Nice! I'll try this when it's not 3 o'clock in the morning.

"Mine has happy faces on it. It's not necessary. But, it never hurts."

Music teachers hate him! Find out how to improve your sound with this one simple trick!

name one of your videos "How to improve your sax life"

_"If you feel you are going to pass out, then_ *s i t d o w n*_"_

You really changed my saxophone life with this exercise :) First i started to practise it with the pen - kind of rumbling your system, ha? O:) :D But later I started to use the octave key. I saw this exercise on youtube sometime ago but there was not that pencil. They just said to play the lower octave note with the octave key pressed so I wanted to play it but I just can not. So therefore I am so thankful to you of that pencil trick. It is really psychological and muscle memory thing - when we hold the octave key we are prehearing that high note so it is hard to play it without the octave key at first time. This is so benefical for embouchure, breathing and overall sound. I just love it the most. I think this and mouthpiece buzzying are the best sound exercises for saxophone. These two things really open the sound so well. I can not stresse enough how you helped me with it and how great it is. I also recommend to pracitse it daily for 5 minutes and you will hear a huge sound progress :)

This is so cool, I've practiced getting high notes with the octave key closed but never getting low notes with it open, seems like it will greatly improve my breath support and tone!

I recommend holding the octave key as well, because when you get to lower tones different hole opens for the 2nd octave after G and it is harder to get the lower tone with octave key than with just a pencil. Awesome tip anyways in 2019 still works :D.

This trick works. I can hear it actively changing my sound when I practice. If you want to try this trick in expert mode, try doing a 3rds or 4ths scale pattern with the pencil.

Thanks Jeff, that's a practical, useful and simply understood tip that really helps. Well done.

Abnel, it's a real exercise. According to Ralph Lalama, Sonny Rollins did indeed practice this.

An oldie but a Goldie!

You have a great sense of humor and your videos are amazingly simple and useful. Thanks a lot!!!

i remember watching this video when i was 13 and just starting, and it still cracks me up - it helped me so much haha

I haven't tried it ..but could you say what this does for the sound , i.e it opens the player's resonant cavity , or it reduces pressure on the reed , or allows more reed to vibrate , frees up the sub tones etc etc. I've been a would- be saxophonist for 5 decades and thanks to guys like you it's beginning to make sense. That's makes me a "late life crisis" fan of yours.

Thank you Jeff. Amazing !!!! It changed my sound at the first time. One step above ! Keep posting. Clear and understandable, even for frenchmen

This exercise is helping me day by day thanks a lot

dude, that actually works! thanks!

I like your vibe, nice vid!

Thank you for this! It helped me with some low notes!

Spectacular exercise! It made a significant change in my beginnings of playing. Big thanks! I would recommend it to my mother if she would play sax.

Thank you so much for all your videos! You're great!

Thank you sir for this, tried it yesterday and the effect is showing already 🙏🙏.. came back here to thank you 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙏

Vary helpful.... And fantastic exercise...... Thanks sir

...Then sit down..

This technique helps a lot when my tone gets too closed. Can't believe I didn't hear about this method earlier...thx

This tip works, and on top of that you're hilarious. 😂👏🏼

You make it look so easy

Thanks for sharing Jeff!

Thanks man!!!

I cant do this with the pencil method but i play low notes perfectly when i manually hold the octave key

Thanks so much! Notice the difference already

At first glance I thought he was Brendon Urie also this video took my tone from suck to actually half decent so the improvement is massive

Great tip. Yeah my teacher Jeff Lange was gonna get me to get lessons from Ralph because he plays with both Lalama's, Dave and Ralph. But since I'm going to college now, I'll have to wait to take lessons from the great Llama!

Hey thanks alot! this really helped 👍

Lol when I first got my cheap alto the octave pin had a layer of rubber/plastic that made the octave key go up like in this video so I was so confused like I thought I was just that bad at alto. Took about a month to figure out.

Thank you❤️🎷

hhehhehe one of your first! You're the best mate

Interesting. I’ll try this out! I’m trying to develop sax skills but primarily am a contrabass flutist so hopefully that’s developed enough lung capacity to not pass out! 😂

thanks a lot for your tip!!! it's great....

amazing

Hey Jeff, looks like a pretty fun and innovative way to work on your sound, question: does this work for tenor as well? Any experience on that?

Can someone explain to me in what way this exercise helps? Just so I can use it better.

How long do you believe doing this exercise will take until you can achieve the goal? Right now im trying it and i can get shaky low As and Gs but the rest no😂 ill keep practicing it though:)

That is a cool trick.

Lol I’ve been doing this without realizing it was something to actually practice XD

very useful Thank you

this is great. Really helps me remember where my teeth SHOULD be as my teacher tells me

WUT WUT WUTTTTTTT OMG THIS works like magic!!!!! Like omg this improved my sound a lot!!!!!!!!!! 😱😱😱😱😱😄 tysm!!!!!!

Wow ! That was a pretty cool opening lick ! What was that ?

"The one secret trick to improving your sound that professional teachers don't want you to know. Quick! watch and share before they have this video taken down!"

Hello Jeff, regards from Dominican Republic. Look this exersice its working great on me on alto sax. But, I was wondering if I can use the same exercise on the tenor sax??, beacuse I really dont like my sound on the tenor. Thanks

nice!!

Nice tone excercise but why cant I just hold the octive key down?

When I do this on my tenor, it's really easy to make that A sound "good". Could that be an indication to get a harder reed?

cool tjx

I'm really not sure that this will work without the smiley faces on the pencil.

The easiest trick is that one one never thinks by himself, like this pencil, thank you very much for the insight!

Its interesting..would lyk to try hehe

holy crap it worked so fast i sound great

Hello, Jeff. I'm a fellow Alto saxophonist and I just watched your video. I liked it and I thought about trying it myself. However, when I stick the pencil under my octive key and try to play low A, my sax made a high A note instead. Everything below low A flat was fine. Can u help me out? Please!

1:17 to the end at 0.2 speed of the video is the most funny and terrifying thing I have ever watched while high

Is it good to do it the other way around aswell?

Can this work for a Bass Clarinet?

This is hard af lol

I know this may sound unrelated, but do you think this exercise will help me play lower notes.( idk why but the notes below d i can play well, but the note d its self is very soft and if i try to play loudly, it will go up the octave)

yo. So when i do the A, it stutters back and forth like it vibrates between a high and low, but when i do anything lower it works just fine, you know anything?

Is this trick equivalent to mouthpiece exercise?

happy faces are key 😁🔑

Bizarre, but intriguing

playing bari for a year helped the same way

Anyone help? I play tenor sax and I have been playing since last year, I was never able to play below E but then whenever I moved up a reed size last year I still can’t go below Middle G, unless I slur but it still squeaks a little. Is the problem me or the instrument, How do I fix this?

Hello, Jeff. Thank you for the trick. How do you record your videos? Which equipement do you use?

Can you recommend books to study jazz?

Will this work on tenor?

cool trick

Nice, I like your sound too. What reed and mouthpiece do you use?

Nice

nice mark 6

Okay this may sound really stupid, but please bear with me I've just picked up the sax a few days ago. I was looking for an exercise to better my time and it seems this works for a lot of people. One thing though, how do you play a low A on the alto, all the other KZfaq videos show people stuffing things into the horn, and it says elsewhere that the lowest not on an alto is a b flat. Please help. Yes im a total green horn, just looking for a daily exercise to strengthen my throat.

...so kinda like "undertones" rather than overtones. It really does help. I am curious.. are we trying to get the notes in tune, or just get them to play and to heck with intonation?

Than you a lot

if you guys are wondering, _'Hey!? Can't I just play the same thing with my left thumb pressing the octave key?'_ bu its a smoother transition even after the g when u use a pencil because the other octave key opens up

Is this exercise to help with overtones ? I know overtones add more (something) to your tone

I have a bari sax what do i doo??

hi, how could this practice improvethe sound of sax ?!! i mean where coud i find the real difrence?

What’s the fingering for a low A? I’m a concert pianist and a beginner sax player. I know the finger down to a low B

i tried it and it works... What i dont understand is exactly how does it translate to everyday playing.

When I do this, it creates a sound that feels bad for blending with an ensemble. Is that normal?

I've just got a sax so this might be a dumb question but does this work for Tenor? I looked online and im pretty sure theres no such thing as a low A on tenor

oh my playing saxophone needs to be fun >>>

Also what does it mean when your throat begins to hurt😂😂

nice

I've tried this glich and I thought it was pached with the 1.14 update but fortunately the problem was I wasn't using the happy face pencil if your going to use this glich use a happy face pencil and quickly save and quit and load back again!

are youJewish? just a question because I saw schneider :)

Play long tones, master the overtones from low Bb to F then listen to Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Stanley Turrentine on tenor. Cannonball Adderley and Phil Woods on alto.

I will take around 20 yrs to do the few seconds videos intro of this guy 😞

What if you have a Bari sax

also it is good the other way, playing the low A and trying to sound the high A

I understand what I'm supposed to do, but what does this do to my sound?