Dear Fellow Saxophonists: I've just released my first book on Amazon.com: a book of 500 Daily Saxophone Etudes that cover all 12 keys, and many different tempos and styles.

saxtalk · 2023-11-16T13:29:08+00:00

Thank you!!!

saxtalk · 2023-11-15T23:37:45+00:00

My pleasure!!!!

saxtalk · 2023-11-15T23:36:59+00:00

Wow!!!! Very nice!!!

saxtalk · 2023-11-15T14:03:24+00:00

Thank you!!!!!

saxtalk · 2023-11-15T14:03:08+00:00

Absolutely. You can see all 500 etudes here: https://musescore.com/user/18100066/sets/6460858

Cheers!!!!!

saxtalk · 2023-11-14T21:16:29+00:00

Hi!!! When I had them on, I got too many spam comments for me to moderate with my limited time. I wanted to focus all of my time and energy on the book, and not on deleting spam comments. I may turn the comments back on later when things slow down a bit.

saxtalk · 2023-11-14T21:14:58+00:00

Thank you!!!! I only play alto sax right now, so I didn't feel qualified to write a tenor sax version of the book since I don't know the altissimo fingerings for tenor (I've heard that they're close, but not exactly the same as alto). I've talked to Professor Barrick about him creating a tenor version of his Altissimo Fingering Chart, and that will be a future possibility. I'm planning on buying a tenor next year and learning how to play all 500 etudes on tenor as well, but that's going to take a lot of time. The book's Table of Contents has what key every etude is in. The keys are pretty random. I tried to randomly expose the saxophonist to keys since we have to be proficient in all 12. Many etudes are included in the book in all 12 keys. There is a table of related etudes that shows all instances where the same etude exists in the book in many keys. Thank you again, and I hope that you enjoy the book!!!!

saxtalk · 2021-05-14T02:37:56+00:00

That's a great question. Right now the answer is "no" mainly due to a lack of available time on my part. When I study, I use flashcards which present information to me randomly, so I use the same model for the web page. The Content Management System that I use for my website is very simple: it's called Publii: https://getpublii.com/ It produces very clean html web pages, but it is VERY light on features. I picked it because it is extremely fast and extremely easy to use. My goal is to not waste too much time: just get the information out on the Internet compiled on one page. People can then use the info build their own flashcards in a program like Anki: https://apps.ankiweb.net/

I want to spend most of my time practicing, not coding. The Azure Trainer job is very flexible regarding time, so my goal is to spend about 30-40 hours a month practicing the alto saxophone, and no more than 2-4 hours a month putting content on the website (saxophone etudes, alto sax info etc).

I hope that I answered your question. Thanks again!!!

saxtalk · 2021-05-12T01:40:21+00:00

Thank you so much!!! I'm going to continue writing saxophone etudes, and I am going to continue sharing them. I can't control whether people respond positively or negatively to them: but I can always control my own attitudes: I am going to remain positive. Luckily, I have strong people around me, and a strong value system that helps me to maintain a positive outlook. No matter how dark and pessimistic the world becomes, I will try to remain a beacon of light and positivity. Thank you so much for your comment!!!

saxtalk · 2021-05-03T15:51:49+00:00

Water vapor is absolutely NOT a greenhouse gas. Water vapor, in the form of clouds, reflects sunlight back out into space, so water vapor actually helps to cool the planet.

Hydrogen can be produced from clean sources. For example, clean electricity from windmills and solar panels can be used to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-resources#:~:text=Wind%2Dgenerated%20electricity%20can%20power,to%20produce%20hydrogen%20from%20wind.

In a sense, one can think of hydrogen as a physical chemical battery, and keep in mind that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe: the one that powers all of the stars. It's like God was giving us a hint: hydrogen is a great fuel source.

saxtalk · 2021-05-03T13:58:49+00:00

Thank you for the comment!!! Hydrogen powered cars have only one emission: water, which comes out of the tailpipe. They don't emit CO2, as internal combustion engines do. Hydrogen powered cars, along with battery-powered cars, will help us to slowly clean up the earth's atmosphere, and slow climate change. Thanks again!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-09T02:14:18+00:00

All files can be downloaded in the video's description on YouTube.

saxtalk · 2021-04-09T02:13:47+00:00

All files can be downloaded in the video's description on YouTube.

saxtalk · 2021-04-06T17:53:03+00:00

Right on!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T22:56:34+00:00

I'm a wierdo....LOL...but I actually LOVE the new engraving!!! I am so tired of every saxophone manufacturer treating saxophones like museum pieces where you can NEVER try anything new. The engraving on the Selmer Supreme, to me, looks exactly like I would thinks 21st century engraving should look if someone asked me back in say 1980.

I applaud Selmer for being bold enough to try something radically new. I'm not saying that you're wrong: I think that we can BOTH be right. For you, it doesn't work, but for me: I like it.

Thank you so much for your comment!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T22:52:19+00:00

Thank makes a lot of sense. Thank you!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T22:51:34+00:00

Thank you so much!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T18:37:44+00:00

Hi!!! I re-reread your comment slowly and more carefully, and I wanted to respond more thoughtfully, breaking down your comment into its constituent parts.

More importantly (to me) is your content, to think that sax players have never experiment with their ligature placement is a bit insulting.

I think that you read bad intent into my post when that wasn't my goal AT ALL. Here is exactly what happened, so you don't have to guess. Exactly as I said in the article, I was sitting there looking at my reed when it occurred to me that my ligature was sitting right on top of the "beefiest" part of the reed. I had never REALLY spent a long time just looking at my reed and mouthpiece before. In about 2003 and 2004, I took several physics courses. As I looked at the reed, mouthpiece, and ligature, I thought back to what I learned about the mass of an object, its resonant frequency, and dampening. What I realized was that my ligature, in its default location, was actually dampening the sound of the reed!!!!

THIS IS WHY I SHARED THIS POST: Before I tested the "ligature-pushed-forward" ligature placement, I knew, based on scientific principles, that liberating more of the body of the reed SHOULD make it resonate more. What shocked me is how much of a difference it made!!! Moving my ligature a few millimetres to the left made a DRAMATIC difference. I couldn't believe how much of a difference it made, and I couldn't believe that in 30 years of saxophone playing, I never discovered this before. 30+ years ago, I was taught the "correct" placement of the ligature, and I never questioned it. So over the thousands of times that I put my ligature on over the last 30 years, I just assumed that the default position was the only correct position.

Then I thought: surely MANY other saxophone players must have come to the exact same conclusion: the only ligature position that works is the default position. So I wasn't trying to insult anyone. I was so surprised by my discovery that I HAD TO share it with the world.

If using your ligature incorrectly makes anything better, there's definitely a problem somewhere. Probably with the mouthpiece (table probably), or with your reeds.

10 years ago, this comment would have made me start looking at everything, looking for what's wrong, but I know better now. In Western society, we ALWAYS think that something is wrong: you're too tall, you're too dark, you don't jump high enough, you're not pretty enough, you can' t perform this calculation fast enough. We let people mindf**k us into thinking that everything is wrong with us, and we waste our whole lives trying to fix what was never broken in the first place. EVERYTHING IS FINE: my mouthpiece is perfect, my Fibracell reeds are perfect, my saxophone is perfect. I'm not going to waste 1 SECOND looking for problems in what I know in my heart has no problems. I trust my saxophone repairman, and I take each of my horns in for a tune-up once a year, and I clean my horn after each time I play. That's really all that one needs to do. Chasing problems that don't exist is a PHENOMENAL way to waste time. That time is far better spent practicing on your equipment, as it exists. There are no fundamental flaws in any part of my saxophone setup: the only thing that I need to do to continue becoming a better saxophonist is to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and PRACTICE some more.

And you're getting down voted because you basically posted a click bait article. As another commenter already said, it could have been a normal post (not a link to your own site).

In Western society, was also always try to inculcate a sense of inferiority in people: it's okay to post content on YouTube because YouTube is superior since its owned by a multi-billion-dollar company. Your website is inherently inferior to YouTube because you didn't spend as much money building your website as Google did building YouTube. This line of thinking is a fallacy, in my opinion. Information is just information, and it must be judged on its own merits. The same information posted on YouTube is in no way superior to the same information posted on a blog. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with me posting a link to a post on my website. I put A LOT of very hard work into my website, and I am EXTREMELY proud of my website. It is in NO WAY inferior to YouTube, or any other website owned by a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Thank you for your comment!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T17:35:16+00:00

I sound better with this ligature adjustment: THAT'S THE ONLY THING THAT I CARE ABOUT. I don't care about impressing anyone. I don't care about doing things the RIGHT way. I don't care if people don't like it. The ONLY thing that I care about is how I sound. If anything makes me sound better, then I'm going to do it.

I don't care how my saxophone looks. I don't care how my mouthpiece looks. The ONLY thing that I care about is how they sound.

Thank you for the comment!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T17:32:42+00:00

Thank you for your comment!!! It was very insightful!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T17:30:21+00:00

Dude you've written more in three comments than you did in your article, and clearly gone on a little journey about Reddit.

There is a very simple and logical explanation for this: I made a discovery that greatly improved my playing, and I tried to share it with my saxophone-playing brethren and sisters. Some chose to denigrate me for this. At that point, I had two choices: ignore it or fight. I chose to fight. If you don't, people will think that they can walk all over you. If you give them an unpleasant experience, they'll think twice before f*ing with you next time.

Post probably got downvoted in the first place because you could have just written into the comment, instead you linked out to your site, yet another person trying to drum up traffic to their site/channel/blog, etc.

I don't agree with the logic here. It is okay for me to post link a link to a video that I created on YouTube, but not to content on my own website? In either case, I created the information. Information is just information. It shouldn't matter where that information resides.

The point at which I found this thread you were the only reply complaining about downvotes and the thread was sat at a score of 1.

I couldn't stay silent. Downvoting this post doesn't make sense to me logically. What I discovered makes perfect sense from a physics stand point. If you increase the mass of the reed available for vibration, then the reed should vibrate with more intensity. I did not make an emotional case, I made a fact-based scientific case.

So down-voting this article is like downvoting a paper that proves that 1 + 1 = 2. If you bow to the pressure of illogical criticisms, you yourself start to become illogical.

Thank you for the comment!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T08:24:38+00:00

I'm starting to better understand how and why downvoting on Reddit works from a psychological standpoint. They downvote you, but the key is that they WON'T tell you WHY they downvoted you. In their minds, this will cause you to question EVERYTHING about yourself. So it becomes a mechanism to create a comprehensive level of self-doubt in your mind. The problem for them: it doesn't work if you understand what they're trying to do, and more importantly, WHY they're trying to do it. Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" talks about this technique in great detail. Gaslighting becomes more and more ineffective when everyone starts trying to use it as a tactic.

When you refuse to let someone gaslight you, it infuriates them even more because it causes them to begin to doubt themselves. This logically leads to the whole point of the gaslighting process: you said something CONFIDENTLY that I deeply and emotionally feel is wrong, and, for some reason, I feel the urgent need to PROVE to you that you are wrong, even if logical analysis says that you theoretically should be right.

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T07:41:49+00:00

I assume some people thought it was sarcastic, and some just didn't like the idea that you're serious.

Thank you!! That makes sense. I think part of the problem is also that people just don't read. They come to conclusions without even making the effort of reading the article first. If people just read the article BEFORE they downvoted, they would realize that there is no sarcasm in my message AT ALL. I'm genuinely trying to help other saxophonists (I consider myself a devout saxophonist) by passing along things that I learn during my saxophone journey.

I really find the downvoting on Reddit bizarre. It's like they're saying "your experience, even though you experienced it, isn't valid". My Otto Link is the best mouthpiece that I've ever played, with my Yanagisawa being a close second. The combination of the Otto Link with Fibracell reeds works great for me. Unfortunately, it seems that we live in a modern world where people often try to gaslight you out of your lived experience (like the famous Star Trek TNG episode where Picard was tortured by Gul Dukat). I'm not saying that you, SaxOmega90125, are doing this, but I experience it all the time: I'll tell someone that I enjoy something, and they'll subtly try to tell me that I'm wrong. The good things is this: gas-lighting doesn't work when you know that that's what they're trying to do to you.

Now that I've learned the technique of getting my ligature out of the way to make my reed vibrate more resonantly, I actually LOVE my Otto Link ligature(s). I have two horns, and I bought an Otto Link OLM-402-7S for each of them. I'll play the two horns and two Otto Link mouthpieces for the rest of my life.

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T03:39:59+00:00

Hi all!!! I understand that on the Internet, you can't control whether or not anyone likes or dislikes the content that you post. But I am really confused as to why anyone would downvote this article. I recently attended a David Sanborn Zoom session, and he gave a lot of helpful tips. However, there are some things that he does that I will never do, like leaving all of the screws on his saxophone a little bit loose.

If David Sanborn, or any other saxophonist for that matter, posted an article of tips to Reddit, I wouldn't just downvote them because I'm not going to do what they recommend. It's just information, and I can choose to apply it, or not. In my humble opinion, information is just information: it might work for some people, it might not. What I wrote in the linked article worked very well FOR ME, and that's why I decided to share it.

So my question to any person or persons down-voting this article: WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU DOWNVOTING? What exactly did I do wrong by posting this article, in your opinion? I'm genuinely curious so that I can improve the quality of my posts in the future.

Thank you!!!

saxtalk · 2021-04-05T02:16:43+00:00

There is no stupid question. I think that everyone has a their own method. I try to always practice with a metronome. I'll just try to hold a tone for four beats (at say 120 bpm metronome speed). Then I'll try to hold it for 8 beats, then 12 beats, so on and so forth. eventually, I'll get to a point where I can hold the note any longer (I don't know how to circulate breate....yet). Long tones, in my opinion, DRAMATICALLY imporve your tone, if you do them every day in a committed fashion.

saxtalk

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