These 4 Simple Changes Make Good Sax Players Great

Can practicing less actually make you a better saxophone player? That’s exactly what happened to me after I made just four simple changes to my routine. Now I spend less time practicing but my improvement has skyrocketed.

Below, I’ll show you exactly how to copy my method to save hours, speed up your progress, and keep your motivation sky-high every day.

Align Your Goals

I spent years working out of the most popular jazz books, trying to learn the hottest licks that would impress listeners. Seemed like a good plan, but I was actually going about the process completely wrong.

Imagine your dream was to become really good at cooking classic Italian cuisine, but all the most popular cookbooks were about Asian food. Would you just study those because that’s what everyone else was doing? No, of course not. You’d get Italian cookbooks and practice making those recipes, right?

So many music students are practicing things that are totally wrong for what they want to do musically. They’re working out of books that were made for an entirely different purpose. Sure, you can learn stuff from them, but if you want to make Italian food, a Thai cookbook is not the best way to go about it.

You’re probably studying from YouTube videos and books that might have very good information, but aren’t suited to what you eventually want to be able to do on the saxophone. And that can result in wasting tons of precious practice time, feeling as though you’re not getting any better, massive frustration, and maybe even giving up.

But here’s the simple solution nobody talks about. Instead of blindly following popular trends, first, clearly identify the kind of music you genuinely love and want to play. You want to cook Italian or Asian?

You have to pick the style that lights you up and inspires you, not just what everyone else is cooking. An easy way to do this is to think of your favorite saxophone player, somebody you would love to sound like. If your favorite player is Charlie Parker, then Bebop is your musical cuisine. If it’s Grover Washington Jr, maybe smooth jazz is your thing.

You have to choose a clear musical direction before you can effectively move toward it. If you don’t have a favorite saxophone player, you need to start listening and find out whose sound and style resonates the most with you.

But once you have that clear musical direction, how do you choose what to practice? The first step is to identify your biggest weaknesses. Is it sound, rhythm, or improvisation skills?

Maybe your favorite saxophone player is someone like Kirk Whalum, and you want to one day play with a soulful melodic style and lush sound like he does. You should probably focus your energy on improving your sound, rhythm, and melodic improvisation.

You probably shouldn’t spend all your time on altissimo, double time, and advanced harmonic substitutions, just because those topics are popular. Those things aren’t aligned with your goal, and they’ll probably just slow you down.

If you need more help with this, click here because I have made the ultimate solution just for you.

Practice the Right Way

Even if you know exactly what you want to sound like and what you should be studying, most saxophone players still end up wasting countless hours practicing in the wrong way. Let me show you how I used to practice completely wrong myself.

I used to feel this immense pressure to improve my playing to the level of others around me. I was comparing myself to people who were way ahead of me, and I thought I needed to put in a massive amount of practice if I ever were to have a chance of catching up.

Other people could play much faster than me, so I convinced myself that I needed to work every scale and pattern up really fast. I practiced playing those things way faster than I was able to execute accurately, though, because I thought if you want to play fast, you have to practice fast.

That’s not practice, it’s the opposite. All I was doing was reinforcing terrible habits, playing sloppily with tension, fingers flying off the keys, I had bad rhythm, it was a mess.

The worst part is that I don’t even like playing fast that much. Not only does practicing that way reinforce bad habits, but it also guarantees that you’ll never reach the goal of clean, fast technique.

The way I practice now saves me so much time, builds good habits, and gets way better results.

It’s so simple. Here are three rules to follow that will allow you to get way more done with less practice time:

Pay special attention to common tension areas like your embouchure, fingers, and shoulders, and gently remind yourself to release any tension while you’re playing.

Practicing very slowly, relaxed, and accurately is like a superpower for progress. Practicing too fast with mistakes and tension is the reason most people progress very slowly or not at all. Having a little patience will pay off big time. Trust me.

Keep it Fresh

There was another big mistake I was making that was costing me years of wasted practice time, and you’re probably making it too. Not only did I practice things that were not aligned with my goals and reinforce bad habits by practicing too fast and sloppily, but I was also practicing the same things over and over for far too long. So many people do this, and it just keeps you stuck in the same place. No wonder you don’t feel any sense of progress.

If you wanted to master Italian cooking, would you just make the same spaghetti and meatballs over and over again? No, of course not. You’d explore many different recipes from all the regions of Italy.

I might have found some really slick lines that I wanted to learn in all 12 keys, but I’d practice them way too fast and spend too long on them because they never came out clean. What I should have done was play it slowly, relaxed, and with accuracy, then move on to something new right away. There is no perfection with music, only incremental improvements that can go on forever.

Every time we introduce fresh material—a scale, a melody, a lick—it enriches us and makes learning new stuff easier and faster. Changing things up like this creates a feeling of forward momentum. With every new thing we learn, we get a win that motivates us to move on to the next step.

Who do you think would make more progress? The player who practiced the same 10 things over the course of a year, or the player who practiced 100 different things?

We now know what musical direction we want to work towards and have identified our weaknesses. Now it’s time to choose practice material based on that and introduce something new regularly.

Pick something and work on it for three consecutive practice sessions max. After that, it starts to get stale. Introduce something new and repeat the process.

This can be a new scale, exercise, song, anything small and manageable. We learn fastest when we’re beginners, so by tackling fresh material regularly, we keep getting a boost from that feeling of accomplishment.

In my daily practice, I always work on jazz standards. I play the melody and improvise with no accompaniment. I change the tunes every day, some I’ve never played, some I haven’t touched in months.

Eventually, you’ll cycle back to older material and level it up even further. This approach saves years of wasted practice time and supercharges your progress.

Goldilocks Zone

There’s one more super practice strategy I want to share with you.

The reason people stick to the same material for years is that it feels safe and easy. You already know your major scales, but that diminished scale you want to learn feels intimidating. It’s easier to play songs you kind of know than tackle something brand new. I did the same thing for years. But it really held me back.

Think of Goldilocks, but instead of porridge, she’s trying spaghetti and meatballs.

Mama Bear’s spaghetti is too cold. That’s like practicing material you already know—it’s too easy. No growth, no challenge, no progress.

Papa Bear’s spaghetti is too hot. That’s like practicing something way outside your comfort zone. It’s overwhelming, frustrating, and just leads to burnout.

Baby Bear’s spaghetti is just right. This is material that’s fresh and slightly challenging. It requires effort, but stays manageable. You learn something new, make progress, and feel a sense of accomplishment. That feeling motivates you to return to the practice room the next day.

To stay in the Goldilocks Zone, commit to including fresh material that aligns with your musical goals. It shouldn’t be too easy or too hard. Ideally, it’s something you can get under your fingers in one to three short practice sessions.

Break it into manageable parts if needed: one new section of a tune, or one key for a new lick. The more you practice this way, the better you’ll get at choosing the right challenge level. And as long as you’re in the Goldilocks Zone, you’ll keep moving forward.

Imagine applying all four of these practice strategies. This is exactly how I was able to get more done in way less time. If you want to go deeper and work with me on all this, click here. And check out the following posts where I show you exactly how to practice something by just copying what I do.

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