Paul Maine

Software Engineer, Musician and Life Long Learner

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Paul Maine

C Major Scale Exercise

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In order to improve our musicianship it is critical to improve our technique on the saxophone. We begin with a C major scale exercise that you can download.  As you work through the scale exercise be sure to use a metronome. Record your progress as you increase the speed of the metronome. Do not increase the speed of the metronome until until you can play the exercise completely without error. It is also good to practice your jazz articulation ( please see my jazz articulation post ) on this exercise.

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Jazz Articulation

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Master saxophonist and educator Jacob Lampe provides the following comments on proper jazz articulation:

“Tongue the upbeats and slur into the downbeats.   The upbeats whether swing (uneven) or straight can be lightly accented / tongued and you slur into the beats for the jazz style. dat would be more of an ending note, or short note… like  do-da-do-dat!

do being slured/unaccented
da being light tongue accent
dat – strong accent”

In chapter 2 of “Jazz Theory Resources Volume One” by Bert Ligon, Bert has a nice section on “Accents and Articulations”.

In the JAN/FEB 2009 issue of the Saxophone Journal, Greg Fishman has a good jazz articulation article entitled  “The Art OF Jazz Articulation,Part 1”.

Fishman calls the articulation of sluring into downbeats and tonguing the upbeats as “Mainstream Tonguing”. Sonny Stitt is an excellent example of a wonderful player that uses “Mainstream Tonguing”.

There are countless variations of jazz articulation but this should get you started.

What type of articulation do you use?

Jazz Theory and Method Books

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There are many jazz theory and method books on the market and over the years I have purchased a great many of them. Most of these books have not been useful.  In the future I will be reviewing a number of different books and communicating my thoughts. Please consider subscribing to the newsfeed at paulmaine.com or visiting often.

Thank You,

Paul Maine