I would like to express the sincerest gratititude to all my teachers for their patience and kindness.  To my students, this gift will now be lovingly passed to you:

How to practice effectively…

In his book Effortless Mastery, jazz legend and pianist Kenny Werner addresses the problem of practicing and how to practice effectively.  The short story is: practice slowly so you don't practice making mistakes and play one thing at a time until you've mastered it; fingers are stupid.  I highly recommend the Kenny Werner book.  Invest in a tuner and a metronome, its not too late to play in tune and in time!  Also, don't forget about ear training: 

www.good-ear.com/servlet/EarTrainer

Embouchure Flexibility Exercise

This exercise is indispensible for centering the saxophone sound.  (attach "embouchure flexibility exercise.pdf")

Warm-Up

Spend 15 -30 minutes per day on a comprehensive warm-up.  I like Jackie McLean's "Grand Exercise" from the book Daily Warm-Up Exercises for Saxophone or try this one:  (attach "saxophone warm-up.pdf")

Scales

Scales and chords are the same material in different configurations.    Regular and methodical scale practice – with a metronome on beats 2 and 4 - will help you to improve your technique and dexterity.  Start by learning basic diatonic and pentatonic scales and their modes, as well as chromatic and whole tone, and then try synthetic scales such as bebop scales and diminished scales.  There are an endless number of books on scales so please make your own investigations and try making scale practice fun by inventing your own patterns.  My suggested method of scale practice is as follows and in Steve Lacy's "magic order" of key centers: Bb, E, C, F#, D, Ab, B, F, Db, G, Eb, A.

Link

Bebop scales are useful in that they have an added leading tone which gives them the colour of a note outside of the basic tonality.  I suggest five basic scales, each with its own root tonality, which when played starting on different scale degrees can be used over many and various chords. 

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Modal harmony is non-functional as it doesn't employ leading tone resolution and is therefore very flexible and complex.  This kind of harmony has been used in jazz since the late 1950's, mainly as the modes of the diatonic major scale system, but all of the modes are worth checking out.  

Link

Harmonics Exercise

This exercise has been used by many great saxophone players including Dave Liebman and Pat Laberbera.  Try it yourself as a window into the altissimo register and match the intonation of the harmonics with the regular fingered notes.   

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Recommended books and recordings for first year jazz studies on Saxophone

The Charlie Parker Omnibook

     Eb (yellow book) for alto and bari, Bb (pink book) for tenor and soprano

Jazz Conception for Saxophone (series by Lennie Niehaus)

     wonderful jazz etudes and duets to play with your friends

Daily Warm-Up Exercises for Saxophone (Jackie McLean)

The Jazz Theory Book (Mark Levine)

Effortless Mastery (Kenny Werner)

Jamey Aebersold play-along recordings-

     Vol. 42 "Blues In All Keys"

     Vol. 47 "I Got Rhythm – Changes In All Keys"

A reliable real book / fake book – Volume 6 will do (transposed for your instrument) – if you decide to acquire more fake books in the future, get concert key books and use them to learn sight-transposition.  Start compiling your own fake book: get a binder and fill it full of concert-key lead sheets of songs you know from memory.

Listening

     Miles Davis – "Kind of Blue" and "Milestones", also "Workin'", "Steamin'", "Relaxin'", "Cookin'" and "Somethin' Else"

     Dave Brubeck – "Time Out"

     Charlie Parker – "Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948" (JSP label, 5cd box-set re-issue)

     John Coltrane – "Blue Trane" and "Giant Steps"

     Oliver Nelson – "Blues and the Abstract Truth"

     Sonny Rollins – "Tenor Madness"

     Dexter Gordon – "Our Man In Paris"