Archive for the ‘Saxophone Stuff’ Category

Gary Jones on Sax on the Web posted this up for all to see.  He happily gave me permission to post it up here also.  Gary studied with a graduate student years ago that was  one of Joe Allard’s best students at that time.

Joe Allard (December 31, 1910 – May 3, 1991), a native of Lowell, MA,was a famous saxophone and clarinet  professor at Juilliard, The New England Conservatory and The Manhattan School of Music.  Some of his most famous students were: Michael Brecker, Eddie Daniels, Bob Berg, Dave Liebman, Paul Winter, Steve Grossman, Kenneth Radnofsky, Bill Pierce  and many many others.

I found reading this both fascinating and enlightening.  Many of the tips on reeds I had never heard before. I love how relaxed it all feels when you’re reading it.  The more relaxed and natural everything is the better.  Thanks so much to Gary Jones for writing this out and making it available to the saxophone community!

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It might be as close as your refrigerator! Check out this video.

About 6 months ago I had a new member to my site named Les Silver. Les signed up for online lessons and we exchanged quite a few emails and phone calls talking about my lessons and in our conversations he told me about his saxophone line that he has been developing over the last few years. He really peaked my interest when he said that the tenor was a copy of a 85,000 Mark VI and that Michael Brecker had tried it.  I knew Les had been a partner in AMT mics and knew Brecker and many other heavy players so I believed what he was telling me. I told him I would be very interested in trying the sax if he could send me one to try. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day one of my students said he wanted to get out of the house and start gigging and making some money. We’ve been working on standards and jazz improvisation over the last year or so. He asked me if I thought he was ready and we got into a discussion about playing out. It’s not unusual in the Boston area to make 400-500 for a four hour wedding reception gig. The thing about these wedding gigs though is that there is a certain repertoire that most players have to know to a certain degree. Most of the bands I play in don’t have any sort of book. You just show up and they start calling tunes that you are expected to know. Here’s a list of my 100 top tunes you should know pretty well before you go out and do a wedding gig. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation into different facing curve lengths on my alto and tenor saxophone. On my alto I have been using mouthpieces that were all refaced by Brian Powell to .80 tip openings. These are what I’ve been using:

Florida Hard Rubber Link-20mm facing length
Florida Hard Rubber Link-20.5mm facing length
Modern Meyer-21mm facing length
Old Hard Rubber Link-22mm facing length
V16 A7M-23mm facing length

I’ve never understood what difference the facing lengths make until playing around with these mouthpieces. Read the rest of this entry »

i did a lesson on Sax intonation where I talked about charting your intonation tendencies of your sax by using a tuner. What you do is play naturally for a few seconds and then end on the target note and while holding it turn and look at the tuner. put a mark on the graph above the note where the tuner said it was. Play again for a few seconds and then land on the next target note and do the same. Do this until you have all 33 notes map out. You might want to try it a few times to make sure you are consistent with your results. Once you are done it’s a great idea to memorize the tendencies of your sax. Read the rest of this entry »

I found this posted on Dave Valdez’s blog. It’s so great I wanted to post it here. It’s really amazing to watch. It’s a video of Coltrane’s Giant Steps Solo transcription being put on the page as the recording is playing. There is something about watching it that is amazing. you’re hearing Coltrane play a great solo as the notes appear right there on the page. I have no idea how they filmed this but it’s terrific.
Giant Steps Video

I’m always finding great videos on Youtube. I wish this was around when I was a kid. You can find almost everybody on there. Amazing!!

1.Some Classic Michael Brecker

2.Rick Margitza with a great sound..

3.Some Beautiful Pete Christlieb

4.Joshua Redman-Straight Ahead!

5.Sal Nistico burning on Sister Sadie

I just thought you might be wondering what the deal is with the mouthpiece clips part of the page. These are in no way studio recordings. They are mostly meant to be of interest to other sax players that are interested in tenor sax mouthpieces. About 7 years ago I came upon a site on the internet called “Sax on the Web” www.forumsaxontheweb.net. At that time I had been playing the same Super Gonz I tenor mouthpiece for 6 years. When I discovered SOTW I started reading about all these other mouthpieces out there. I slowly started buying and selling mouthpieces to try them out and see if any were better than the Super Gonz. Sure enough, 7 years later, I’ve tried a whole lot of pieces. Read the rest of this entry »