LESSONS

With both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in jazz studies, Eli particularly enjoys working with advanced jazz saxophone students but is happy to work with all levels of students on saxophone, flute, and clarinet in any genre. Composition and Ableton Production lessons are available to advanced students. Over the last 20 years, Eli has developed an extensive collection of woodwind and jazz learning materials that includes the most common etude books as well as advanced college level materials. The below examples will use language for jazz saxophone students but can be applied to others as lessons are personalized to student goals. Some examples of lesson content may include:

- Concepts

• Visualization

  • We can’t see our hands when we are playing and a lot of things are happening at the same time. Many things about playing music and woodwind instruments are conceptual, so we need to strengthen our imagination muscles to have clear ideas about what we are doing.

• Thinking critically about sound

  • Use musical terms

  • Practice listening deeper

• Be curious and experiment!

  • Curiosity and playfulness are actually very important. Keep asking questions, “What does it sound like if I do this?”

• Practice non-judgementally taking in data. The less we identify with a mistake, the faster we can learn. Growth takes patience.

  • Thank the mistake! It’s a part of learning. Each step you take gets you closer to your goal. It’s just information, no need to identify with it, your worth as a human is not tied to your musicianship because you’re already valid and whole. If a passage is too difficult it just means we need to try it slower.

  • Move on from mistakes quickly. If you say “oops” every time you make a mistake at home, the more likely you are to do that on stage. And now you’ve fully taken the instrument out of your mouth to say something and need to reset your embouchure to play again. If you just keep playing, your sound will be more consistent.

  • Learning is brave and strengthens your brain! Be compassionate with yourself. Our brain processes what we say to ourselves the same way as when someone else says it to us. Negativity can hamper learning and make us feel bad about ourselves.

• Focus on one thing at a time

  • Our brain actually doesn’t multi-task. It’s flipping between different processes very quickly, and the energy it takes to do so is draining. That’s why we want to develop muscle memory and good habits that we don’t need to think about such as taking a big enough breath that engages the diaphragm before playing. As each part becomes a habit, you can focus on new things and play at a higher level. Each part of music like rhythm and melody are also processed by different parts of the brain so focusing on one at a time can be a more efficient way to accurately take in all that information if you are for example, transcribing. Like when you’re watching TV and someone starts talking to you, you can miss what they said or what’s happening in the show depending on which one you are paying attention to. Even though the sounds are happening at the same time, one almost “blocks out” the other.

- Listen to people who play your instrument and develop your own sound

• Who’s playing do you like? 

  • Why? What elements specifically?

  • If you imagined the perfect playing, would it be a combination inspired by different players?

  • What is your musical personality?

  • Are there other instruments that inspire your playing?

- How to practice

• We get better at what we pay attention to

  • If we only practice what we are already good at, the gap between what we’re good at and what we’re not - widens.

  • It’s really common to spend more time on something that is fun because it’s easier. But there’s a reason why practicing doesn’t sound exactly like a polished performance because ideally we’re working on things that aren’t ready yet. Being able to accurately access what needs the most work is key and as we grow, what we work on most will keep changing.

- Embouchure/Air

• Engaging Diaphragm

  • Breathing Exercises

• Sound/Intonation

  • Longtones in all ranges and dynamics with Tuner/Drones/Piano  

  • Bending Notes

  • Full tone and subtone

  • Overtones

• Articulation/Vibrato

  • Articulation Exercises and applying different articulation combinations to scales

  • Jazz phrasing tonguing

  • Vibrato with metronome

- Technique     

• Scales - Full range, 2 Octave, 1 Octave, Ascending, Descending, Alternating (Asc. and Desc.), in 4rths, 5ths, chromatically, etc.

  • Chromatic Scale

  • Major Scales, Arpeggios, and Patterns in all 12 keys

  • Other Major Modes

  • Other useful scales such as: Pentatonic, Bebop Scale, Blues Scale, Altered Dominant, Lydian Dominant, Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor, Diminished, Whole Tone, etc.

- Reading

• Big Band Music

• Jazz Etudes

• Jazz Standards

• Classical Etudes

• Scale Studies

• Transcription

• Sight Reading

• Chosen Repertoire

- Extended Techniques

• Altissimo - Don’t start without working on overtones 

  • Top Tones for Saxophone - Sigmund Rascher

  • Make your own fingering chart with most in tune options for your horn

• Multiphonics

  • Multiphonics for the Saxophone - John Gross

• Double Tonguing

• Circular Breathing

- Theory and Improvisation

• Memorizing scales, arpeggios, and patterns 

  • Thinking in #’s

• Learning and analyzing progressions

• Substitutions

• Learning Tunes (Melody and Harmony)

  • Analyze melodies

  • Walk a bass line

  • Voice leading

  • Improvise

• Analyzing Transcribed Solos

  • Archive ideas you like! Notice similarities.

- Ear Training

• Singing before you play. Can you hear it in your head while you are playing?

• Recognizing Roots

• Intervals

• Chord Types

• Chord Progressions

• Transcribing

  • Same instrument - attempt to copy the player’s sound, phrasing, etc.

  • Transcribe other instruments

- Audition/Performance Preparation

• Performing is different from practicing. Many people are comfortable talking in normal situations, but fear of public speaking is one of the most common fears. Like anything else, we can overcome performance anxiety with practice and developing tools to overcome nervousness.

- Piano can help you see concepts that you are imagining on saxophone and sing at the same time. It’s ok if you never intend to perform on piano, it’s a great tool (like a metronome) for your saxophone study and ear training.

• Intervals

  • You can hear them at the same time. How does this sound different than playing them separately on the saxophone?

• Major scales, arpeggios, and root position chords

  • Can you visualize the piano keys while playing them on saxophone?

• Chords in different voicings

  • This moves the octave of one of the notes. Notice how you can hear the root of the chord regardless of which chord tone is on the bottom of the chord?

• Progressions in all voicings

  • Focus on hearing the function of each chord within the progression. Sometimes we don’t realize we are memorizing the sound of a specific voicing because of the way it was played on a recording. We want to recognize the chords no matter how they are played. This is actually one reason why kareoke is hard! For copyright reasons you are not singing over the backing track from the actual recording. People often can only sing the melody in the context of the exact recording because they’ve memorized how it sounds and not how the melody functions over the chords, or how the chords sound in any other way.

• Voice Leading of chords

  • It can be helpful to see which notes move and which notes stay the same from chord to chord. This can help you visualize lines when improvising on the saxophone.

• Tunes that you are working on on saxophone 

  • Hearing the same tune in different ways is super helpful!

- Gear/Checking condition of gear

• Your instrument is an extension of you, and because we are all unique there is no one kind of gear that is “best”. Playing the same setup as your favorite player is not going to result in the same sound because gear doesn’t have it’s own sound. Selecting the right gear that makes it easiest for you to access the sound you want is key, and your tastes may change/evolve.

• Accessories

  • Reeds, mouthpiece, ligature, neck-strap type

    • We can discuss different brands, sizes, styles, and see which unique combinations of each that are best for you.

• Instrument

  • Is it time to upgrade? Trying to decide vintage vs. modern horns?

• Maintenance

  • Sometimes we don’t notice when we’re blowing through a leak or working harder than we need to because the instrument needs servicing. Sometimes it isn’t us!