
May seem like a dumb question - so apologies in advance.

What is the highest note on an alto?

I taught myself high F and E last night and was just wondering if there's anything above top F

Lisa

It looks like Brian has the top F# key for you!
See the side keys operated by your right hand? its the long brass one just in front of them.
When you play that top F again, bring your second finger into the action on this one and you have F#.

if you want to go higher then you'll need to learn the other fingering pointed out earlier in the thread.

🙂