Hi am in 8gr & was wondering if any one wriths the letter of the note and/or should i stop

i am also first chaier

Yes, writing the name above the note is a good learning technique. However, this is something you should eventually grow out of. Reading the notes should become second nature, and you shouldn`t have to write the name above every single one. If you do, it becomes problematic when you have long solo pieces, and/or sections with lots of sixteenth notes and accidentals.

It`s not a matter of whether or not you should stop doing this. It`s a matter of personal committment, and learning the notes on the staff before moving on to more complex music. I, myself, never wrote the names above the notes. I had taken piano lessons since seven years before I started the sax, so I already knew treble and bass clef.

Thomas

I started doing that, but then I stopped around "Mary had a Little Lamb." One of our saxists still does it, but our band director told her to stop. That really isn`t a good habit. It takes too long and makes you look like a slight moron because you don`t know how to just read notes off the staff.

Amen, geek. Our 3rd chair flute player does that all the time and it drives us nuts.

Sorry, I meant "something you should grow out of soon".

you should deffinitly stop... this girl i teach piano used to write the notes above her music for everything for like 2 months.... right when i noticed and made her stop... within 3 weeks she could read music without writting anything above .... you wont be able to do that forever... once you get into highschool youll probly have some troubles...and if you ever want to become professional... it would be harder then it would be for any other sax players

you are grade 8. O.O

do you mean you are only writing the note name above very very high / very very low (although there aren`t many very high or lows on the sax) - or do you mean every single note.

if you are doing most notes like this then i think you need to seriously considering learning to read music properly. I`m surprised you were able to do the grade 8 sightreading without being able to read notes.

i think that you should stop now! it is a hard habit to get out of, and it will really get you back when you are in a competition and it comes to the sightreading part of it. i`ve saw people writing the notes above them in those competition. we got a lot of points against us then. we got a 3 on our sightreading portion. mainly because of people asking notes and writing them in! it is a really bad habit! im trying to get one of my friends playing the flute to stop it. :0

Note writing definitely helps when you`re a beginner. I`ve been playing saxophone for about 8 years, and this summer was required to play bass trombone for a camp. Because I was a relative stranger to this monstrosity, I wrote in the slide positions. I know how to read bass clef, but I needed the reminder. More than likely, your fellow band member needs to start really learning how to read music, and at the very least slow down the note writing to special, rare notes.