[abrogard]

I tried a couple of online tuners last week. they were not specifically for sax.
What was interesting is that down low I got the reading I expected - low C was A# and so on. But the higher I got the flatter my sound apparently was.
Enormously so.
There was somewhere there I think, if i remember right when I was a whole tone or more lower than I should have been.
So: I suppose there's no question about the saxophones themselves? They all produce tones at the right frequently given half a chance?
Mine is a Buescher Aristocrat 200.
So in that case how common is it for raw beginners like me to sound that flat?
And what can we do about it? I tried everything I could think of but I couldn't get the pitch to shift significantly at all.
Leaving the question about the quality of the online tuner via my crappy desktop headphone speaker.
What do you reckon is the truth of it all?
Edit:
hmmm.. I just checked. I exaggerated it seems. I' m only a half tone out.
I have these wrong notes:
From the bottom, moving up:
For the (one oct above the lowest) B I blow G#
For the A above that I blow F#
For the C above that I blow A
For the D above that I blow B
Them results make me think it's all me.
But no change of blowing or mouth position or pressure on the lips seems to change anything...

 

[bandmommy]

Are you tuning to concert pitch???

 

[John_Dikeman]

blrp flrp, technical error... hold on I need coffee...

To be clear, is this an alto or tenor?
All those note differences make sense for an alto except that the low C registers as Bb.

 

[abrogard]

I am using this one: Online Instrument Tuner | Chromatic tuner for any instrument
It says it is tuned to A:440. That's concert pitch I think?
It is a tenor saxophone.
Very surprising, to me: I can't get my voice above A: 220

 

[whaler]

My motto as far as playing sax is;
Better sharp than out of tune.
It’s the one thing that makes me prefer my MarkVI tenor over my Balanced Action. The low C is especially sharp on the BA but I can get it close. The rest of the tenor seems really close.
I fought for a while with a Conn 10M so the BA seems easy to deal with.

 

[nigeld]

For the (one oct above the lowest) B I blow G#
For the A above that I blow F#
For the C above that I blow A
For the D above that I blow B

All those notes are a semitone flat. So the obvious solution seems to be to push the mouthpiece further onto the cork.
What note are you using to tune your sax?

 

[turf3]

Tuners are only useful if you already know how to play the sax.

Lessons are recommended.

 

[swperry1]

Flat overall and flatter up high…plus it seems you don’t understand transposing instruments yet. Just play. Forget tuner work until you’re solid on a good sound. Tuners don’t help at all. I mostly use mine just to glance at occasionally to see if I’m drifty. Play to the music using your ear. Get a drone and “feel” in tune…tuners are a detractor from the fundamentals of long/ overtone work. I played a couple gigs with this cat on alto and his pitch was garbage; like I couldn’t match the inconsistencies as I had to play around him. At the first set break he said he was playing exactly in tune because he made every note green on his clipped on tuner (🤣🤦‍♂️) and that I was killing him. I told him I was not the issue. I was right.

 

[jski2011]

Back a few years ago when I started playing tenor after playing alto, I constantly had notes that were either sharp or flat, my instructor quickly corrected my embouchure, the result significant improvement,
now as swperry1 does I tune at the beginning with the rest of the band, tuner gets put away
also as mentioned above might be a good idea to get a drone and practice matching long tones by ear

 

[Pete Kelly]

Back a few years ago when I started playing tenor after playing alto, I constantly had notes that were either sharp or flat, my instructor quickly corrected my embouchure, the result significant improvement,
now as swperry1 does I tune at the beginning with the rest of the band, tuner gets put away
also as mentioned above might be a good idea to get a drone and practice matching long tones by ear

I'm with jski2011 on this. Drones are far more useful because you develop your ear.

 

[Hesso]

The value of something like this Peterson Strobe Tuner (around $5,000) is that you can see whether the upper partials in your tone are in tune as well, which relates to what many have mentioned here, your overall tone quality. While a single meter tuner or online tuner (one needle that centers when the fundamental note is played), will show you the fundamental, your tone could still be atrocious beyond belief. Only good tone produced by a good embouchure on a good reed can produce the other overtones necessary to play in tune with others. Note that severely crappy tone can make it difficult to even peg a single meter tuner.

This is the big mistake band directors make because they are in a hurry to tune the entire band - going down the row of students, each one plays their tuning note. They can lock in the fundamental, but they're tone can clearly sound terrible. This is almost always due to embouchure (but can be worn out reeds, guitar strings etc., that are no longer able to produce the overtones). And this is why 30 students who all pegged the fundamental can still sound like a band out of tune - because they are. The out-of-tune overtones do not line up and the band will sound like mush to the listener.

 

[FisherSax]

Push the mouthpiece way in and work on relaxing for the low notes. It seems contradictory but you are flat because your embouchure is too tight.

 

[Nefertiti]

My guess is your reed is way too soft. What mouthpiece and size reed are you using? I have had students come in for their first lesson incredibly flat up high and 9 time out of 10 they are using a 1 1/2 or 2 size reed on a small tipped mouthpiece………


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dexdex]

Hi. In the smartphone era, most of us are using mobile applications for that. They are accurate. This to answer the 1st question.
Regarding playing one's horn in tune, I'm from a generation where the most used device was a piano. Your's, or your teacher's. Or the one in the band's room.
I join all those who insist on first learning to make sure you blow enough air through your horn, and than to use your ears and not your eyes to improve intonation.
Some use drones, which is ok. There are cool phone applications for that.
My approach has always been to play over music. Like backing tracks. You'll soon learn to check octaves, fifths, fourths, and eventually the whole scale over a simple piano chord.
I have played in numerous bands and gigs without any other device than my ears and a decent piano. (when there's only a banjo, it is trickier....)
It won't happen overnight, but naturally fit into the broader learning process.

 

[FisherSax]

Didn't have time to find the link earlier: https://www.saxontheweb.net/attachments/mpc_placement_tuning_tone-pdf.19412/

 

[abrogard]

Wow. Got a swag of answers. Thanks to all.
I'll say something about four things I picked out of it all:

Drones
What's a drone I know like bagpipe drone and such.. long monotonous sound... but it's a device, we can buy it? they sell them for wind instruments or something? or it's a bit of software makes droning sounds for us?

Embouchure tight.
Right on. I'm so tight it hurts my face muscles. I am right at the beginning still trying to develop an embouchure that will play all the notes from lowest to highest. And just following instinct it seems I have to do that. I will try and play more relaxed if I can do it and still get the note and not have air leaking.

Reed Soft.
Another hit. I am using Rico 1.5 and the three I just bought all work for me where the 20+ reeds I have on hand have provided only one that works for me. And they're all 2's. So that's why I bought the Rico 1.5's to experiment. And they seem to work.

Play over music.
I never do this. I have a big library of all kinds of music scavenged from all over the place and I favour the old show tunes, often marketed as 'jazz favourites'. But I have a go at anything. And what I do is just keep going through them playing what I can and as yet there's very few I can play through because of, mainly, struggling with those lowest notes (but that's getting much better with these reeds) and the high D etc and my poor fingering technique.
So like what i'm saying is if I tried playing over something I wouldn't be able to stay with it.

Play by ear.
Meaning playing pieces I've learned. I never do it. I don't even try to learn them. Always read.

I think all you guys go to gigs and play by ear perhaps pieces you never even heard before and extemporise and whatever.... I know what you're doing, I've been there, in my head, in my dope smoking days especially, listened to it, loved it, been transported by it. Even after those days Just a couple of years ago a jazz quartet playing locally.

But I have never done it and I think will never do it.
I'll never get there. I read these old tunes and try to play them and do an awful job and somehow get an enormous amount of pleasure from it. But I don't think you guys would call it 'playing' at all.
So like I say that just so's you can appreciate I'm in a very different scene. Attempting perhaps a very different and far more pedestrian and ordinary thing.
I don't aim very high. But I get something out of it alright.

 

[FisherSax]

Wow. Got a swag of answers. Thanks to all.
I'll say something about four things I picked out of it all:

Drones
What's a drone I know like bagpipe drone and such.. long monotonous sound... but it's a device, we can buy it? they sell them for wind instruments or something? or it's a bit of software makes droning sounds for us?

Embouchure tight.
Right on. I'm so tight it hurts my face muscles. I am right at the beginning still trying to develop an embouchure that will play all the notes from lowest to highest. And just following instinct it seems I have to do that. I will try and play more relaxed if I can do it and still get the note and not have air leaking.

Reed Soft.
Another hit. I am using Rico 1.5 and the three I just bought all work for me where the 20+ reeds I have on hand have provided only one that works for me. And they're all 2's. So that's why I bought the Rico 1.5's to experiment. And they seem to work.

Play over music.
I never do this. I have a big library of all kinds of music scavenged from all over the place and I favour the old show tunes, often marketed as 'jazz favourites'. But I have a go at anything. And what I do is just keep going through them playing what I can and as yet there's very few I can play through because of, mainly, struggling with those lowest notes (but that's getting much better with these reeds) and the high D etc and my poor fingering technique.
So like what i'm saying is if I tried playing over something I wouldn't be able to stay with it.

Play by ear.
Meaning playing pieces I've learned. I never do it. I don't even try to learn them. Always read.

I think all you guys go to gigs and play by ear perhaps pieces you never even heard before and extemporise and whatever.... I know what you're doing, I've been there, in my head, in my dope smoking days especially, listened to it, loved it, been transported by it. Even after those days Just a couple of years ago a jazz quartet playing locally.

But I have never done it and I think will never do it.
I'll never get there. I read these old tunes and try to play them and do an awful job and somehow get an enormous amount of pleasure from it. But I don't think you guys would call it 'playing' at all.
So like I say that just so's you can appreciate I'm in a very different scene. Attempting perhaps a very different and far more pedestrian and ordinary thing.
I don't aim very high. But I get something out of it alright.

A drone is just a steady low tone to play over. Lots of free tracks out there such as this:

Nothing wrong with hacking through sheet music but improvisation is loads of fun! Start simple, maybe a slow blues in Bb or playing a pentatonic scale over a single chord jam track.

 

[NO SAX]

This seems to be my worst note on my Amazon sax the rest are much closer and half of the chromatics are on the green

 

[abrogard]

A drone is just a steady low tone to play over. Lots of free tracks out there such as this:

Nothing wrong with hacking through sheet music but improvisation is loads of fun! Start simple, maybe a slow blues in Bb or playing a pentatonic scale over a single chord jam track.

Thanks for that. I'll get the track or similar and try it. ' a pentatonic scale over a single chord jam track ' ? Didn't even know such things existed. Thanks. I'll give it a go.