Saxophone Demonstration: Breath Control

Video Transcript

"O'kay just to help you exercise your breath control while you are not around your saxophone. If you happen to have a metronome handy that is okay, you can always look at your watch, you could use any kind of measurement of time to really practice if you are not around your saxophone, if you are at school or work or whatever and you feel like working on breath control here is a good exercise. Breathe deeply, fill your lungs up with air, what you are going to do is exhale through a small opening in your mouth. Be careful not to be whistling because if you are in school or at work that is not going to go over too well. You are going to be inhaling all the way, exhaling through a small opening in your mouth and that is going to help build the strength of your lungs pressurizing to force air through the saxophone. A good reason to use the metronome is to actually count how long you can hold your breath for and how long you are blowing out so if we were just going to put it on 120. You will be counting in four's to make it easier to count up one, two, three, four, two, two, three, four, three, two, three, four and so on. While you are counting, I mean you will be counting in your head while you are blowing so just to give you an example, breath as deep as you can and exhale through a small opening in your mouth. Three, two, three, four, count up as high as you can and you are going to try to keep moving up in your time. If I have it on 120 and I can get it for say you know, 10 bars of 4, then you are going to want to move up and the next time do 11 and the next time do 12. You will be moving up because as you are exhaling you are obviously going to be running out of breath and you are going to want to take a breath. Work that up and that is a good way to control and work out your breath control while you are away from the horn so try that."