Anthony

Longtones:
Continue fading-in longtones: Your throat should be open like a yawn and the front of your tongue should be high in your mouth (eeh voicing), shooting the air faster through the instrument. Playing like this with smaller amounts of air will allow you to make a note sound at very low volumes.

Technique:
Chromatic scale – pg. 47 in Elementary Method

Warmup:
Continue Blue Bells of Scotland: Elementary Method Lesson 9 #3.

Repertoire:
Continue All Blues – listen to it here. Practice with a metronome and try to imitate the swing feeling from the recording. Focus on the alto sax solo; this is what your part in the middle is imitating.

Jackson

Longtone Warmup:
Register Switch Exercise (on paper). Make sure to use full breaths on each set of notes and listen deeply to the sound.

G major scale, 2 octaves. Try to keep the top few notes (D up to G) in tune; you have a tendency to go flat. Think about maintaining the witch chin, supporting that higher register well.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. You pretty much have all the notes and note switches; now you can focus on playing it musically! Try to keep consistant tempo and imagine ‘singing’ the lyrics as you play.

Continue from last week:

Technique: #12 and #14 in Galper Book
Repertoire: #15 in Galper

Ryan

Take a listen to Time Out by Dave Brubeck Quartet, and Take Five in Particular (14:16 in video).

Longtones (continue alternating these exercises):
1. Voicing exercise, adding overtone matching between first and second overtones.
2. Opposite octave exercise: add your octave key to F, but keep it from jumping up the octave by opening your throat (like a yawn) and relaxing the muscles in your embouchure. It might help to take a little more mouthpiece in your mouth than usual. Once you get it on the F, repeat on E, D, C, Bb, then G, A, B, C.

Warmup:
Use the circled bit on the second page of the Voxman etude as a longtone warmup, playing the G’s as an overtone from your low C and the F# as an overtone from your low B.

Scales:
Continue chromatic scale – aim to get to 115-120 bpm this week, going from low Bb to high F#. We’ll take this up next week.
Ab major full range.

Repertoire:
Continue Take Five. Aim to get the whole melody (‘head’) to 100 bpm this week. This week, focus on tapping quarter notes in your foot as you play – if you feel rhythm throughout your entire body you’ll groove harder, phrase more naturally and stay in time.

Learn Groove Blues from the Snidero Book with a metronome. Listen to the accompaniment CD and try to imitate how he plays the melody. If you’re up to it, play along with him.