The Science and Art of Saxophone Teaching: The Essential Saxophone Resource

By Ray Smith

The Science and Art of Saxophone Teaching will become a standard resource for saxophone teachers the world over. Perhaps no other book has brought so many practical ideas and approaches for the saxophonist and the pedagogue under one cover. This book can be equally valuable for the serious intermediate to advanced saxophone student. The video demonstrations that are paired with the book will be invaluable to all saxophonists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Feb 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781977240415

Ray Smith

Ray was born in rural Indiana. His family moved to suburban Chicago before he started school.He obtained an associate's degree in electronics technology, then moved back to his hometown, where he works as a factory drone and spends his free time writing stories.

Book preview

Chapter 1

General Teaching Philosophies

Teach Correct Principles

Many years ago, the mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois (Nauvoo was bigger than Chicago at that time) was asked how he governed such a large and diverse people as the people of Nauvoo. His reply is insightful, I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves. All of my teaching is based on that idea. I teach my students correct principles, and they can govern themselves whether they are practicing, are in a rehearsal, or in a recording session. My goal is to develop independent musicians, not musicians who are dependent on me. The key to independence is understanding correct principles by which one can solve problems and make good decisions.

Eugene Rousseau used to hold two or three masterclasses each semester where students had to perform a piece without any coaching from him. He would begin each of these sessions by saying, The reason we do this is because my job is to become useless as soon as possible. That is how I feel about my teaching, and the only way to become useless as soon as possible is to teach correct principles.

Don’t Teach The Exceptions

If we are teaching agreed upon principles, then we are not teaching the exceptions to the norm. When you watch a video of the great Dizzy Gillespie, you see him puffing his cheeks with bell bent up. He looks like a giant bull frog. Somehow Dizzy learned to sound great in spite of what he was doing, not because of what he was doing. I would not teach young trumpet players the Dizzy Gillespie approach. Eugene Rousseau sounded amazing in spite of anchor tonguing, not because he did it. We should normally teach the rule, not the exception.

Wind Pedagogy is Often Invisible

As we teach these principles, we run into the problem that much of our wind pedagogy is invisible. It is not like piano or violin or percussion where all the pedagogy is observable. We cannot observe the tongue and how it touches or moves. We cannot observe the abdominal muscles and how they support the sound. We cannot easily observe how oral cavity voicing is done, and so on. Consequently, I am always looking for external ways to evaluate these invisible skills. I am also always looking for metaphors, similes, and object lessons from real life experience to help convey the concepts behind the invisible. You will notice a lot of these are included when we get into the applications part of this book.

Help Students Set Goals

I want my students to be working toward goals that are inspiring to them, so I help them set goals. The overriding goal at all times is to sound professional. If you are in junior high school, is your goal to sound like a good junior high player? No! Is your goal to sound like a good high school player? Or a good college player? No! Your goal is always to sound professional! You don’t have to be old to sound good. Sonny Rollins was 16 years old when he started playing with Dizzy Gillespie. I believe with Jerome Bruner that we can teach anything at any level if we give it in the right amounts over time. Of course there are many subgoals under the main goal of sounding professional, and I will help the students set goals that are appropriate. Whenever there is a choice that is possible, such as, Which solo shall we work on?, or Which tune shall I transcribe?, I always present options and allow the student to make choices. If the student has decided and believes in the goal, he or she will be more motivated to work hard.

Be on the Same Team with the Student

Once we have our direction set, now we are in this thing together. We are working together to solve problems and make progress. I want the student to feel that we are on the same team, and we succeed together or we fail together. It is not me or I and you. It is we. I believe this attitude helps the student feel more comfortable and supported and leads to faster growth.

Be Demanding About Detail

I don’t want to create a negative vibe, but I do work on a lot of detail. It is in the small details that the battle is won or lost, and I am very demanding about every little thing. I try to be very demanding with a lot of warmth and trust. I am lavish in my praise for true accomplishment, but I don’t give it out easily or for less than what I am looking for. For me, it ain’t right until it’s right. When some people ask the key to my success, I often reply, It’s just because I am so ornery. It has to be right. This is, of course, tailored to the level of the student.

Modeling is Key

Modeling is one of our most powerful teaching tools. I try to always have my horn close by, and I play a lot in my lessons. A sound picture is also worth a 1,000 words— maybe more. Learning music is really an apprenticeship situation, and the mentor should share examples frequently. At times, I do this by singing an example instead of playing depending on what I am teaching. I like to have the student sing a lot, too. This is often valuable for more specific communication. Then we try it on the horn. I also push for the student to do a lot of personal listening. If I played for the entire lesson every week, it would still never provide enough listening for the student.

Use Technology

Technology can be a big help in our teaching. We should not ignore the possibilities. I will give a few examples of using the aids we have today. First, we have had the technology for a long time to record in lessons, but we still don’t use it like we could. Now we carry in our pockets a great tool for taking pictures and for capturing video. I take video and show it to the student, and there is instant communication. Also, for years I was saying to students, If I could just take a picture of your airstream, you would see that your air is not constant, up and down and up and down. Then one day it hit me, "I can take a picture of your airstream!" I record the student in Garage Band and then record myself playing the same thing. Then we study the difference in the waveform shapes. This makes the point very effectively. I also use AudioStretch a lot. With this app, I can access anything in my iTunes library and slow it down or speed it up or transpose it to any key. Then I can email it to the student with the tempo or key changes. The iReal Pro app can be helpful for finding backing tracks. Smart Music is incredible for the tuner that will play the note you are playing back to you in tune and give you immediate feedback. There are many other useful apps and electronics. The point is, let’s use them. They will give us a great advantage in our teaching.

We Are in the People Business

For the last point, when we teach, we are in the people business. Music is a fantastic vehicle for blessing human beings. We should keep in mind that we are always about building people. We are in a unique position as teachers to be close enough to our students to really have an impact in their personal lives. In some of the most important lessons I have ever had with a student, we haven’t even played that day. Let us not pass by opportunities to lift and bless people while we are building musicians. I have had many parents thank me for this approach with their children.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice.

—Stan Getz

Chapter 2

Listening as a Way of Learning

I will say this more than once, but music is an aural art, not a visual art. It seems to me that most of music education over the last 80 plus years has attempted to make music a visual art for the students. It has become so much about using the eyes and reading—to the point that I don’t think most of the students that have entered my office over the last forty years have ever heard themselves play before. The eyes are so preoccupied that the ears have shut down. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but I believe we have got to change the focus of how we teach from reading to hearing. Of course, I want my students to be good sight readers, and they are; but I want them to learn with their ears.

Suzuki Approaches

Suzuki, the great Japanese violin teacher, believed that we learn to play an instrument the same way we learn to talk (The Mother-Tongue Approach). [You should read Suzuki’s book called Nurtured by Love.] I believe he was right. How do we learn to talk? NOT BY READING! We hear our parents and siblings and others speaking for months before we venture to imitate and repeat what we have been hearing. As an example, every time the dog enters the room, someone says the word dog. How did that dog get in here? Get that dog out of here! Did anyone feed the dog? How long has it been since that dog has had a bath? We begin to associate the sound of that word with that animal. One day we try it out. The dog walks into the room, and we say, dah.. Everyone around us jumps on it. That’s dah…ga! It scares us to death, so we don’t try again for a while, but soon we can say dog clearly. Before we are two years old, we are using the word dog in sentences with full comprehension. When do we learn how to spell dog? We usually don’t do that until three to four years later in kindergarten or first grade. This is really the best order for learning aural sounds— learn the sound, then learn the concept symbol that represents that sound.

For most of us, the first day in school band ran something like this: Okay, we are going to play line 1. That note is a G, so finger it open (clarinet or trumpet). It gets four counts, so beat your foot four times. Okay, blow and hold it. That’s what that means when you see that. We had to learn to make sounds by reading. It is backwards. For this reason, even with very young beginning students, I have them playing simple nursery rhyme tunes by ear. We can learn the notation after we can already make the sounds. This is much more motivating for students and gets them using their ears from the beginning. I tell my music education students that the main reason for having a book at the beginning is so the parents think something is going on. We really don’t need the book for a while.

Music is actually learned by apprenticeship. The Master or Mentor can be live or recorded—audio or video. We can take private lessons and have our own private mentor, but we can also choose to study with anyone in the world that has recorded material available, if we know how to use our ears.

I always had a great desire to study with Cannonball Adderly. When he died in 1976, I was very disappointed that it had never happened. During a particularly bad winter in Indiana in 1977, I decided I was going to study with Cannonball anyway. It was to my advantage that a lot of school got cancelled due to the weather, but in a three week period, I transcribed ten of Cannonball’s solos. I may have gotten more out of that apprenticeship than if I had spent some time with him in person. Those lessons continue with me to this day.

When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time listening to and transcribing Hubert Laws on the flute. Then Hubert did not put out anything new for a very long time. I had not listened to or even thought of Hubert for at least 25 years when I recorded a jazz flute solo for a CD. When I listened back in the studio, I thought, That’s how Hubert would have done that! Oh my gosh! This kind of learning lasts for a lifetime!

Transcription

There are different kinds of listening, ranging from casual listening while we are doing something else to focused listening to very active listening. All can be beneficial, but it is the really active listening that will yield the greatest results. By active listening, I mean sitting with the music with instrument in hand imitating what we are hearing. When we learn to emulate a recorded solo by not only learning the notes by ear but the tone, the rhythmic feel, the articulation, the inflections—every detail; we call that transcribing. The literal meaning of transcription is to write it down, but I am using the looser definition of learning to play it on the instrument. Classical transcribing is equally as valuable as jazz transcription or rock or funk transcription. The more the ears are involved in the learning process the faster will be the progress.

There is a wonderful apprenticeship app for learning from the masters called A-ccompany. The app (iOS or Android) is designed to be used in a school band program, but it could also be used in a private lesson situation. The student can solo the person he is trying to emulate and play along with or play back and forth. Then the master can be muted, and the student can play that part with the section or with the whole band. It is an amazing way to do an apprenticeship with the masters.

The technique of transcription is demonstrated on the YouTube videos, but here is how I would teach a student to transcribe. First, listen many times to the recording you want to transcribe. Sing along with it. Internalize it as much as possible. Then with instrument in hand play along with the recording and get your bearings on the key and the rhythmic basis. Then begin transcribing by listening to a short phrase. The length of the phrase will depend on the difficulty of the passage. If it is relatively easy, listen to a longer phrase. If it is a lot of fast notes, listen to a much shorter amount—maybe only 4 notes or 2 or even 1 to get a start. Then sing what you have listened to and get it planted firmly in your tonal memory. Then try playing it on the instrument and work with it until you can play it. If you skip the singing part, you will spend many additional hours re-referencing the recording. So hear it, sing it, play it, and then piece together one series of notes after another until you have the whole thing done. Yes, it is an arduous process but yields so much deep and long-lasting learning. It is totally worth it! A student should have a regular transcription project in process.

Playing by Ear

It is a looser form of transcription to play by ear with whatever comes up on the radio or the CD or your streaming service. In this case, we don’t get every note and every detail, but we do get some notes and ideas and the gist of the feel and the style. Playing by ear is a very valuable learning activity. I first psyche out the key and the rhythmic basis of the tune. I do this by playing a note, any note. Is it right or wrong—does it fit or not? If it fits, then I go up a step (or is it a half step?). If it does not fit, a good note is only a half step away. Then go from there, and with a few more notes I have a pretty good idea of what key I am in. I will confirm it by playing the appropriate scale for that key. If it all fits, then I know I’m right; or if one of the notes doesn’t fit, then I can revise my first estimate. Then I analyze whether there is a duple division to the beat or a triple subdivision of the beat. Now I have the key and rhythmic basis, and I can try to emulate the style and see if I can fit into the group and make a contribution as if I was a member of the group.

I can’t tell you how many times that kind of practice has come back to help me. For one example, I was hired to record a saxophone solo on a CD for a singer. When I arrived in the control room, the guys said, Oh, Ray, glad you are here. Let’s play this and show you what we are thinking. The music that is already recorded begins to play, and they say, Let’s put a sax lick in this intro. Now lay out. Okay, here we left 8 measures for a saxophone solo. After the solo, just put in some sparse sax licks under the vocal. On the ending, do another sax lick, maybe like the one on the intro, to tie it together. Okay, let’s start making it. I walk out to the recording room with my instrument, put on my headphones, and go to work. There is no chart. No one has even told me what key the piece is in. I’m not even sure what to call the groove being played by the rhythm section. But somehow, intuitively, I know what to do and can quickly decipher the key. I am able to play some things they are happy with. This is a direct result of playing along with random radio stations, sometimes for a couple of hours a night, back in high school.

I also have a similar experience when someone sends me a session file and asks me to put some saxophone stuff on it. I open the session in Pro Tools, give it a listen, determine which saxophone (or flute) I think would fit it best, and go to work by ear. Again, there is no chart, and this time not even any directions. I usually play everywhere I think would make any sense; and then when I send it back, they can always dump anything they don’t want to keep—one of the beauties of multi-tracking.

Practicing playing by ear and transcribing really help to develop the complete musician that can not only function with eyes but also with ears—the musician that has developed much more intuition about how to fit into any musical circumstance.

The easiest way to get a younger student into transcription is to have them transcribe the melody of simpler tunes. The easiest way to get younger students into playing by ear is to play with classic rock or reggae stations where the tunes tend to stay in one key for long periods of time. Gradually, more difficult projects can be undertaken.

I think it is also valuable to have the student do some ear training in the lessons. With just a few minutes each session, the student can learn to hear and identify intervals and chords and scale-chord pairings. I’m afraid the first time I was formally asked to do anything like this was in college theory class, and it was not a pretty thing. I think I only got through my college dictation classes by fingering everything mentally on the saxophone. If I trusted my intuition, I was usually right. If I second-guessed myself, I was usually wrong. Ear training in lessons can be a great activity on those days when the teeth braces get tightened.

I often set up a routine with students where I play chords on the piano and they have to respond by playing the scale on their instrument that fits the chord. I will play in the order of the Cycle of Dominants (the key circle going the direction of the flats first); so the student knows what the root is, but has to ear out the quality of the chord. At first, I just do major, minor, and dominant chords; but later, I will expand to half-diminished, minor with a major 7th, altered dominants, and the like. At a more advanced level, I might tell the student that every chord I am playing has a C in it somewhere, but it is not necessarily the root. I will ask them to play a scale that goes from C to C and play the correct internal notes to fit the chord being played on the piano.

When I have students come to a lesson with a solo or a ballad that their band director has given them, my first approach is always with the ears. I want to get them functioning first with the ears, and then I may give them some theory or patterns or whatever. We will first play the solo along with the recording of the tune. Many times we find the solo is not all that difficult by ear, but the written changes look really hard. (This tends to be the norm with the way published big band chord changes are writen,)

Right Brain vs. Left Brain

There is a school of thought out there that some people function in a more right-brained way while others function in a more left-brained way. The right brain is thought to represent the artist—more intuitive, spontaneous, and creative. The left brain is thought to represent the scientist—more analytical, statistical, and mathematical. I think if we were to ask the average person whether John Coltrane or Charlie Parker or Marcel Mule or Eugene Rousseau was right-brain or left-brain dominant, they would assume they were right brained because they were artists. But I believe they were double-dominant. Yes, they were right brained and had great musical intuition, creative capacities, and aural skills; but they were also able to deal with musical theory (the math part of music) and its application to performance. I believe we should have our students do things that develop their left brain by learning theory and notation and sight reading. I also believe we should have our students do right brain things that develop their ears and aural skills and develop spontaneous creativity and musical intuition.

The left brain activities will include exhaustive work on scales and arpeggios and patterns, articulations, sight reading, theory and analysis. The right brain activities include playing by ear, transcribing, playing our emotions with no preset chord progression or form, playing simple tunes in all 12 keys, and later more difficult tunes or patterns in all 12 keys.

These activities will help to develop a complete, double-dominant musician. This is our responsibility to our students. Don Sinta tells the story of taking a sabbatical at age 56 and working on jazz for the first time in his life. It was very frustrating to him at first until he realized he had been set up for 49 years to be totally eye-to-fingers driven. He worked hard to develop some aural-driven skills, and concluded at the end of the sabbatical that we should develop eye-ear-finger coordinations, not just eye-to-finger coordinations. I rest my case.

SAXOPHONE

everyone else is accompaniment

Chapter 3

Teaching and Playing Music versus Technique

We tend to work mostly on technical issues in our private lessons. There are good reasons for this. It’s hard to make music if we don’t have any technique. The easiest teaching we do is the technical stuff. We can teach the basics of tone production, articulation, and fingers fairly routinely. We can get students into their scales and chords, and we can get them reading notation. We can make very specific assignments, check up on them, evaluate, and give a grade—if that pertains, or maybe the star on their chart?

It seems much more difficult to teach the nebulous non-specifics of musical phrasing and interpretation, playing by ear, playing our emotions of the very moment, and improvisation and solo compositional structure. I’m just nuts enough to try to teach these things, but I feel strongly that we must. The students spend so much time working on technical things in the practice room that when they get to the recital hall, technique is still the focus.

This, of course, is backwards. Technique has no life of its own. It is extremely valuable for helping us make better music, but has no value by itself. This is a hard shift in the recital hall if we have not taken care of it in the teaching studio or the practice room. In jazz, we work so hard to learn how to keep an eighth note line that we can start believing the eighth note line is what it is all about. When I play a solo that is eighth-note line driven, there may be a little polite pitter patter from the audience. When I play a solo that is idea driven and compositionally strong, the audience goes wild. In classical playing, it is the sixteenth note passages that defeat playing music. We practice so hard on those sixteenth note lines that we start to believe they are the most important part of the music when, in reality, they are the least important in most cases. I believe we must always be teaching and emphasizing playing music as we work on the technique. After all, isn’t making and enjoying music the consuming reason all of us are still doing this!

Some years ago, I was asked to adjudicate a jazz and concert band contest. There was $1,000 riding on the line for the band kitty. We had already done the jazz part, and we were in the concert band portion when the following story happened. In my mind, the decision came down to two bands. One band played with very good technique. They had been well-schooled, and tone and intonation were excellent, articulation was clean, rhythm and ensemble precision were enviable. The problem was I did not feel any music coming from their performance. The other band was from a less affluent area and probably had not had private lessons like the other group. Intonation and