Reddit reviews A Complete Approach to Overtones: Vivid Tone and Extended Range

Long tones. Overtones. Transcribing. Patience and perseverance.



For TONE, if you're on your own, I'd recommend using "A Complete Approach to Sound for the Modern Saxophonist". It takes the best of classic books like Rascher's "Top Tones", as well as adds its own exercises, but above all explains everything very clearly - that makes it easier to follow if you're practicing without guidance.

You can download demonstration sound clips of some of the exercises [HERE](http://www.benbrittonjazz.com/completeapproach/Complete%20Approach%20Sound%20Clips%20(Demonstrated%20on%20Tenor%20Saxophone\).zip "20MB zip file!!").

Ben Britton also wrote a follow up book for more advanced overtone exercises: A Complete Approach to Overtones: Vivid Tone and Extended Range.



BUT, "sound" is not just about "tone", it's also about articulation and time feel. You can have the most mind blowing harmonic approach and tone, if your time feel and articulation isn't solid, you will always sound like an amateur. A few things to work on to develop good time and articulation:

• make your metronome your new best friend
  
• slow scale practice with mixed articulation (fundamentals never stop being cool...)
  
• transcribing and focusing on imitating articulation and time feel. Coltrane and Rollins had radically different approaches for example. Transcribe both guys and find out why and how.
  
  One of the best exercises for developing a solid time feel is to play bass lines on the saxophone. After all, if you can't play quarter notes with a solid time feel, with that forward momentum a good bassist has, how can you expect smaller subdivisions to sound better? It's also a fantastic voice leading exercise, and makes refreshing or learning tunes efficient and entertaining. I'd explain more of the concept, but I got it from a Will Vinson video lesson so I'm not sure it would be cool. This and the other lesson on melodic improvisation are well worth the price IMO (less than the price of a box of reeds...).

You should get "A Complete Approach To Overtones" by Ben Britton. Here's a sample with the table of contents and there's a review HERE and HERE - I particularly like when the author of the latter says:

>the exercises in this book actually make sense

Honestly, it's much more user friendly than "Top Tones" yet thorough and systematic - and quite challenging. I don't think I'll need another book on OT anytime soon.

The guy's other book is also worthy of getting although it doesn't focus just on overtones: A Complete Approach to Sound for the Modern Saxophonist. Some great reviews if you google it.