Blog.This is where I will be keeping my weekly updates on my progress on my studies of music as well as my studies of a saxophonist this way you will be able to keep track of my progress to preparing for the lessons for the middle school students
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Introduction blog
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Week 1 blog
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Week 2 blog
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Week 3 blog
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Week 4 blog
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Week 5 blog
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Week 6 Blog
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Week 7
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week 9
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Week 11
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Introduction to the project |
The beginning of this project in my opinion is not the hardest part as most people who have read over some of the basic of what my project will be about it is just basic music studies. No matter how simple I will be starting of with studies taught in middle schools no matter how simple and even if I know them already it's not a bad idea to refresh your memory and what you already know kind of like a review except this time I'll actually be writing it down and taking notes. After that I'm going to look for some things that are not taught to middle school students but can be helpful for beginners, who knows maybe even I could learn something new from this part.
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What is coming up |
I plan on starting on all of my basic studies in this up coming week while managing my work in other school classes. This week will probably deal with finding reliable sources for information because as far as finding websites goes I haven't looked into it too much and need to get started but as I do this I will also use information from these sites that I find useful and write them down. I will also reference information with Mr. Jimeson making sure that all information that I find is reliable seeing as he is a professional on the subject.
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Future plan for blogs |
I plan to give more information on what I learn in future blogs this is just a basic layout for anyone who doesn't already know what the plan is or a introduction to what I will be doing future blogs will Include the topic of what I am looking at that week as the title of the weekly blog and hopefully people will be able to learn something new with me as I post some of the information I learn from this project I also plan to make this longer and even like with a well thought out tv show will even give insight to what will be to come in the blog. I also plan to make these as interesting as possible to keep people who view my blogs as interested as possible.
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A new realizationSo I started doing some actual research on the basics of music by looking through whatever websites I could find that weren't advertising books for sale. After reading through some of these I realized that when they teach some of the basics to people learning music or in my case middle school students they simplify and leave a good amount out or at least mine did anyway. This will make this part of the project a lot harder than originally planed because I planned on just refreshing my knowledge but now I have learn some things I didn't originally know. I guess it isn't completely horrible though I do get to learn some new things and that means when I give lessons I'll have more to teach.
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The first basics |
So the first thing I came across I did know a little about is rudiments. These are taught as elements of notation or what you would call symbols to represent the different things in music such as key signature time, time signature, and rhythmic alteration. Saying this though doesn't help the none musically inclined though because you also have to know what those other three things. Key signature is the sharps or flats that are found at the beginning of each line of music and if you don't know what those are if you ever see two symbols that look like this "#" or this "b" those are sharps and flats. Time signature is the indication of rhythm also found at the beginning of each line in music. This usually looks like a fraction that is on each line. This is not the same as rhythmic alteration however it can show rhythmic change. If you are wondering what the difference is the time signature can be changed to make permanent change to the music unless shown otherwise by the time signature again where as rhythmic alteration is a temporary change usually only lasting a few measures. Measures are the boxes that consist in the lines.
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Starting to get the hang of itOnce you can read music properly you can do some things that will help your sound quality when you play sound way better and that is tuning. For the people who aren't in band tuning is something musicians should always do before they play it is where you adjust your instrument (differs depending on the instrument) so that it is as close to perfectly in pitch as possible. If you have ever seen some one playing a guitar turn the nobs at the top that is tuning. Usually when you pick up your instrument it will be sharp or flat, sharp being highly pitched and flat being low. This isn't as big of a deal when you are by yourself but when you are in a group with other people it is vital that everyone be at the same pitch so it sounds like there is one instrument and not a whole bunch of the same instruments. Now that you are in tune and ready to go the first thing you should do as practice is learn your scales. Scales are any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. Basically meaning when you start on a specific note and play the ones that follow it usually each note either being higher or lower than the last (ascending and descending) it will sound correct. These are pretty basic fundamentals that all musicians are taught if they start in middles school and sometimes elementary school and that will probably be used through out their musical career.
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More changes... |
So after doing this weeks research and music theory I realized I didn't look good enough last week. I started of with the wrong things, what I was talking about yesterday is a little more complex for people just beginning learning music so for this weeks blog I plan to cover the correct first step to the basics of music that way any one who doesn't know anything about music can follow along in the future. This also proves that taking your time when studying is quite vital to collecting the correct information for any form of study even in a subject that you excel in.
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What even are notes |
I realize this seems pretty simple for even someone who doesn't now how to read music and you are probably thinking well shouldn't a student in middle school already know all this, yes they should but I'm trying to take as similar to the steps a college student wanting to major in music teaching would take and that's studying all the little things of music including yes the basic notes of music. Notes are pretty easy to explain they are how long you play a pitch and there are several different note lengths with different names. Before I begin all notes are usually taught in the basic time signature of 4/4. The first note is a whole note it looks like a wide o and usually takes a whole measure to play but can vary depending on the time signature. The next basic note to know is a half note it is self explanatory and usually takes half a measure to play. The last basic note to go over is a quarter note also self explanatory it takes a quarter of the measure to play.
I will cover the more advance notes latter on in future blogs. |
The corresponding silence |
As you noticed in the picture above you saw a category for something called rest and if you don't know in music silence is just as important as sound and that's where these come in. Rest are the corresponding silence that go with notes and just like notes have their own name, whole rest, half rest, and quarter rest each one taking up the same amount of space in a measure as their corresponding note. The one difference between a rest in a note besides their purpose is the shape. The shape between notes are relatively similar no matter how short you make the note however with rest every time it's a different type of rest the shape gets weirder and weirder and harder to differentiate except for whole and half rest, of course you can only see a whole to a quarter rest from the picture but you will see later on these crazy symbols I'm talking about.
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Some good habits to form |
Now that you know most of the basic things you need to know to be able to read music it is probably best that you add this to daily part of your life as a musician and that is a eight letter word called practice. Just like any sport practice as a musician is basically the key to being a good musician besides dedication. When it comes to practice you should do it daily or at least whenever you can. Now when it comes to practice yes fifteen minutes is better than none but you preferably need at least one hour of practice in your every day sessions if you can create a habit of doing this you will be sure to be ahead of all your friends in no time. Something to include in this you don't need to just practice music you are working on practicing fundamentals like scales are also crucial to making yourself a better musician because not every piece of music will cover every note or rhythm that is playable.
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There's more than one! |
Now there is one other habit that you need to learn that ties in with practice but more when you are with the band you are in and that is work ethic. Now this one is usually looked over a lot but I'll explain what it is and why it is important. So when it comes to work ethic it can be hard to give your all in a band when you play instruments the relate to bass line and percussion for one reason you usually get stuck wait for instruments with the melody going over their part with the band director or you have a lot of rest in the song you are playing. Most of the time these people zone out and stop paying attention to what is going on but there are a lot of cases where these bases lines will echo a part the melody players have and the melody will go over it without the bass line realizing this and then they get to it and mess it up and repeat the process of going over that part. This in turn makes everyone agitated and slows things down more. When it comes to actually playing there comes times where you rest for sixty measures at a time and bass players tend to zone out the they get to the part where they come in and usually either miss it or have no idea they where even supposed to be playing. These things slow a band down and usually make them worse than they could have been so next time you diced to zone out while you have rest give the other parts your attention while you wait your turn and count all your rest.
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A little update for the future |
As I have stated in my mission for this project I plan on giving lessons to sax players near the end of this project well as you know their are three main saxes that are played in high school and middle school bands alto, tenor, and bari saxophone and on rare occasions the soprano will be played as well. In middle school I played alto and tenor and I am happy to announce I am playing bari for the upcoming concert at my high school so this will give me experience with all three of the main saxophones and help me in the future.
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Multi instrument mastery |
One thing that I've always wondered and confirmed while being a musician was is it good to learn to play multiple instruments at once and from what I found if anything it should be recommended for students to try multiple instruments. So for one thing playing different instruments will give you a better understanding of music theory in it's self because different instruments require different things. It will also teach you some of those different methods of music if you don't already know about them and music requires them. If you are thinking of music in a long term way well you probably are either thinking of doing something orchestra related or doing something involving education and if you are wanting to join orchestra you have a better chance of getting in if you can play more than one instrument and you have to know how to play all the basic instruments if you want to be an instructor.
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Self experimenting |
One thing that is not address very much as a musician is the fact of making your own music. When I say this I don't mean to go home and compose your own piece of music I mean to mess around with your instrument and see if you can't come up with a cool rhythm of your own. Yes reading music that has new things in it will help expand your knowledge of music but whenever you create something new that only you have thought of it expands it even more because every time you create a new tone that you haven't experience that's one more chance of already knowing something for the future. Plus it can be a lot of fun making something that is your own.
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Respect your fellow band members |
For this one I mean it in two different ways the first being in general. When you are apart of a band you realize that not every player is as good as the other and sometimes they struggle with certain things and in a lot of cases the students who see themselves as better than them will start to make fun of them and talk badly about them with other people and that person realizes this and their motivation to get better goes down but imagine if that same person cheered them on and helped that person to get better then not only do they get better with the help but they are motivated to try their hardest. The other type of respect I am talking about is for the other role musicians have in a band. If you are a tuba player you have probably only had a melody once in your entire life playing. However if you are a trumpet player you probably have a melody almost every piece. Bass line is usually always stuck counting rest and playing off and down beats. So if you are one of those instruments that always has melody respect your fellow bassline brethren and bassline respect melody when they mess up because they probably have something a little bit more challenging. I can tell you from experience from playing alto which usually has more of a melody part and then playing bari which usually always has bass line that they are both equally frustrating and important.
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Switching gears |
since we have now moved into the month of November I will be switching the focus of my studies from general music to more saxophone related studies. I will start off with the basics since not every one who may read this will be a saxophonist already even though this part is intended for the middles school sax players. I personally am excited for this part because I hope to learn something new from studying different techniques for saxophone because I personally believe there are multiple ways to do something and learning as many possible ways to play my family of instrument opens new doors to me as a musician
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Meet the familywell as far as basics go there are usually 3 different type of saxophone that come to mind the Alto saxophone the Tenor saxophone and the Baritone saxophone or for short the Bari saxophone. Their is an exception to this which the Soprano saxophone but that one is not as commonly played in a band more for jazz and solo sax. The important thing to know about these 3 different saxophones is what they usually play in bands because if you have a preference then that will dictate which one you choose. Alto usually plays more melodic things usually the one getting the spot light; Tenor is the mediator between Bari and Alto, it sometimes plays melody (not often though), usually counter melody, and then bass parts (more common than melody, less than counter melody); Bari is almost if not always bass which always stands as a big red flag for people deciding which sax to play but this makes it no less fun.
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Easy to master |
One thing that is great about saxophone is that it is easy to master. Unlike the impossible french horn the saxophone takes little time to learn of course to master it that takes more time but once you can play one you can theoretically play all of them which makes your choices in a band much wider compared to that of other instruments. It actually helps to know how to play the 3 basic types of saxophone because all of them focus on a different category of music and if you need another reason to try Bari it requires the most air out of all of them so your lung capacity for the other two will be tremendously improved.
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The Bari |
To start off this week I am going to talk about the bari sax. The bari is a very instrument in my opinion cause it has a lot of different things compared to the alto and tenor which are very similar in shape. The first thing is the neck of the instrument, as any sax player knows the neck of all saxs comes of to make storing the instrument easier but surprisingly the bari has the smallest neck out of the three basic saxophones. The next thing about the bari that you need to know is that it has an extra playable note that the other two do not and that is low A, this is important because with all saxes they have the same fingerings for the same note but when it comes to bari there is one extra fingering you have to learn. The last big difference about bari is that it is one of the only reed instruments that has a spit valve, no other reed instrument needs one but almost all brass instruments have one.
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The Tenor |
Tenor is a fairly common sax usually mistaken with alto and vise versa. It is usually what most people think of when they think jazz besides trumpet. The one thing that is unique to tenor is the large neck it has unlike bari and alto the neck on a tenor is much larger in comparison it also has a distinct curve. It is also one of the few saxophones to have a neck that can come with the octave lever on the bottom of the neck instead of the top these are called fat necks. The one thing that I have found to be common among all tenors is the lack of low notes wanting to come out, unlike it's bigger brother the bari tenor is not as effortless to play low notes and does require more effort to get them out. This is probably why tenor rarely plays lots of low notes.
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The Alto |
The alto usually referred to as saxes in any band that has them because they are like the trumpet to brass, seen as the top one because they always play melody. The alto is the smallest of the basic three and is quite easy to play like bari but harder due to the constant melody parts. Like the tenor alto is the only other sax with a octave key on the bottom of the neck also called a fat neck. Unlike the tenor the alto doesn't struggle to play low notes as much but it doesn't matter since alto hardly ever plays in the low range. The only thing that really stands out with alto is the fact that you play it between your legs instead of beside your right leg like the other two but even then you can still play it to the right of your right leg. Alto is pretty basic compared to the other two.
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The sad life of a saxophonist |
Being a sax player is a weird life because they are a whole separate class of instrument when it comes to band. They aren't exactly seen as a woodwind even though that is what they are classified as but they aren't seen as a brass instrument either even if more than half of the instrument is made of brass. Saxophones are not exactly the spotlight instrument but they aren't the forgotten instrument either they are more the instrument that assists other groups alto for trumpet and french horn, tenor for trombone and baritone, and bari for tuba and other bass parts. Unfortunately this means they aren't seen as necessary in places like orchestras which is why you never see them in them all though saxophone is popular to people not in band when it comes to band itself it is not the most popular.
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The upside |
However for every downside there is a upside which is the fact that since sax is popular with people current day pop artist fancy the saxophone so there are plenty of hip-hop and pop songs that you will hear with this instrument in it. If you are looking for where the sax takes its spot in the spot light then look no further than jazz and classical music it is probably in almost every bit of music from the era of those genres with usually the tenor or alto being the main accompaniment to the lead singer usually having a solo somewhere in the piece. If that doesn't suit your fancy I think you'll be glad to hear that saxophones are excepted in marching bands unlike all the fancy and weird named instruments like the bassoon and oboe and french horn, saxophones are excepted into marching band so you won't have to look for and instrument to transfer to.
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Why is the Saxophone where it is |
You are probably wondering to yourself why the saxophone is popular in more modern things than other instruments this is probably because when it comes to the musical spectrum the saxophone is quite new. The Saxophone was patented on March 20, 1846. This might seem like a long time but compared to the flute dating back almost 40,000 years ago in Germany usually being made out of bones. This is probably why it is not excepted into orchestras because it didn't exist when great composers like Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach where alive so the orchestras like to stick to the way they had it. When you think about it Saxophonist are crippled by stereotypes put upon it, since it is seen as being apart of jazz and pop it is not seen as to fit in with the orchestra especially since it was originally designed for military bands. Maybe one day we will see the saxophone jump into orchestras and join the other instruments in a band it longs to be apart of.
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Update |
I have made some changes to the end plan for my project I no longer plan on teaching lessons but instead intend to do a solo trio video with the three different types of saxophones. What this means is that I will be playing a song that I choose with a part for alto, tenor, and bari and playing them all by myself by recording each individual part and putting them together with some form of software whatever it may be. I have already chosen a song and will working on it this upcoming week hopefully having it done as quick as possible. On another note it is clear that I did not do last weeks blog and this is do to lack of time I will probably make up for it with some for of closing blog at the end
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correct embouchure |
As sad as this may be but as a saxophonist I honestly didn't know there was a certain form to make with your mouth (which is called embouchure) for saxophone. I always thought of it simply as and O shape to make with your mouth but that is not the case. When it comes to the correct embouchure for saxophone you are to be as relaxed as possible and the mouthpiece should sit in the players mouth with as little pressure as possible. The upper teeth should rest on the top of the mouth piece and should never be used to apply pressure. When it comes to the bottom lip, the player should role the lip in slightly to be used as a cushion, the bottom lip is also how you control the pressure on the mouthpiece which helps with playing certain note, for saxophone specifically lower range.
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Important notice! |
This is something that can be covered in general for woodwind instruments but since the sax is classified under that group I will go over it and that is the importance of protecting the pads of the saxophone and any woodwind instrument from water. This may sound redundant since moisture builds up in the instrument from playing it but that's not the type of water I am talking about, I'm talking about rain. This relates almost only to that of woodwind members in marching bands but can pertain to any other out door band. When pads get wet on a instrument they can mold and deteriorate and replacing them is very expensive so if you are ever caught outside with your sax or woodwind instrument hold down all the keys or the fingering that makes all the keys go down and find your case as fast as possible.
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