I recently purchased a Soprano Sax from www.wwbw.com. I only played the keyboard before buying this sax. I am currently in a war zone and do not have the option of taking any music classes. I am having a few problems with the sax, as expected.

Obviously I know there is nothing wrong with my sax, I know it is operator error. So I was wondering If anyone would be willing to help me learn via email. A few of the problems are as followed.

First, the ligature seems to not fit my mouthpiece. I purchased the Selmer S90 mouthpiece and own an LA Sax model LA-650-IM black. The ligature seems to be too tight for the mouthpiece. If I attempt to put it on, it starts to scratch the mouthpiece. Is this normal? I also got a fingering chart for the sax from musiked.com but the keys dont seem to match what is on my sax.

I was also wondering, how do you tune the sax? I did not think to buy a tuner as I just basicly got whatever the salesperson said I needed to get started. The sax doesnt seem to be out of tune from the few notes I already played.

And the final question. I have noticed that when I am playing and going from note to note it starts to squeek and sound real bad. For example, when I go from E into D it starts to squeek. If i go back to E it sounds normal. I have tried keeping the same breath and it kept squeeking. I have held the D before without it squeeking, yet it seems to squeek more often then not.

Any help would be appreciated. You can contact me at bnkrecords@yahoo.com

Thank you

I guess I should add what type of reed I am using. Judging from other posts it plays an important role.

I am using the Vandoren 2.5 reeds.

I want lessons, tell me how you finger the first four notes of the Creston Sonata. Thanks.

What? That didn't make sense. I would like to know how you finger the first four notes of the Creston. Come on now, stop playing around.