can anyone tell me how to play altisimo. i able to get it once, but since then, i have faild miserably. is there a special technique to playing. any help would be apppriciated.

Ask your teacher!!! lol

It might be your moutpeice that is inhibiting you. I have a lot of mouthpieces, but only use 2, a classical and a jazz. Simply put, the classical (selmer s80 c*) doesn`t play altissimo, but the keilwerth jazz (came with my shadow) does.

You can make any mouthpiece play altissimo, some are just easier than others. Altissimo has nothing to do with tightening and loosening your emboucure, (even though its easier to do it that way at first), its all about voicing (using your throat and sometimes tounge). If you really want to learn altissimo pick up a book called "Voicing" by Sinta and Dabney, you can find it online at Hickeys music. Also there is an altissimo book out there by Eugene Rousseau that is good (I don`t remember the name of it). Avoid the book Top Tones, while a good book it only teaches you altissimo for the alto (fingerings are different for every sax in altissimo) and forgets about the other horns.

One of the first things you can work on is lowering your voicing while playing front F, If your not sure where that is, it is the key just above your b key (the one we never use ), and finger c at the same time, with the octive key. It should produce your 3rd octive F same as using your plam keys, it may be a little hard at first but keep working at it. Once you have the tone try to voice down a half step by adjusting your throat muscles DO NOT DROP YOUR LOWER LIP.

If your confused on how to adjust your throat muscles, say the vowels a e i o u without moving your lips, you should feel the muscles in your throat contract and loosen, thats it.

While this is not altissimo it will prepare you to have a good sounding altissimo register. If you just start playing it without learning how to voice, you will have flat sounding and sharp sounding notes (sax was not designed to play that high) so playing altissimo will be almost pointless.

Keep playing
CJ

Also helpful is working on the Overtone series but that is alot to cover here. If you want to know about it let me know.

Keep Playing
CJ

Of course I never claimed I was very good at altisimo Cause cj just burned down what i said good

How would you finger an altissimo F# on bari? I`m playing this new jazz chart, and the bari I`m currently playing on doesn`t have an F# key (it has a low A though). This will probably be a temporary situation, as my school is getting a new bari w/ low A and high F#.

Thanks!

some fingerings work better for different horns, just experiment around