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Ohtori Akio posted:I think that's plenty to bring back to the instructor. "this full warmup plus the studies is too much for my chops right now, what do we cut?" My instructor thinks it's probably DOMS from not having played a lot in awhile. He told me to power through it for a week and see if it gets better. He also gave me a slightly truncated warmup routine to try out and told me to limit my playing times during practice and to rest more often. So I'm gonna try all of that this week and report my findings back to him at my next lesson and then we'll tweak accordingly.
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Dec 21, 2023 20:47
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Been playing the Roland Aerophone(a toy) for a while since i love the Tenor sound and live in an appartment with neighbours(eww). But since my neighbours are gone, my partner gifted me a Tenor But impatient as i am, i just practiced a Bm blues scale and play Summertime 30min everyday in the closet. i use a 2.0 reed and the sound that comes from it sounds more like a fart then jazz. I signed up today to private 1-on-1 with an instructor, i hope their are not from a classic background as im more leaning toward blues/funk/jazz to play along my bass arrangements/jams.
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Dec 22, 2023 12:14
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DrZepam posted:Been playing the Roland Aerophone(a toy) for a while since i love the Tenor sound and live in an appartment with neighbours(eww). How thin are the walls in your apartment? If you're worried about bugging your neighbors, putting a Crown Royal bag (or two) over your bell should dampen your sound a little bit. You'll probably still have to practice in a closet, but you may at least be able to play a dynamic or two higher without bothering them. EDIT: Not sure if you meant your neighbors are gone permanently or just on vaycay.
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Dec 22, 2023 18:55
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The bag trick doesn't work nearly as well on a sax. Keyed instruments emanate sound from the keys themselves in addition to the bell.
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Dec 22, 2023 21:19
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Oh. ... well then I got nothin'.
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Dec 22, 2023 22:12
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There are these doofy things: https://www.saxophone-mute.com/ I just practice mid-afternoon, under the theory that kids coming home from school, etc, make it a noisy time of day anyway. No neighbor's complained yet, anyway. But, I work at home so that's doable for my schedule.
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Dec 22, 2023 22:56
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Bread Enthusiast posted:There are these doofy things: https://www.saxophone-mute.com/ This thing looks like it's in unending pain.
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Dec 22, 2023 23:53
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as far as apartment practicing goes, as long as you're reasonable about it and you don't overdo it you're generally fine like don't practice at 11 PM and don't just do the same scale exercise over and over for an hour or whatever
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Dec 23, 2023 00:21
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DrZepam posted:Been playing the Roland Aerophone(a toy) for a while since i love the Tenor sound and live in an appartment with neighbours(eww). Feedback, I cannot fathom how fruitful an hour with an instructor was. As any respectable gamer, I wanted to blame myself instead of blaming the gamepad/gear. And I was right. My instructor was the stereotype of "asian grandpa", often fixing my mouthpiece because the pitch wasn't right. Checking my embouchure and encouraging me to "Blow more, don't be shy this is a soundproof room, not your apartment", apparently I was chocking on the whole mouthpiece instead of only using 1.5inches (I didnt knew what is that even, I speak metric system) After some nice warmups he asked me to play something. And I did play the only thing I know. He immediately sits in the Piano and keeps playing the rythm and asks me if I know the scale, I nod and he tells to improvise slow notes and don't think as a guitarist/bassist. That was up to date my best jam with another musician. I will sign with this amazing dude and record my progress. Hell yeah I love this instrument. 10/10 worth the learning budget if you're an adult hobbyst.
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Dec 28, 2023 19:26
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Im a huge dumbass so how does the partial system work for brass instrument work? I'm played  throughout college and the 1 fingering combo = 1 note system makes sense, but a 3 valve instrument only gets 8 options which isn't enough notes. I think pitch change has to do something with buzz pressure, but like, how does that work? If I flop my lips together, I just get one speed only and that's not rightHow horrified would a classical flutist be at Ian Anderson's technique?
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Jan 10, 2024 00:35
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Im a huge dumbass so how does the partial system work for brass instrument work? I'm played The column of air inside the instrument has a set of specific mathematical frequencies that it'll vibrate at, called the instrument's resonances, and buzzing faster (not pushing harder) to excite those faster frequencies produces higher notes. Strings and woodwinds work similarly; you can get the same harmonic sequence on a flute with faster air, and you can touch the nodes on a string to produce them.
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Jan 10, 2024 00:58
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:I'm played To relate it a little more to your saxophoning experience, you know that octave key under your thumb? That isn't actually required. You can play a G-in-the-middle-of-the-staff without it, and then just sorta crank down on your lips and boop! G-on-the-top-line pops out. Now, the key makes it like a million times easier, but you can technically do it all with your lips, tongue height, and throat. This is easiest to mess around with on a low note, like low C or B or Bb, you can get like five or six overtones fairly easily if you've played sax for a while. The first overtone is an octave, the next one is less than an octave, and the interval shortens with each one due to the magic of sound physics. So in a sense, brass instruments are like saxes without the octave key. Gotta do it all the hard way. (Flutes too, they just don't have an octave key, wacky, huh?)
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Jan 10, 2024 01:21
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I haven't practiced in a week and a half and I feel like a failure. Might have to cancel my lesson this week just to avoid the embarrassment of telling my instructor that I couldn't set aside even a few minutes to blow a few notes. I'm also learning that I cannot go to the gym and expect to be able to practice afterward; I can either practice *before* going to the gym or not practice at all. If I go to the gym first then it will be dark by the time I leave, and practicing at home after dark just feels wrong to me for some reason. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Jan 12, 2024 |
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Jan 12, 2024 01:58
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I. M. Gei posted:I haven't practiced in a week and a half and I feel like a failure. Might have to cancel my lesson this week just to avoid the embarrassment of telling my instructor that I couldn't set aside even a few minutes to blow a few notes. Nah, make it a coffee lesson. Bring two coffees, pay your teacher for their time, and discuss life. A good teacher will understand, will have been there, and will have advice. Or don’t even discuss music but learn something anyway. It happens.
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Jan 12, 2024 03:52
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or use it as an opportunity to hop back on the practicing train
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Jan 12, 2024 08:28
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borrowed a clarinet from my college last tuesday; have 0 woodwind experience apart from goofing with a recorder, but i want to get a headstart on methods classes for my credential. finally made a musical sound today that wasn't just a stream of humid air coming out of the bell, LFG. i have mad respect for yall after starting on this, woodwind is like a vertical wall of difficulty when you start compared to string instruments.
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Jan 22, 2024 00:27
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Even if your tone production is rough right now, the technical stuff in terms of fingering and the like will be of great benefit moving forward. In the same way the valve sequence gets carried over, you will find a lot of the fingering technique does as well. Stick with it, you’ll be glad you did.
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Jan 22, 2024 06:06
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I've been practicing on my Schilke 12A4A for the past few days and the chop stiffness I had on it before is almost completely gone. I think it's because I'm doing a new warmup routine that's way shorter and less intense than the one I did before. I started noticing that my chops felt stiff on every mouthpiece anytime I did my old warmups plus Cichowicz flow studies on my new horns, and shortening the warmup seems to have fixed the problem. Which is great because it means my soreness from earlier was my warmup routine's fault, and not the mouthpiece's. I really love this mouthpiece, although I do wish the inner diameter was slightly wider. It feels great to play, but having just a tiny bit more room to buzz my lips would be nice, and might help improve my accuracy a little bit. I feel like the 14A4A might be slightly too wide, and that either a 13 or 13.5 width with the same cup depth as the 12A4A would be just right, although the actual 13A4A is too shallow. I'm not really sure what I can do about this other than ordering a whole custom-spec mouthpiece from Schilke, which costs $$$$$. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Jan 25, 2024 |
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Jan 25, 2024 22:27
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I. M. Gei posted:I've been practicing on my Schilke 12A4A for the past few days and the chop stiffness I had on it before is almost completely gone. I think it's because I'm doing a new warmup routine that's way shorter and less intense than the one I did before. I started noticing that my chops felt stiff on every mouthpiece anytime I did my old warmups plus Cichowicz flow studies on my new horns, and shortening the warmup seems to have fixed the problem. Which is great because it means my soreness from earlier was my warmup routine's fault, and not the mouthpiece's. lol welp I practiced on it again right after typing this and the stiffness came right back. The only thing I did different yesterday was not take Advil after my practice the day before. I took some after yesterday's practice and the stiffness was gone again today. So, lesson learned I guess. If you're gonna practice on a screamer mouthpiece, and especially if you're gonna play Cichowicz flows, don't forget to take your Advils afterward, or you're gonna be stiff as a zombie the next day.
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Jan 27, 2024 01:07
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boooooo my tax return isn't enough to buy that second Torpedo Bag I want 
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Feb 3, 2024 02:46
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Anybody know any good tricks for keeping the throat open when playing high notes? Mine is closing up like a motherfucker any time I try to go past an A above the staff, and I'm trying to figure out how to make it stop.
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Feb 19, 2024 20:18
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The advice, for everything, is always 'relax'. How to relax is never explained. I tend to bear down too much when shooting for the highest notes on sax, which makes me sharp and nasal-sounding. I just... try to remember to not do that? It's not easy to actually remember in the heat of things, though.
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Feb 19, 2024 20:28
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I. M. Gei posted:Anybody know any good tricks for keeping the throat open when playing high notes? I always say you should feel like you’re almost about to yawn while maintaining a firm embouchure. Play high ledger notes and guide them into tune and hold them there while consciously trying to get that pre-yawn feeling until it becomes muscle memory. I don’t know how well that translates to brass, so this might be completely unhelpful but the principle should be the same 
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Feb 19, 2024 20:33
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Hazo posted:I always say you should feel like you’re almost about to yawn while maintaining a firm embouchure. I just tried this on some Cichowicz flows and I think it actually worked. Holy gently caress.
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Feb 19, 2024 23:45
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Never underestimate the power of chromatic long tones. It doesn’t fix the immediate problem, but I would wager that it would slowly expand the range of the notes that do not have that issue over time.
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Feb 20, 2024 01:07
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I. M. Gei posted:I just tried this on some Cichowicz flows and I think it actually worked. Holy gently caress. I did it again today and got all the way through them without issue, which means this is a repeatable action that works! Holy poo poo. Why did NOBODY ever bother to tell me that "open the throat" is a voluntary physical action that I can do?
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Feb 21, 2024 00:20
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i mean they might have. sometimes pedagogy is being told the same thing several ways until the right one sinks in. keep repping it.
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Feb 21, 2024 00:28
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Ohtori Akio posted:i mean they might have. sometimes pedagogy is being told the same thing several ways until the right one sinks in. keep repping it.
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Feb 21, 2024 06:19
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i want to get a saxophone. always loved the timbre of sax, love when weird metal albums use it for solos, love jazz. been looking at altos. did some research and it seems like people who aren't trying to sell you something say find a used yamaha and take it to a tech, i've found some yas-23s for about 400 bucks at a few online places and like the local music go round that claim to be in good player condition. what do y'all suggest? not looking to spend more than about 500 bucks on this, gonna flip an old guitar to fund it. Southern Cassowary fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 07:28
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The reason people say that is because Yamahas are decent and sturdy and common, so any repair shop can repair them. Cheap horns off Amazon or whatever often use metal that, like, won't bend properly when something needs to be fixed, or parts are loose or misaligned and constantly shuffle about. The Yamahas are bolted together, use thickass rods that don't bend, and are generally constructed to survive the abuses of elementary school. And there tons and tons of used Yamaha altos out there, thanks to school kids churning through them and abandoning them later, so it helps keep the price down. In a vacuum, a YAS-23 is a fine horn. With its reparability and price compared to everything else, it's a great horn. It's unfortunately hard to factor in repair prices for a new-to-you used horn. It might be fine right off (I've been lucky in this regard), it might need $20 because one cork is wonky, it might need $300 of pads - who knows? And repair places are wildly all over the place with what they charge for labor.
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Mar 25, 2024 14:47
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Bread Enthusiast posted:It's unfortunately hard to factor in repair prices for a new-to-you used horn. It might be fine right off (I've been lucky in this regard), it might need $20 because one cork is wonky, it might need $300 of pads - who knows? And repair places are wildly all over the place with what they charge for labor. this was my concern with price hunting on a reverb/ebay special. i know enough to know saxes have wear items and require regular looking at by a specialized tech, but not enough to be able to spot if a given instrument is in tune-up shape or if it's a basket case. i pulled up a picture of the vito (rebranded yamaha, apparently) i was looking at on music go round and the cork where the mouthpiece goes looks black and maybe misshapen. how much of an actual problem that is? zero idea. there are some local(ish) and online woodwind-focused shops that keep a stock of old yamahas and other instruments in stock for repair and sale to newbies, thinking of calling/emailing a couple of them and seeing what they have. Southern Cassowary fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 15:31
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Cork replacement is negligible, probably the single cheapest possible repair. I paid $10 about 5 years ago for my last one. My tenor cork is actually falling off, it just slides loosely back and forth on the neck (the glue died or something). I keep putting off the visit to the repair guy for no particular reason, and have a roll of blue painters tape in my case for if it completely self-destructs right before a gig. I really ought to go get it fixed, though. The real expensive stuff is a problem that requires disassembling the whole sax. Bad pad(s), a badly bent rod, or a sound-affecting dent in a really inconvenient place. Spotting these by sight on an ebay pic are basically impossible. Some Vitos are Yamahas. They stamped that name on numerous brands over the years. I have been told that the Yamaha-Vitos have 'made in Japan' stamped on them, but that is secondhand sax gossip which is not super reliable. Now it's thirdhand gossip!
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Mar 25, 2024 15:49
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this is all enlightening, thank you getting down to brass tacks - let's say hypothetically i can find a used ebay/reverb/general music store special yamaha/mij vito (the one i mentioned is stamped mij and claims to be a yamaha) for about 400 bucks, and i can get one from a woodwind repair tech that keeps some in stock to sell to newbies for about 500-600. where do you go? also how much is a repair job that requires sax disassembly? is total pad replacement 300 usd?
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Mar 25, 2024 16:00
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Personally, I would lean towards the local guy just cause of the better odds. At those price differences it's basically insurance to cut down on chance of damage from shipping, imo. Disassembly is a major, major job. Even ignoring all the frickin rods and screws and springs that need to be reattached, there are like twenty-something pads that all need to be angled and sealed correctly and you're gonna pay for like a week of labor. If it is under $1000 it's a miracle. Fixing one pad is not gonna involve all that, of course. To screw them all up you'd have to be pretty neglectful. Some climates can be an issue (either super dry or super humid) but I've always lived in fine saxophone country. But getting something online, you don't know if some guy stored it in his 140-degree attic for ten years or what. Another point for local, I think. As far as continuing costs (if that factors into your decision), decent mouthpieces start at like $50 and go up to silly prices. If the horn doesn't come with a mouthpiece you would need to get at least a passable one, hopefully in the $50-100 range. You ultimately only need one mouthpiece, but sometimes it takes a while to find a good one for you. But the Great Mouthpiece Hunt is something that you do after a few years of playing, not right off. And reeds, the only actual consumable, are like $3-5 each for wood and like $20-30 for artificial. Wood ones last surprisingly long if you don't damage them by banging the edge on something; artificial last for a long, long time. A year or more. They sound different, though.
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Mar 25, 2024 16:18
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I prefer buying from local stores whenever possible just because if there is a major unseen problem with the instrument, it's less hassle to bring it back to have someone look at it than it is to arrange to get it shipped back cross-country or work your way through an eBay dispute. (You're also potentially able to playtest it if you buy it local, which can shake out some problems with instruments that are otherwise in good shape but aren't compatible with you for some particular reason, though if you're looking for an instrument to learn on that probably won't tell you much.) I can at least second the old Yamaha YAS-23s as a perfectly fine, sturdy basic sax for the price, it's what I was recommended when I was looking for an alto sax more reliable than the $100 Amazon special I bought on a whim and after a few years of irregular use it's still playing fine The Chairman fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 19:04
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A full overhaul of a student instrument at my local pro shop starts around $650. More if major metalwork like serious alignment has to be done. However at the local shop that mostly does school band instruments it costs half that. An old YAS23 doesn’t need techs who can make an attic find beat up Chu Berry back into a new pro horn. Check to see where your local schools take their stuff.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:08
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Stultus Maximus posted:Check to see where your local schools take their stuff. i know that place and i am unenthusiastic about it tbh, been there for guitar stuff and it's kind of eh. i've got a list of a couple of places in bigger cities an hour or two away that seem well-regarded and advertise having selections of refurbed student instruments i'm going to reach out to.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:46
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So I'm writing my first full score.  I'm transcribing a song for marching band and want to get an idea of what it sounds like on real instruments, since the playback on the notation software sounds like rear end. I think I have software that can combine tracks, but I'd need to record the parts individually and I have no money or recording equipment. This is a long-shot, but does anyone in this thread have access to decent recording gear, and if so, would any of y'all be willing to record yourselves playing part of this monstrosity I've written so I can see how it sounds and figure out what adjustments to make? I mostly need recordings for alto sax, mellophone, trumpet (since I don't have equipment to record myself), baritone, and sousaphone (or tuba, since I doubt anyone on earth owns a sousaphone). MAYBE tenor sax (I need to get an idea of what this sounds like in case I need to reassign some parts), and MAYBE trombone (I know someone irl who may be able to do this one). I don't have anything written for piccolo, clarinet, or percussion yet, although I know a couple of people who can probably do at least two of those if they have their own equipment. I also have a simple 4-bar piano loop I could use a recording of.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:31
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Which notation program are you using? If Finale, I can help you out. I do this poo poo for a living.
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Mar 27, 2024 04:16
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bagina posted:Which notation program are you using? If Finale, I can help you out. I do this poo poo for a living. Sibelius (the paid subscription version for iPad), although I have Finale v27 and can convert it to that too.
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Mar 27, 2024 04:33
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