I’ve been meaning to post this since Friday, of course, and haven’t.
For those of you who are wondering, the saxophone lesson on Thursday night went…okay. I was hoping to come out of it raring to go, but it didn’t really happen that way. Nor did it go badly. It just kind of…went.
I’m going to give things a few more weeks to settle. The teacher seems like a nice guy. He also seemed nervous. He’s taught high school students before, but this is his first independent lesson. I also think he was nervous about what to teach me as I’ve taken lessons before. Some of the stuff he was teaching me, in fact, was a completely different method of playing from what I’ve done before — down to a different way to put the Silver Lady together.
Basically, we went over putting the sax together, placing the mouthpiece, basic embouchure. He asked me to play something. I (rather nervously) played some of “Into the West”. Then we went over the importance of long tones and scales, and talked about new equipment I will need, and he sent me home with lots of exercises and no new music. Boring, boring, boring. But I will admit it’s what I need, and what I asked for.
I’m slightly nervous about the “new equipment” thing. A couple of the things he suggested were mouthpiece pads (which I didn’t know existed, and which are glorious!) and papers for keeping the moisture out of some of the pads. Both of which are cheap ($5 each). He told me my saxophone was “fine”, which didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement (Silver Lady sniffed audibly and turned her nose up at him) and said “but that’s the most expensive thing to replace anyway”. Which sounded to me a little like “I would tell you to replace it, but it would be expensive, so don’t bother.”
I’m a little sensitive about the saxophone. I do wish he’d said he liked it. Part of me wants a pro player to look at it and say “Hey, that’s a nice saxophone.” But then *shrug* whatever. I know what I heard when I played it in the store, I know how I got it, and I love it, right? I have no need of outside approval. I will keep telling myself this. First person who tells me my sax sucks gets the mouthpiece as far up their nose as it’ll go.
Speaking of mouthpieces, I’ll probably have to replace mine, and the ligature, both of which are expensive propositions ($70 for the ligature, Gods only know how much for the mouthpiece). I’m told this will make playing a heck of a lot easier, but I’m loath to do it as it’s a lot of money. That and my teacher said he was going to check with HIS teacher about what mouthpiece I should buy, which was hardly a confident recommendation. I’m thinking “If you can’t tell me what’s wrong with my mouthpiece your own damn self, why should I pay to get a new one on the word of somone who’s never even seen the one I have?”
Oh, and I probably need a tuner for the sax. An electric one. So’s I can do my long tones and see if they’re in tune all the way up and down the scale. I went into Twigg to look at them on the weekend, and they were woefully unhelpful. The guy pointed me at one tuner which was on sale, didn’t tell me why I should buy it (other than “it’s on sale, it’s a good tuner, that’s the one you want”), and then were terse when I asked questions about it and the other tuners. When I mentioned I might like something that transposed the key for me (Tuners tell you the note in concert C, and a tenor sax is tuned to Bb) he told me I didn’t need that function! Um…hello? But I’ve just told you it’s a feature I want? So I went to Archambault and asked there, and the guy said “Oh, I know the perfect one” and got me out a (cheaper) seiko model that transposed the keys for me, and explained why it was better than some of the other tuners, and what I would get out of paying more for a tuner.
Really, I’ve never known the staff at Twigg to be that unhelpful.
Back to the lesson. So yeah. Mostly it was boring preliminary stuff, with a few minor irks (he didn’t tell me I had to buy all the new equipment. Just pointed out a lot of stuff that would help). And we were circling one another, trying to find common ground, figuring out how the lessons were going to work. I think it’ll likely settle after a few more lessons. They’re every two weeks, so I’m giving it a month or two.
And the lessons are helping already. Embouchure is a pain, but I’m playing much better: the notes are clearer and I can play more of them; and I’m getting my butt in gear on being able to play the scales.
Updates as circumstances warrant.
Posted by Ceri under ShinyNewSaxophone | 1 Comment »