Q&A for How to Play the Alto Saxophone

To clean the mouthpiece and neck, use a gooseneck padsaver. For the body, pass a swab cleaner through the saxophone. You will want to clean it regularly.

Curl your bottom lip over your bottom teeth and put your top teeth on top of the mouthpiece. Close your lips tightly all around, take a big breath, and blow.

Yes, especially if you've just eaten, as the food can get stuck in the mouthpiece. To keep them dry and avoid breakage, consider keeping your reeds in the little plastic cases you buy them in.

There is no age limit, it's just a matter of whether the person is capable of holding the instrument, blowing the right amount of air in, and learning and applying the playing instructions.

Probably you are accidentally flicking your tongue around the reed while playing a note. If your tongue is not flicking around the reed, try to look for other flaws in technique that could possibly be causing the problem.

F: First three fingers and add the first finger on your other hand. G: First three fingers.

It all has to do with your embouchure, how tense or slack your lower jaw is, how you breathe, and how tightly you grip the reed. To get a softer sound, you need to relax everything.

The octave key is only used for notes above the C# mentioned above in the tutorial. So when you move up one note from middle C# to D, that would be the beginning of the octave key notes.

On an alto sax, E would be all top 3 fingers and on the bottom the first 2. D is the same, but on the bottom you cover all three.

It would be difficult because each person in class would need their own saxophone, and it is a bad idea to share a saxophone with a class of people. You could teach them concepts though, like different notes and how to form an embouchure.

I like to use "Original Big Band Songs" transcribed by Jeff Hear. It features Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Duke Ellington. This does not have a DVD, but you can look up videos on YouTube of different bands playing each song. I just played one song with my band at concert and it was the audience's favorite.

You need to break it in and get it soft enough so you get a good sound with your normal embouchure. You can do this by soaking it in water to make it a little softer and playing long tones to wear it in.

There are soprano (looks like a metal clarinet) alto, tenor (has a hump on the neck), baritone (it's about 6 feet tall), as well as contrabass and subcontrabass.

G double sharp is the same note as an A. It would be the top two fingers (add octave key for the high A).

Sometimes when I play, that happens when the reed wears out. Alternatively, there may be something wrong with the embouchure.

John Coltrane, Kenny G, Sam Gendel and Stan Getz are all very good sax players.

The soprano kind of looks like a clarinet. The alto is small. The tenor is medium-sized, and the baritone is huge. Do a Google image search if you want to see some pictures.

Try blowing more downward, and also try blowing into only the mouthpeice. When you blow into the mouthpeice it should sound like a duck quack when you blow.

In the mouthpiece, there's a place that looks like the shape of the reed. Place the reed against it, then use the ligature (metal with screw) to tighten the reed to the mouthpiece.

Push a little more air through your mouthpiece, but be careful not to blow too hard, or you'll get screeching.

Alto Saxophones will range in price. You can find them for as cheap as 200 dollars, but they can also reach the thousand dollar range, too.

No. It makes the saxophone sound flat. Keep your cheeks in as best you can.

If you want to make a loud sound, blow harder. For a quiet sound, blow softer.

It‘s not good for your embouchure or for your sound. You should try to play with a relaxed jaw, and biting is counterproductive to that.

The most basic answer is to play using notes from a blues scale, and improvise/noodle on those. To actually sound like and have the tone of a blues saxophonist takes years of practice.

A is 1 and 2 on top, B is just 1. If you want one in a higher octave, use your octave key on the back.

Higher C is just the second key covered. Lower C is all keys covered, plus the second key on the little lever.

First you need to work on your breathing technique. A good way to practice vibrato would be with a metronome. Just push out a little more air every time it clicks. Start at 60 BPM and slowly increase the speed until you are comfortable doing it every time you play without the metronome.

Although you probably won't damage your saxophone by eating or drinking before you play, it is still a good idea to rinse your mouth beforehand, just to be safe.

My advice would be to play it slowly first and make sure you hit all the notes. Then, slowly speed up the time and play it again until you get it perfect. Continue this for awhile and then it's up to muscle memory.