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How long do you have to do long tones in a practice session

9K views 22 replies 20 participants last post by  Chunsoo 
#1 ·
I'm just wondering because people always say, "Long tones improve your tone"
but how long do you have to do it each day? I've been using the Tim Price longtones sheet to have a shorter long tone warmup which takes me about 1-2mins to finish
but I'm guessing I should do a chromatic long before I practice like play a note as long as you can, soft at first and crescendo then get softer, something like this < > starting on a low Bb or C until you reach the altissimo F# or just a high F above the staff line, but I'm guessing that will take a long time to do like 5-10 min so how long should I do long tones and how do I practice the long tones?
 
#5 ·
Chunsoo- Ok - There are no short cuts my friend. Use this mantra I learned by a killin' guy :D " WHERE THERE'S A WILL....THERE'S A WAY , MY FRIEND. "

Then try the -Overtone Scales: Play mid range Bb major scale starting on the over blown Bb (low Bb fingering) and play up to Eb, then go back down to low Bb fingering for the F on up. Do this in one octave scales.Then move up a half step. Go as high as possible BUT play intune !

Last but not least; try this; all students of the saxophone NEED to do this;

Middle G down to low G chromatically. Hold each tone while
pushing all of the air out of the lungs. This excercise gets the air
moving. You will know when you are doing it right when you find yourself
"shaking" at the end of each tone. If there is any secret it lies in this
practice. Furthermore this excercise should be done everyday for results.
Following your long tones should come extended lip slurs on
high B, Bb, A, Ab, G, Gb, F. This excercise will let you know how tight
your facial muscles have become. You must loosen up, and not bite down
hard on the mouthpiece. Form an oval-O in the oral cavity for big sound.

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#6 ·
but I'm guessing that will take a long time to do like 5-10 min
Well, I guess it's all relative. 5-10 min might be a long time to some insects whose entire lifespan is about 24 hours, but to us humans, 5-10 min is not a long time, provided you're not in excruciating pain. If you are in pain when doing a long tone, you're doing something wrong. Loosen up.
 
#8 ·
It has nothing to do with lots of breath, it has everything to do with approaching your embochure muscles as an athlete would approach other muscles. If you've never done long tones, chances are you can't play 45 minutes straight. However, start with 5, then try and increase it by a minute a day or, but once it begins to hurt, stop the long tones for a day to let your muscles rebuild themselves.

In the end, I've found that long tones help me to focus on building my tone quality, and also control. Paired with doing overtones everyday, it's a great way to build a better sound.
 
#14 ·
Mr. Price is the master. If I could humbly add something its this; that when you're playing to the point you're trying to push your diaphragm through your rib cage, that's when its important to be paying the most attention to your embouture (sp? crud). You have got to be putting out the most even tone possible when you don't think you can anymore. Its the end of the breath cycle that's the most critical. The part where we want to just take another breath but the music or the phrase we're in the middle of, demands us to finish it completely. That's one major difference between a player and a musician.

One of the problems we face as wind instrument musicians is that we try to cut off the musical sentence to early. If you listen to beginning and intermediate players one thing you should notice is how long their musical sentences are. Do they leave that last note hanging in the air, filling what could be a disastrous noteless void if they cut off too early, or do they cut it short to take their next breath? Long tones promote not only embouture strengths but the ability to hang that last note on the air and cause the audience to stay with you.

Harv
 
#15 ·
I do at least 30 minutes a day of working on my over all sound. This means long tones, overtones and tuning. When I was really trying to get my sound more together I spent a month of practice time focusing on tone. I would spend 3 hours a day just doing long tones with a tuner and or piano. It really paid off. I would take little 1 minute breaks every 3 minutes to rest my embouchure. 2 minutes of straight long tones is very tiring for an embouchure and you lose the ability to properly play the note and you can ingrain wrong habits. Thats why the breaks are important. Take a break when you are unable to play a steady note, after your 1 minute break you start again and the steadiness is back.
 
#18 ·
Two additional opinions, FWIW, from a couple of respected clarinetists (I think the reasoning could apply to saxophone practice as well):
Long tones by themselves are an inefficient use of your practice time.

I do not use long tones in my warm up and do not advise my students to use them either. I feel that they accomplish very little and take unnecessary time away from scales and arpeggios, which are the building blocks of technique.

A better approach would be to play your scales very slowly, listening for smooth connections between the notes, and checking that the down and/or up movement of each finger is absolutely precise and seamless.

I also do not think that long tones help to improve your tone quality. Playing notes slowly, in context, whether scalewise or arpeggiated, and matching their sonority and color will do much more to develop your overall tonal concept.

Music making is the connections of notes at different speeds, not just one sustained note...

As Stanley Hasty once said: "...Anyone can sound good on one note. Once someone plays an INTERVAL, however, you can immediately tell whether the player is a beginner or someone very good..."

Take the 15 minutes you use daily for long tones, add up all those minutes, and in a month it is more than 6 hours which would have been better spent on scales and arpeggios.
and
I still think long tones represent an unnecessary stealing of time away from scale practice as part of a proper warm up. The difference between a working clarinetist and someone who can't get work almost always comes down to rhythm, intonation and technique. Minute colors in tone are almost impossible to hear under most circumstances one would encounter professionally (we don't play concertos and chamber music every day. certainly never etudes on the job). In any case, clarinet players are more sensitive to this sort of thing and most others will not even notice things other clarinet players find very obvious.
[...]
On the other hand, not having great technique, excellent intonation and perfect rhythm will inhibit what you want to do musically more, because no one wants to listen to a player who does not posess all of these things,

If you practice 20 extra minutes of scales every day at age 15-18 you will save an hour or more of technical practice when you are in college.In addition, you will have to practice every piece you play longer because you have less basic technique.

If you listen to recordings of great clarinet players like Marcellus and Wright, that tonal concept will get into your ears and help you produce it far more efficiently than anything else you can do.

Should you ultimately become a professional, you will discover that you have almost no time to practice anyway, and you certainly won't want to squander any extra time on long tones.
As for me, I usually start my practice session with ten minutes of long tones but if anyone wishes to see the original threads in context, just PM me and I'd be happy to provide the links to the Clarinet BB. Obviously, if long tones work for you, fine, but I question the "one size fits all" approach.
 
#21 · (Edited by Moderator)
I used to do 4 hours a day of long notes for a couple of years, but I think that is excessive.

I now recommend that whatever time you have to practise split roughly into 3 and spend 1/3rd on long note and tone practice.

If you find it hard to concentrate on pure long notes then practising ballads can be a sort of substitute (but not the same thing and anyway it's to practise ballads for ballad playing).

I find that visualisationhttp://www.petethomas.co.uk/saxophone-visualising-sound.html?submenuheader=4 of tone helps a lot if you have a problem with concentration.
 
#22 ·
I used to do 4 hours a day of long notes for a couple of years, but I think that is excessive.
Wow I'd love to know what exercises you did to fill that much time, I'm seriously interested. I know it's probably a bit excessive as you said yourself, but there must be some stuff in there that I'm not doing atm.

I guess at this point spend at least the first 40 minutes on my tone, though this includes air support and sometimes tounging too.. I do my daily overtones apart from this.

OP:
But seriously, you should not do more then you are actually capable of 'getting' so to speak. As in, if you just try to fill the time because 'we told you that WE fill lots of time', instead of being fully focussed and aware of what areas exactly you are working on--> You are doing it wrong and probably even developing bad habits, and that's the worst thing a developing sax player can do (speaking from experience).

Just try and fully focus on your tone for a few minutes a day, focus on your air support a few mins a day, do your overtones etc. Might be a total of 15 mins max, but if you do this every day you'll probably get results in a few weeks, else I'll give you money back.
 
#23 ·
I always did long tones before I played like a few months ago, the retarded kids make fun of me for doing long tones before I play and they think its just a "waste of time" when their tone is crappy, it explains a lot.
 
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