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SPECIAL
EFFECTS ON THE SAXOPHONE
The saxophone is an incredibly versatile instrument, the effects above can be used for expression, humour, surprise or just to extend the boundaries of the instrument. This is just the tip of the iceberg, with some experimentation you can probably make up some of your own effects.
There are a lot more saxophone effects than I have time to cover here, and new ones are being invented all the time. I have not yet had a chance to cover the thousands of option available with multiphonics (playing more than one tone simultaneously). I’ll soon be adding a fingering chart for saxophone multiphonics so keep an eye out.
There are many special effects on the saxophone that are all but forgotten about (see below), I remember once having a very old saxophone tutor called Eby’s Scientific Saxophone Method
, which included some real gems.
I have just started a series of short video tutorials on Youtube. The first one is not strictly speaking an "effect", but is a little trick that allows you to play an otherwise impossible trill, from low Bb (A#) to B:
In addition to my own introductory exercises to the crazy world of saxophone effects (see menu to the left), I have included some extracts from a book by Henri Weber from 1926, which includes such gems as the Meow, the Moan, the Auto Horn and the Dog Bark:
