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Saxophone Basics
What is a saxophone?
The saxophone is a versatile and expressive wind instrument, which makes it very popular with both beginners and professionals. Most saxophones have a golden appearance and are usually made of brass. However, despite their metallic body, saxophones belong to the family of woodwind instruments. This is due to the reed, which originally comes from wood. Even though modern reeds are sometimes made from synthetic materials, saxophones are traditionally still classified as woodwind instruments.
Common features of the saxophone family
Although there are different saxophones, the conical bore is identical in almost all instruments. Conical means that the tube widens towards the end. In addition, you should know that saxophones are transposing instruments. That means the sounding pitch does not correspond to the written pitch, or the player must transpose the music into the appropriate key. Thus, the saxophone part in the score can differ from the accompanying instruments. The range of the different saxophone models appears the same in the notation, from B-flat to F-sharp′′′. Due to the different transpositions, however, soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones sound in very different registers.
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What prerequisites should you bring to play the saxophone?
Apart from quality, beginners should value easy handling. The alto saxophone is ideal for starting out in the saxophone world due to its comparatively compact size, and with the right exercises even beginners can achieve first successes relatively quickly. However, because of its relatively high weight and a certain width of the bore, you should have an appropriate stature and sufficient lung capacity. As a reference, textbooks recommend an age of 10 years; but as soon as you are physically able to hold a saxophone, nothing stands in the way of learning it.
Which saxophone model is right for you?
Which type of saxophone you choose is ultimately determined by your own stature and the pitch range you want your instrument to cover. The most common saxophone types are the soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone. If you want to learn a bit more about the four common saxophone models, we recommend another blog post. In our buying guide "Saxophone types explained" we take a closer look at the different saxophones.
All saxophone categories
Soprano saxophones
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Alto saxophones
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Tenor saxophones
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