Learning to Play the Tenor Saxophone

Video Transcript

"Hey! My name is Brian Medeiros. I'm a professional saxophonist and I want to just tell you a little bit about learning to play the tenor saxophone. Tenor saxophone is pretty much middle of the road, there's lots of different kinds of saxophones. There's soprano, alto, tenor and baritone are pretty much the four most popular saxophones that are out there, styles of different types of saxophones, that is. Tenor saxophone is very popular, John Coltrane, tenor saxophone player, there's lots of tenor saxophone players, Sonny Rollins, lots of saxophonists out there that, that are tenor players. And it's a great voice, I love the tenor myself, and I just want to give you a little bit of a beginner's guide to learn how to play the tenor saxophone. Saxophone, all saxophones are reed instruments. They have a one reed on 'em, the way that you make a sound on the tenor saxophone, this reed vibrates in your mouth, causing vibration that goes down to the saxophone. The length of the horn is very important. You have all these keys on the saxophone, the more keys that you hold down, the lower the note, and the fact you're lengthening the instrument as you hold down more keys. So basically, if you were to play a note on the sax and keep adding keys, your tone go down farther and farther and farther, just to demonstrate. C on the tenor saxophone is this middle finger, when you're going to play this the saxophone, tenor or any of the sax, you curl your bottom lip under, like this, that sits on the bottom of the reed, and your teeth sit on top of the mouth piece. So, just to play a C for you real fast, this is what it looks like, and just as I add keys going down the instrument, it'll get lower. So basically, that's how a tenor saxophone is played. It's all about, for sure, you want to keep your cheeks nice and tight, do not puff your cheeks, curl your bottom lip under here, teeth on top and you're vibrating the reeds to make a nice, nice saxophone sound. More practice makes you more consistent and, you know, keep at it. That's basically how you start playing a tenor saxophone."