22 Must Know Steps to a Good Saxophone Warm-up Routine

The Importance of a Good Saxophone Warm-up Routine
How you practice is more important than what you practice or how hard you're working during your practice sessions. You can literally spend hours practicing only to find that you were practicing incorrectly, drilling in something that will end up taking you hours to unlearn. How you practice is more important than anything else and there's a science in how to get the most out of your time practicing your instrument.

Of all the most important things to progress as a saxophone player learning jazz improvisation in Los Angeles, I have found that the greatest thing that impedes my students' progress is the lack of a good practice routine. It's also important to realize that the warm-ups must change sometimes week to week in order to reflect the changes that are happening in your ability after each saxophone lesson.
Below is a compilation of many of the most important warm-up techniques that I've put together from all my various Burbank saxophone students. This came as a request by my students so that they would have a routine to follow.

DETAILED WARMUP PRACTICE ROUTINE It’s important to do this in a sequential process

1. Check Airstream only (NO sound) Listen for the free flow of the air (no resistance in the sound of the airstream is the goal) Taking a good FULL breath with your mouth opening and releasing any tension you feel with each breath. Try to feel that you’re “pulling” it down to your stomach.
2. Letting the Air do the Work - Now do #1 again but with adding more volume of air (speed up the air) and LET the note pop in on it’s own. If you’re hearing any resistance in the airstream before the note pops in then you’re haven’t mastered #1 so go back and get that right. Once you get it, repeat this this exercise over and over (taking a full breath with the mouth open) and restarting the exercise with just the air and speeding it up to produce the sound. All the while you need to make sure you're not helping to produce the sound by squeezing with the lips.
3. Long Tones - Now, let’s concentrate on holding out one note steady as long as possible. For this, think of blowing a flame on a candle so that you are able to control the air to the point of bending (not blowing out) the flame. Your goal is to have such good airflow and control of the air that you don’t blow the flame out but rather just bend the flame down and pin it there (you will feel the muscles in your stomach tighten to be able to control the amount of air). The tightening this stomach muscles is necessary for good breath control and ultimately control of your sound.
4. Tongue Position - Once you have mastered #1#2#3, then you are ready to start focusing on the back your tongue position. Begin by singing the highest note that you can sing. Now sing the note again and notice where your tongue is in your mouth. You’ll notice that your tongue is back and up about as far as it can be. Notice also that the sides of your tongue are touching your upper back molars. This is the proper position of the tongue when playing. Repeat this exercise over and over until you can easily feel the the proper tongue placement. Watch in a mirror the first few times to see it and get the feel.
5. Now, let's focus on the TIP of the tongue. Notice that when he you have your tongue back in your mouth it's now in a good position to touch the reed just a little back from the tip of the tongue. You also only touch the bottom tip or bottom corner) of the reed. Test your tongue placement by blowing the note in, holding the note for two seconds and then bringing your tongue slowly forward until you touch the bottom tip of the reed.
6. Find the reed - Repeat this several times until you can feel your tongue hit the same position every time. Remember, it's not the tip of the tongue that hits the tip of the reed,. It’s about a half an inch back from the tip of the tongue and the tongue only touches the tip of the reed and approximately and 1/8 inch from the tip.
7. Tonguing exercise- in this next exercise, we are going to train the tongue into staying close to the reed. Why close to the reed? Because, if the tongue is close to the reed it can you go on and off without interrupting the air flow or causing you to open your jaw and distorting the sound. This is another exercise that you need to do in front of a mirror. Remember, your tongue only hits the bottom tip of the reed. So you should only feel about an eighth of an inch of the reed being touched by your tongue. Start with the airstream and then bring your tongue forward and tongue just about as fast as you can. Fast tonguing works really well to train your tongue to stay close to the reed. Keep your tongue really light imagining that you are just resting your tongue on the tip of the reed and you are blowing it off with the force of the air. You can use syllables like Thee and Lee to help you to lighten the contact of the tongue on the reed.
8. Long tone harmonics: Bb, B, C, first harmonic only for a couple months. Remember everything you learned in #1 - #4 and hold these notes out for the full breath
9. 2 Note Exercises - Now you are ready to coordinate the tongue with the fingers. Start with the 2 note exercises I gave you and practice them VERY SLOWLY at first with the articulation on the UP BEAT (and remembering to tap your foot for everything you play from this point on in your warmup. As you get comfortable you gradually speed them up. Don’t try to force the speed. Feel the movement of your fingers and gradually you can begin to relax your fingers and the tempo will start to speed up almost on it’s own. Concentrate on the precision and the relaxation of the fingers. It doesn’t happen all at once but your fingers will begin to work just like they do when you type on a keyboard. Go through all of your 2 note exercises up to high D.
   
10. 3 Note Exercises - If you good with the 2 note exercises then begin to practice the 3 note exercises the same way.
11. 5 Note Exercises -When you’re feeling good with the 3 note, try the 5 note exercises. These cover almost a full octave range so be very aware of your air (as you should be doing in ALL exercises)
12. Full Scale -After the 5 note exercises are mastered, practice the full scale starting on G and go up 2 octaves to high D, then back down to low D and finally back up and land on the G (the home key note). At this point, I shouldn’t have to tell you to start this very slowly with a good airstream and make sure your sound as well as your tonguing is a good as it was with the 5 note scales. Everything builds on one another so you need to not allow the difficulty of playing the full scale to hamper your sound in any way. If it does, then you are not practicing correctly and although you may think that you can PUSH your way through, it will actually impede your progress. So remember PRACTICE EVERYTHING SLOW TO FAST, and stop and check your airstream if the sound is anything but as good as it is when you’re playing just the long tones.
13. Dynamics from super soft to LOUD, and vice versa
14. Dynamics Do this exercise in time with track from 1 to 10 (on the target note only) then backwards starting on 10 and going to 1.
15.  Vibrato with just the air first. Make sure you’re not squeezing because you will not be able to produce a smooth vibrato without
16. Vibrato starting very slowly and focusing on “perfect” sine waves. Follow my vibrato exercises on that.
17. After you can produce a smooth sine wave slow tempo then begin to notch up the metronome a couple of clicks at a time but never going faster thanyou can do it smoothly.
18. After you can begin to get it to a normal vibrato speed then you can begin to practice placing the vibrato in time with the blues track playing the vibrato only on the target notes, using transcribe to slow down the speed to a very slow at the beginning and gradually speed up as you get control.
19. Next, with the vibrato, you need to practice bell tones, imagine that you are ringing a bell, the first pulsation of the vibrato will be the loudest and then each pulse following will be 1° softer (using the 10 to 1 scaling)
20. Once you've mastered the bell tone on the target note you should begin to add in the approach notes. Start each approach note very softly ramping up quickly to a 10 on the target note and then producing the belltone effect.
21. Blues in F, target notes with different rhythms
22. Song 2 bars at a time, first eight.
23. 3 Note Exercises - If you good with the 2 note exercises then begin to practice the 3 note exercises the same way.
24. 5 Note Exercises -When you’re feeling good with the 3 note, try the 5 note exercises. These cover almost a full octave range so be very aware of your air (as you should be doing in ALL exercises)
25. Full Scale -After the 5 note exercises are mastered, practice the full scale starting on G and go up 2 octaves to high D, then back down to low D and finally back up and land on the G (the home key note). At this point, I shouldn’t have to tell you to start this very slowly with a good airstream and make sure your sound as well as your tonguing is a good as it was with the 5 note scales. Everything builds on one another so you need to not allow the difficulty of playing the full scale to hamper your sound in any way. If it does, then you are not practicing correctly and although you may think that you can PUSH your way through, it will actually impede your progress. So remember PRACTICE EVERYTHING SLOW TO FAST, and stop and check your airstream if the sound is anything but as good as it is when you’re playing just the long tones.

For more information, please visit us at http://www.losangelesmusicteachers.com or call us at (818) 902-1233. Check out my videos on YouTube. I have a channel called "Ultimate Saxophone Lessons." Here is a video showing how to bend notes on the saxophone when you're improvising jazz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBhv42hEtpo