For those of you with a well developed tone and embouchure, you should be working towards extending your range into the altissimo of the saxophone. You should first do this by practicing overtones. An excellent source is Sigurd Rascher's Top Tones for the Saxophone, published by Carl Fischer, Inc. Make sure you read what he has to say, especially about the importance of "hearing" the note before you play it! Rascher's altissimo fingerings don't work on most modern horns very well so I've got a copy of my own favorite fingerings in Adobe Acrobat PDF format for you to use. These fingerings work very well on my Yamaha YAS-875 alto sax.

(A.K.A. "Five Note Exercise.") I've had the opportunity to hear and watch a number of players over the years. One of the things that I'm always having to correct are fingerings for specialized patterns and scales. One of these "problem" scales is the chromatic scale. I like to tell students that they should use fingerings that will enable them to be a "race car driver" on the saxophone. In other words, while any fingering might work at a slow speed, there are other fingerings which work at very fast speeds. So why not learn the "fastest" fingering in the beginning, rather than having to switch over when one can no longer make the slow fingering work!

Longtones is the "most" important part of your practice routine. After you have done longtones at "mf", working to sustain a steady pitch, you need to begin to develop a steady pitch at all dynamics. Practice starting "ff", gradually decrescendoing to "pp", then to air over about 10 seconds. Take a breath, then come back in with air gradually to "ff" again for 10 seconds. Once you have control of the pitch (use a tuner!), then use this exercise in Adobe Acrobat format to practice. Also, I've included a Flexibility Exercise for saxophonists to make sure you have good throat and tongue position.

A daily routine to help you be as efficient as possible in your practice.