[Brayden]

Hey, my name is Brayden, and I play saxophone as a sophomore in high school. I switched from oboe, which I played in middle school to Eb Alto saxophone, which I started May of my 8th-grade year. I guess you could say I'm a beginner to sax, but not to music. So anyway, some of my friends and I decided to make a quartet to perform for our Solo and Ensemble Festival. We have a SATB piece, so I switched to soprano. My problem is this:

Most of the notes on the sax (school owned) work fine, albeit very out of tune. The problem I have is with the notes between fourth-line D and top-line F#. The pitch goes way up, with the D sounding like an above the staff B, for example. Everything else is fine, and this might be a relatively easy fix, but I am by no means an expert on saxophones, let alone the soprano. I can give any other information you might need.

Oh, and another thing. I can get out those notes when descending in a scale. I'm not sure if that helps. Thanks in advance.

 

[collegestationsax]

Soprano is just generally hard to tune. Sit down in front of a tuner and play long tones of each note. Memorize the embouchure when you get each note in tune. you may also be accidentally playing overtones if the soprano is that out of tune though. try to keep your throat setting and embouchure the same for each note on the instrument. You may notice on alto that a g above the staff may come out as a high d sometimes. that is the same problem. The more I think about it the more it seems like accidental overtones. Especially because they come out fine descending the scale. Practice ascending interval jumps from middle g to these notes and try to not move your throat or mouth.

 

[bandmommy]

It's a school owned sax so it probably hasn't had the best of care. It may need to visit a tech to make sure that the last person to use it didn't knock something out of adjustment.
Soprano sax is hard enough to play well without having to fight with adjustment issues.

 

[bruce bailey]

First off, what brand is it and what mouthpiece are you using. Remember to hold the horn straight out like a trumpet and not tilted down like a clarinet. The mouthpiece needs to be in your mouth like an alto. I suspect it is a lower quality horn but being friends with the tuner may help. Some of the mouthpieces that come with a horn are really bad. I prefer a Yamaha 4C as it is an easy player, cheap at under $20 and even after 49 years of soprano playing, college and professional, I use one.

 

[jlima]

It takes a while to control the intonation on soprano. You are probably biting for those upper notes and the result is sharp notes and a constrained sound, thin sound. Work on keeping the embouchure firm but relaxed, with no biting. Use a sound source, like a piano or an electronic keyboard. Do long tones and check for intonation and correct embouchure. This will take a while (at least several weeks or months) before you master it.

 

[Brayden]

Soprano is just generally hard to tune. Sit down in front of a tuner and play long tones of each note. Memorize the embouchure when you get each note in tune. you may also be accidentally playing overtones if the soprano is that out of tune though. try to keep your throat setting and embouchure the same for each note on the instrument. You may notice on alto that a g above the staff may come out as a high d sometimes. that is the same problem. The more I think about it the more it seems like accidental overtones. Especially because they come out fine descending the scale. Practice ascending interval jumps from middle g to these notes and try to not move your throat or mouth.

Yeah haha, I was warned about the tuning beforehand. I'll be sure to give that a shot today. Thanks!

It's a school owned sax so it probably hasn't had the best of care. It may need to visit a tech to make sure that the last person to use it didn't knock something out of adjustment.
Soprano sax is hard enough to play well without having to fight with adjustment issues.

It's been used once before by someone who was always very careful with it, but I'll be sure to get it checked out.

First off, what brand is it and what mouthpiece are you using. Remember to hold the horn straight out like a trumpet and not tilted down like a clarinet. The mouthpiece needs to be in your mouth like an alto. I suspect it is a lower quality horn but being friends with the tuner may help. Some of the mouthpieces that come with a horn are really bad. I prefer a Yamaha 4C as it is an easy player, cheap at under $20 and even after 49 years of soprano playing, college and professional, I use one.

Okay, so it's a Yamaha YSS-675. And what do you know, I have a 4C mouthpiece, too! I'm doubting it's the instrument, but rather the player that's messing this up.

It takes a while to control the intonation on soprano. You are probably biting for those upper notes and the result is sharp notes and a constrained sound, thin sound. Work on keeping the embouchure firm but relaxed, with no biting. Use a sound source, like a piano or an electronic keyboard. Do long tones and check for intonation and correct embouchure. This will take a while (at least several weeks or months) before you master it.

Sure thing. The same thing I work on with my alto. The thing is, the Festival's in February. Looks like I'll be nolifing for the next few months. Thanks!

---Oh, so I got up today to check for the brand, and I started playing it, and oh my gosh the D came out! It was super out of tune, but still! I am so excited. Thank you so much!

 

[Brayden]

http://forum.saxontheweb.net/archive/index.php/t-11432.html

This seems to be similar to my problem, but it has to do with the instrument. Do I focus on my embouchure, or could there be something with the octave mechanism? The key seems to go up perhaps a millimeter when fingering middle G to the higher octave.

 

[Tom Goodrick]

Find a repair tech at a store who can take a quick look to see that everything is properly connected and working. It should be someone who is familiar with the soprano. Not all techs are. Your band teacher should at least be able to point you toward a suitable tech. Or just find a pro soprano player who will try playing the horn. (He might want to use his own mouthpiece.)

The horn and mouthpiece are good for your purpose. After playing many more expensive mouthpieces over several years, I have been playing a Yamaha 5C for a year.

Tuning a soprano can be tricky. If not pushed adequately onto the neck cork, it can seem in tune at one medium note, and then go way out of tune at other notes.

 

[milandro]

playing the soprano saxophone and the sopranino (by Jove!) can be tricky on account of the fact that one might be given a false sense of security by placing the mouthpiece in the wrong spot , as Tom Goodrick says, you may think that you are in tune somewhere in the middle but in fact your embouchure is compensating for the wrong spot you have placed your mouthpiece at and then as you go up and down that level of compensation works its faulty magic in different and wrong ways on the horn easily resulting in a messy intonation. I agree, most sopranos need pushing the mouthpiece forward more than most people would initially do and one needs to learn to relax the embouchure in general while playing sax but in particular on smaller saxophones .......especially when going up the horn whereas most players tend to tighten their embouchure while doing this. Remember , stiff though that might be, this is a small reed and if you want to play it low down it will be flexible enough to be relatively easily bent to play a much higher pitch. If you relax the embouchure (which perhaps because of the oboe playing might be tight) you will tend to take away the involuntary bending into pitch, which you are probably doing in my opinion, out of the equation. Of course certain mouthpieces or reeds might help this process more or less and practice is paramount.