Archive for the ‘Sax Corner’ Category

Sight Reading

Direct Practice:

I have read and heard many things about improving sight reading. But to really improve at it, it must be approached like any other aspect of your playing you wish to master. You need to start slow. Trying to read something that you have no chance of playing correctly will only create frustration, and provide minimal to no gain. There are a couple of good approaches, one is to take some very easy music and try to sight read it quickly (with metronome of course!). This will get you some experience of keeping up at a fast tempo. But alternatively, you can also take difficult music and read it slowly. Just like anything else, you start with a tempo where you can play it, and speed it up gradually.

One of the most important things I can say, is when you are alone and practicing sight reading, practice as if you were performing with other musicians. This means that if you make a mistake, you can’t begin at your error, you must continue with the tempo because the rest of the musicians would continue playing and not wait for you. If you’re having trouble keeping the time you must slow the tempo down until you can. It’s only when you practice at a speed where everything feels solid that you are ready to slowly move up the tempo.

Head Games:

The other aspect of being a great reader is being mentally prepared. Any time you receive a new piece of music you have some amount of time before you play it. Quickly scan and identify the important/difficult things.
– Key signature (and key changes)
– Time signature (and time changes)
– Repeats, Jumps (Coda/DS/DC etc…)
– Difficult lines/rhythms
– Page turns (learn how to manage your pages effectively)
– Instrument/mute changes

Don’t waste your time on the notes you won’t have any trouble playing, but try to slowly finger through any fast runs as time allows, or even sing the difficult rhythms in your head slowly. You can give yourself a distinct advantage by using this crunch time when you first see a chart when others are goofing off! Like other skills you will become better and quicker at identifying the critical elements in a chart before playing the more you do it.

Jake Lampe

The Rovner Ligature

Liguatures don’t pop into the mind of most people when they consider upgrading their setup. They do play a significant role in the entire equation though. Today I want to focus on the Rovner’s Light and Dark ligature. One of the qualities in equipment that I look for is consistency, and this is where these shine. They have a fabric band that encircles the mouthpiece and reed and a single adjustable screw which turns from the back side.

One of the benefits of the design is that it is easy to mount the reed accurately as the screw pulls the fabric tight from the back side away from the reed. On the standard two-screw metal ligature the reed will not only slide as you tighten the screws, but the metal will also damage the bark which will ultimately lead to an early demise to your reed. Another significant benefit to the Rovner is by using a flexible material it will provide even pressure and mold to the shape of your reed. This is even more apparent to me how important it is since after using metal ligatures for years I have seen the metal deform to fit the reed and create gouges in almost every case.

One of the less obvious benefits is the ability to change the mounting position giving you some amount of control over how bright the reed will play. Since the material is flexible you can slide the edge of the rovner slightly forward on the reed (twards the tip). By pressing down on the edge which is slighly over the vamp area of the reed as you tighten it, the Rovner will slightly deaden the reed giving a warmer sound by supressing full resonance of the reed. Of course there will be a subtle change in the response of the reed, but nothing that can’t be easily adjusted to after a bit of playing. The other option of course is to slide the ligature further twards the back of the reed allowing it to resonate more freely. This will give a feel and sound more similar to what you would get out of a standard metal ligature especially if you follow the mounting position guide embedded in one of Selmers mouthpieces.

Rovner has a good product here and the benefits for me as a player are numerous. Even though it may seem insiginificant, this ligature saves me time and frustration. Mounting the reed accurately is so important and I am quickly able to do so with this one. These also are very inexpensive especially considering how much some of the botique makers are charging for theirs. Also I have never had a Rovner break on me even with regular use for over a decade.

Well, there you have it. At this point you might be wondering if it’s worth a try. As always if what you have works for you then by all means stick to it! But if any of the above benefits seem like they would be useful to you then it’s a very inexpensive way to test them out. Heck…if you don’t like it sell it on Ebay afterwords and only be out a few bucks on the whole exchange.

Jake Lampe