Proper Long tone excersizes?

[disgruntleddave]

What is the best way to go by doing long tones? Is it better to play notes until you have no breath left or do something else? Is it better to stay on one end of the sax or go through everything? Dynamics? Vibrato? What to do?

[frankbiff]

Most that I've talked to or read about say hold for a count of 8. Play every note on the horn. At first try to hold both the pitch and volume constant, use a meter to get the pitch right. Practice vibrato as a seperate exercise.
After prcaticing a while, I like to play long tones both loud and soft and subtones; and also pp to ff and back while holding pitch constant, that is, in addition to the usuall practice of long tones with constant volume.

[Tears June]

One common problem when working on long tone exercise is after a few long notes, our month will full of salvia. I think this is more easy to get salvia for the metal MP players. What should do? Stop a few second, leave the MP from our mouth then suck all the salvia?


:cry:

[Andrew]

Yeah, just stop for a sec or two and get the saliva out. Nothing wrong with that.

[Gregg W. Jackson]

See http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~bucheger/SaxPages1.html.

[RatBatBlues]

Gregg, I think you mean this - there's an extra '.' at the end of your link. Good info here:

http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~bucheger/SaxPages1.html

[Frank D]

MajinX, the way I learned is to start each note ppp and crescendo to fff, then decrescendo back to ppp. I usually hold each note for 16 counts, reaching peak volume around 8 or 9. Tempo is slow, probably around 60 bpm. I usually start on low G and work my way down the chromatic scale.

I find that when I'm really busy, doing longtones this way plus practicing major, minor and diminished scales only takes 30 min. a day, and keeps my chops in good enough shape so that I'm able to handle any gigs that might pop up.

[love4jazz]

totally certain Frank D but without forgetting the breathing doing force with
the muscles of the abdomen, fortifying the sound and causing that the
box of torax helps us to the sound like resonance, excuse if you find some mistake, I'm non english :P

[Gaijin-san]

This may sound strange, but practice your long tones in front of a mirror! I have a full length mirror that I stand in front of. I'm new to long tones practice, but I notice that my sound will go:
------------------.----------------------.-----------------

If that makes sense, I just must have some slight muscle or tongue twitch or something that causes the note to just cut out for the slightest second. Or as I tire, I'll start to get a little air out of the corner of my mouth. Playing in front of the mirror makes me all the more aware of my emboucher, whether or not the mouthpiece is crooked entering my mouth, etc. I also know that my two front teeth are the same height, but my mouthpiece always shows much more wear from my front right tooth than my front left tooth. So I use the mirror to try to "level my head", if that makes sense. (yeah yeah, I'm not a "level-headed" guy...)