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You are here: Home / Sax Lessons / Sax Expression / The Art of Bending Saxophone Notes Lesson

The Art of Bending Saxophone Notes Lesson

$9.99

SKU: 177 Category: Sax Expression Tags: bend notes, saxophone, steve neff, throat, tongue, voicing notes
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Description

A great sax player has mastered the art of bending and shaping  their notes to express what they want to convey.  It might be a mood, attitude or emotion.  There is no doubt that bending notes adds excitement and emotion to a solo.  Bending notes on the saxophone is one of the coolest things that you can learn to do.  All the great jazz and R&B saxophone players bend there notes in some way.  Usually, the most expressive players and the ones who convey the most emotion and feeling in their playing are the ones who really manipulate and shape their sound the most.

For me, it’s similar to being a great reader or storyteller.  The worst thing you can do while reading a story to a child is to just have a monotone voice that drones on throughout the story……..never changing.  That’s a great way to get a child to fall asleep fast but a horrible way to keep their interest and attention.  You will find that the best storytellers are those that manipulate different aspects of their voice while reading.  They talk slower or faster.  They talk higher for a women’s voice or lower for a man’s voice.  They try to match the sound and style of the way they are speaking with the character that is saying it.  If the story is happy…..they sound happy.  If it sad, they sound sad.  If it is stressful they speak urgently and with some anxiety in their voice.  You will find a ton of volume changes while they read to help them convey different emotions to the listener. They might whisper and the child will lean forward to hear.  They might yell and the child will jump back startled.  All these elements are brought together to tell a story in a rich and expressive way.  I find that the great sax players use these same techniques to convey a story to their audience. The best ones use many different techniques to create a mood or  emotion.

One of the most common is the bending of notes on the saxophone.  In this video, I am showing you the technique I use to bend notes by just using your tongue and throat.  Many players will  learn how to bend notes by dropping their bottom jaw early on in their development.  The technique I am using here is a bit more nebulous and hard to define.  As I have taught over the last 10 years I have found this to be one of the hardest elements to teach to a student.  The problem is teaching in such a way that the student understands what I am saying and how to implement it without actually being able to see and experience the movement or action.  The other problem is trying to understand what is going on within the students throat and tongue position.  Many times a student is unaware of what is happening or is even mistaken about what is happening inside their own body.

This video is in response to a great player on the internet who sent me an email asking me to go into further depth about this bending with your throat concept.  He is an amazing player but has never been able to bend notes without using his embouchure and was very curious about the method I use to do this.

I try my best in this video to show you how I can bend the tenor mouthpiece pitch down while I blow by “voicing” the note lower.  I explain in the video how I am not knowledgeable at all about the medical terms for what I am describing (and I’m not so sure it would help students even if I was) but I try my best to describe what is going on inside my throat and mouth.  You can see first hand the affect that this manipulation has on the mouthpiece pitch as well as the sound of the tenor sax as a whole.

Learning this concept has huge benefits.  It helps with expression but it also helps with intonation in a great way.  If you have certain notes that are sharp or a top register that is sharp then you can very easily use this concept to bring the pitch down without using your embouchure at all.  This frees up your embouchure for vibrato and other tonal aspects that you might want to manipulate.

I hope you enjoy the video and find it useful. (32 Minute Video Lesson)

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Lesson Sample

https://public.neffmusic.com/The%20Art%20of%20Bending%20Notes%20clip.mp4

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I bought Steve’s dominant bebop book and took a couple of online lesson from him. I really appreciated Steve’s careful listening of what I wanted to get done in a lesson and his clear, concise ideas on next steps to improve my playing and musical interpretation.  His mastering  the Dominant Bebop Scale has lots of exercises to use a scale that addresses the largest percentage of chords I come across in pop/blues music. The dominant V7.  Needless say it has improved my playing.  I teach and a… Read more
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Your major diatonic patterns book is great. I”m studying the first twenty patterns (first twenty pages) each day with different articulation each day and slowly increasing the tempo each week or so.  There is a noticeable improvement in finger coordination across all keys and its amazing how much more secure I feel on the difficult keys when attempting to play pieces with 5+ flats/sharps. I’m able to sort out the fingerings for these pieces now much more quickly than before, often in one or two … Read more
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After reading your story I will never feel quite right about complaining about any of my MINOR health issues!!    God bless Steve and I really hope that your health doesn’t stop you from fulfilling your calling.    These books have been such a help to open up my jazz vocabulary…   Thanks so much for sharing your story and for providing these great teaching tools…   John Leclerc   Saxophonist / composer/ EWI player and professional working musician of 35 years….

John Leclerc
Thank you so much for the great job you are doing to help further our jazz studies. Though I make my living as a repairer of musical instruments I am a student of jazz and have been fortunate enough to be involved with a big band and a combo for the last several years. As my children began to leave “the nest” I had decided to dedicate the next half of my life to a more serious study of the sax but I didn’t know exactly how I would go about doing this until a friend of mine turned me onto your si… Read more
Jon
I just wanted to write a thank you note to you for this website. I play and teach saxophone, but I have always been intimidated by the gear aspect. Your website has helped me become a lot more knowledgable. Your knowledge is staggering! I’m telling all my students about your website. Pierre
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Wolfgang from Berlin
I just started looking at my lessons and I have to say, dude you are awesome.  I ABSOLUTELY will learn from you!  I started the tenor about 1 ½ yrs ago and have since picked up an alto, and more recently a soprano.  I spend most of the time on the tenor, followed by soprano, and have only gotten to the alto a few times.  I think I’ll be sticking with tenor.  I’m having a great time and hope one day to play well enough to get regular gigs.  I’ve been playing keys for about 35 years (… Read more
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Two years later I began a search for a sax teacher and happened to come across Steve Neff when I was searching YouTube for sax teachers.  I went to neffmusic.com and was very impressed with the lessons Steve Neff was offering.  The concept of selecting lessons was an approach that I thought was unique and purchased a few lessons.  I liked the lessons so much that I signed-up for a 6 month package. I was very happy with all the lessons I selected.  I also purchased Steve’s book Mastering the B… Read more
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I like so many other subscribers feel so encouraged by Steve’s learning techniques; you will enjoy reading the comments of praise others have left as you too will feel that you share a common view and path. I feel very lucky to have come across Neffmusic and that feeling will remain with you as you search through a treasure trove of learning materials on offer, you will quickly find the lessons that you are suited to. You will instantly recognize the unparalleled quality of Steve’s teaching … Read more
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