Using Saxophone Vibrato

Video Transcript

" For expertvillage.com this is Mitch Kaplan. In this segment we will be talking about vibrato. Vibrato is used in both classical, jazz and rock. It is an effect on the saxophone while producing a sound that will make it sound more exciting. If it is just played bland all the time, the music does not have that feeling behind it, and that is what we really are looking for. We are like actors, as a musician and we want to portray that and we want to show the feeling behind each note, so by doing that we use vibrato. In classical, it is a tighter vibrato. You would set a metronome, which is the device that counts the beats and you would play sixteenth notes and to the quarter note, so you would use your jaw and you go up and down with your jaw and it would sound like eyi, eyi, eyi, eyi, eyi, eyi, eyi, eyi, eyi and that is how a tighter vibrato is made. In the jazz vibrato, it is a wider vibrato. In the olden days, the big band jazz they would use very wide vibrato, and it became so ostentatious that it became out of character and it became too ornate and so they dropped the very wide vibrato, that used to sound like this, very wide and it you can see how it become very sickening very quick. But nowadays it is a more modern kind of half between both of the classical and that very wide vibrato, and we use it only tastefully in certain notes, in longer notes or right before a rest, such as and there you have it, vibrato. "