Who was the best saxophone player that played for Miles?

Advice for teaching a ten year old to play the saxophone?

• Hi everyone! I played the flute during middle and high school and also played the saxophone in high school. Now, seven years later, my cousin is starting middle school and wants to play the saxophone as well. I was a great player in my day and made it to All-State band a few times, and I still remember how to play. My question is: is there any advice on how to teach her this instrument? Should I start with reading music or making sound from the saxophone? Are there any websites that have sheet music that I could print for her? ANY advice would be great! Thanks!

• Answer:

  Well, I'm a piano teacher so bear with me! Don't go into teaching the sax to your cousin lightly. In-family teaching situations tend not to end well so be sure you really want to do this. Then you need you need to decide what kind of teacher you want to be. Following that you need to decide if how you were taught to play the sax and the flute is how you want to teach it AND then you need to decide how you are going to teach note values, rhythm, and ear training and improvisation...Then you need to go to a music store (online or in a store) and look at the books for beginning Sax players. Normally you will find that you do the sound and the note reading simultaneously. Also the finger positions. This is true across instruments. You will also need to teach your cousin how to care for your instruments. Be sure to ask for help from a current teacher such as a high school/middle school band teacher if you run into trouble. There are usually theory about learning and teaching music in general plus the practice of teaching issues that you will find difficult to remedy if you don't have a support system of some kind. Then you also need to decide if you only want 1 student or if you are really going into the business of teaching music to kids and adults. When my son took trombone lessons in middle school they used a book called "Essential Elements - trombone" and I have seen them for saxophones. I do not know if it is a good one or not. A quick Google search led me to a zillion sites but here are 2 or 3: http://www.encoremusic.com/saxophone/cat41.html http://www.saxspot.com/cat41.html About downloading music - I've not done it for a long time but I assume that there is if there aren't copyright issues involved. Your best bet might be to copy some music from a sax solo book or some similar type of thing for your student. Keeping the book for yourself for possible future use. Hope this helps.