Playing a Chromatic Scale on the Tenor Saxophone

Video Transcript

Hi! This is Dave Birkin and on behalf of expertvillage.com, I am going to talk to you about the chromatic scale on the saxophone. I am going to start on C and I am going to show you all the 12 tones that make the western musical system. So we got the C that we had before, in order to play the C sharp, you see in order to play the C sharp you have to make this key over here, you have to make this key open up, and that is done with your left pinky and it is this key right here, you see there are four keys that this pinky is in control of, here we go and that is the B flat, this is the B, this is the C sharp, this is one that opens up, it opens up with, keep going, there we are, it opens up this way, and it is the C sharp. And then of course the next one is D, which you have already leaned and the next one is D sharp or E flat and that is accomplished by this pinky key here, see you have the C over here, this pinky key here opens up, you see the key opening up, right, right there, that thing right here, and that’s your E flat, D sharp key. So that is your D sharp and you got the E already had, the F you already had, then you have got F sharp, it’s like that. Then you got G, you already got, and that’s that and this is G sharp, this is the other pinky key I talked about here… right here, that’s your G sharp key and what that does is it opens up, that opens up this key right here, and that’s what makes the G sharp. Okay, move back to the fingers and you have got the A and then for B flat, there is four different ways to finger it depending on what notes are around it for the purpose of the chromatic scale the simplest way to do it is with this side key, right here, see that side key, you have got three side keys with your right hand. And this is lowest one, you don’t press it with the tip of your finger, you just sort of put your knuckle on it, that is how you do it, just sort of, lot of wrist action in saxophone fingering, you know, go between this and this, you just sort of move your wrist a little bit, and you keep your fingers ready to go on top of the keys. So you got your B flat, so you are playing with this, here, you see playing your A, and then here you are playing your B flat, because you have got the B flat and you have got the B that we already had and we got the C that we already had before.

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