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In this tutorial, I’m going to show you 2 pro level sax articulations that will help add a lot of style to your sax playing. Both of these articulations are a lot less common than your typical slur, tongue, accent, and dop – but if you use them correctly, they will help take your sax playing to the next level. The first is an articulation concept I made up called the “thwap” which adds power to a note, and the second is what I call the “stutter step” which puts some space around a note.

2 PRO LEVEL SAX ARTICULATIONS:

  • The Thwap is used to add power to a note by catching the very edge of a set up note
  • Thwaps are great for horn hits and stabs.
  • Add a fall to your thwapped note to take it to the next level.
  • The Stutter Step is used to add some subtle space around a note through using a false fingering.
  • The Stutter Step is great for adding style to a melody or a medium tempo improvised line, by creating a kind of bounce effect to the notes that you are playing.

INSIDE THE SAX SCHOOL

Inside the Sax School, I spend time in every lesson talking about how to use articulations (and dynamics) to make everything you place sound better. I give very specific articulation examples on every song & exercise that we cover. I also have courses dedicated to jazz style & funk style, where I break down the unwritten rules of articulation and show you step by step how to make your articulations fit the style of music you are playing. If you are ready to take your style and sax playing to the next level, then enroll in the Sax School today!

A full-text transcription is available by clicking the accordion below. The timestamps line up with the video’s timeline.

2 PRO LEVEL SAX ARTICULATIONS YOU SHOULD KNOW

0:00:00.0 Scott Paddock: What's up, everybody? My name is Scott Paddock, and today I am gonna show you two pro-level articulations that you've probably never heard of before, that will add a whole lot of character to your saxophone sound.

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0:00:17.1 SP: If you're new to my YouTube channel, please show some love and hit the subscribe button, give me a thumbs up and click the bell for notifications. The first articulation I'm gonna show you today is called the thwap, T-H-W-A-P. If you've followed me on YouTube at all, you know that I like to call articulations by what they sound like. And when I made up this articulation, it sounded like a thwap to me. So what I was trying to do when I made this up was add more power to a hit note, so I play in a lot of funk bands, rock bands, R&B bands.

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0:00:58.4 SP: And in bands like that, you have a lot of horn hits, so I was always trying to come up with a way to make those notes sound a lot more powerful. So if I just play a D, If I accent it, it sounds like this.

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0:01:11.5 SP: Which sounds good, it's strong, it's powerful.

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0:01:15.1 SP: If I wanted to add a little more depth or power to it, I get to add a grace note.

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0:01:22.6 SP: But that doesn't really give me the power that I was looking for when I'm doing one of these hits. So after playing the muted A, if you've never heard of a muted A, it's when you play your A and you add these three keys here.

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0:01:38.2 SP: When you do that, you can get a lot of power on that A from the muted fingering, the D3 fingering. So it's like this.

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0:01:46.8 SP: I really like that sound and how much more power it gave me, so I figured out a way to add that sound on to other notes, now pretty much any note above a high A. So here's what it sounds like if I just do a thwap on the high D.

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THE THWAP FINGERING

0:02:03.8 SP: So you can hear there's like that thwap sound in front of it, and then you hear the power of the D. Now, all I'm doing is I'm fingering a middle D, So I'm fingering 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. And right before I go into the high D, I finger that, and I play the high D. So I just catch the very edge of the middle D before I go into the palm key D. So it's kind of like playing a grace note, but just the very end of the grace note, and the grace note is a low D, so it's giving me that big interval jump and give me a big powerful thwap sound at the end of it.

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0:02:43.9 SP: And it sounds even better if you do a fall afterwards.

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0:02:50.7 SP: Now you can do that on pretty much any high note, anything above A, so I can do it on a C sharp.

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0:03:00.5 SP: Now, when you're using that thwap sound again, it's to add power to a single note, usually you're not gonna thwap a note and hold it.

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0:03:08.1 SP: 'Cause that sounds weird, but if you're doing a horn hit or you're taking a solo and you just want one really big stabbing and jabbing note, a thwap is a really great way to do it.

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0:03:26.5 SP: That thwap takes it to a whole different level.

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0:03:38.4 SP: The thwap articulation, super cool articulation, and I haven't really heard any other saxophone players use that type of articulation. The saxophone world is a giant world and I haven't heard everyone, so I'm sure someone else has come up with something similar, so if you have heard another saxophone player use that type of articulation, leave their name and a comment below. I'm curious to see if there are other saxophone players out there doing it. Now, a lot of people use the muffled A.

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0:04:03.6 SP: And Gerald Albright does this super cool thing that's very similar on a front F.

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0:04:09.4 SP: But that's a little bit different, super cool sound, but it's a little bit different technique than the thwap A. By the way, if you'd like me to do a tutorial on how to do that Gerald Albright front F, hit me with a comment below. If enough people wanna hear it, I'll do a two-minute tutorial on it,

So that is the first pro-level articulation I'm gonna show you today, the thwap hit note.

SCOTT PADDOCK SAX SCHOOL

If you'd like to learn a lot more about adding style into your saxophone playing through the use of articulations or just getting better at playing the saxophone, in general, I'd like to invite you into my saxophone world at the Scott Paddock Sax School, where I will teach you step-by step how to become a better saxophone player.

STUTTER STEP

0:04:44.8 SP: Pro-level articulation number two. This one is on the exact opposite end of the articulation spectrum from the thwap. This is more of a medium swing, a laidback articulation, and I call it the Stutter Step. Now with the stutter step, I'm just putting a little space in between the notes by doing a little fingering thing on my saxophone, so first I'm gonna play it so you can hear what it sounds like, and then I'm gonna tell you how to do it.

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0:05:17.6 SP: Now, I would never do the stutter step that many times in a row, but I want you to hear what it is. What I'm doing is I'm putting a false fingering in between every note just before I'm gonna play the note, so I get like a Badi into that note, Badi meaning the sound that I'm getting. So I'm getting Badi, Badi, Badi into the note that I'm playing.

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0:05:41.6 SP: Again, I would never play it that many times in a row, but I would use this articulation if I was playing a melody or a playing a solo, and I just wanted to get a little bit more bounce in the line, and it's one of those articulations that when you play it, and most people don't hear exactly what you're doing, but they can hear that the notes sound different and there's a little bounce on it, even if another saxophone player hears you do it, they might not know exactly what you're doing.

0:06:05.5 SP: So the way you do it is actually pretty easy, you just lift your front finger in between, so you're creating a false fingering when you do it, and it only works for your right-hand notes so F sharp, E, and D. So I'm gonna stand up so you can see my hands a little better. And I'm gonna do the stutter step articulation.

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0:06:26.0 SP: Watch this finger right here.

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0:06:33.0 SP: So what I'm doing in slow motion is, again, I'm lifting this finger and it's giving me a false fingering kind of a ferp sound in between each note, but it's so short that you don't really hear the sound, you just hear the space. So here it is in slow motion.

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0:06:49.1 SP: And sped up.

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0:06:56.3 SP: So here is how I would use it in context.

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0:07:03.3 SP: Did you hear all of those stutter steps in the melody?

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0:07:10.0 SP: Now, if I was playing that melody for real in a performance, I wouldn't put that many of them in a row. I usually do one or two at a time, but I want you to hear what the effect is on the notes when I use the stutter step articulation, so if you wanna put a little extra style and a medium swing solo or a medium swing melody, use the stutter step articulation, where your gonna add like a little extra bounce and a little something on the note that isn't really obvious, but again, adds a whole bunch of style.

0:07:35.4 SP: And this isn't something that a ton of people use, so I can't tell you how many times I played that in a lesson, and the student who heard me play it said, "How did you make that sound?" So it's one of those articulations that's a little less common, but if you use it correctly, it can be super cool.

WRAP UP

Thanks for taking the time to check out this video and if you want some more tips and tricks and some structure and learning how to play the saxophone, come visit me at the Scott Paddock Sax School. Thanks a lot.

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ADDITIONAL LINKS

www.scottpaddock.com

Scott Paddock Sax YouTube Channel

YouTube video link.

Instagram: @scottpaddocksax

Scott Paddock Sax School