SOUND

The first thing that grabs a listener is your sound. Your sound is probably the single most important characteristic of your individuality as a player. It doesn’t matter how many notes you play, or how hip those notes are, if the sound is not an attractive one, then the listener won’t be engaged.

Here are a couple of simple exercises to improve tone and pitching which you can use at the start of your daily practise session:

1.       Pitching fifths and octaves. Beginning at the bottom of the horn, and moving up chromatically, on each starting note play a root, a fifth, the octave, the root, the octave, and the fifth.

Tongue the start and end of each note. This exercise is not about speed. You can see it as a variation on long note practise so choose a slow to medium tempo. You will be training yourself to pre-hear the fifths and octaves and to hit the target pitch accurately without sliding up or down to it. Aim to play each note with a constant pitch and volume without any vibrato.

2.       Playing the lower octave with the octave key open. Keeping the octave key open, finger and pitch each note of the lower octave in turn, moving down chromatically from middle C# to bottom Bb. Tongue the start and end of each note. At first, you may find that the note jumps up the octave especially as you get lower on the horn. Look on this exercise as a work in progress. If you persist with it, you will soon find that you can get all the way down to bottom Bb. Don’t worry if the notes sound thin or distorted: the benefit is a strengthening of the lower embouchure which you get no matter how horrible the sound you are making!

Copyright 2009 Pete Canter

07966 034 884 lazybirdjazz@hotmail.com www.petecanter.com