Reddit reviews Technique of the Saxophone: Scale Studies

I've been critical of Arban's for a while. It's a great catch all and can be a good place to start getting a bit of fundamentals in all the major food groups.... with guidance.

My biggest complaint is how often it's blindly recommended to people. It's honestly not a very good instructional book and definitely not a book you can learn to work out of without a teacher. Those who recommend it (to people just starting in their 20s with no background) often are taking for granted that they know how to use it. Some are just saying "trumpet bible" like some kind of meme and not actually considering the pedagogical value.

This is the exact same problem with Levine's The Jazz Piano Book in the piano world. It's a resource.... not a guide and not for someone trying to teach themselves.

I think Arban's is particularly lacking in flexibility work which is absolutely core. There are some lip slur bits, but there's virtually no partial skipping.

I think multiple tonguing is also petty weak.

I do think a lot of the arpeggio work, and interval work is particularly solid though.

Ultimately, I think everyone should own one, but it should not be their only go-to book. I think there are a lot of books that do much better jobs in specific areas. The Salvo tonguing book; Bai Lin, Irons, and/or Colin for flexibility; Clarke Technical for much more robust technique. Technique of the Saxophone and this book
are vastly better scale books even though neither is explicitly for trumpet and so they probably get overlooked or even actively ignored by most


Now, anyone can argue that you could milk Arban for more and never master it, but at the end of the day, you should work smarter, not harder. Just because it's in there doesn't mean it's practical. There's also a lack of hierarchy expressed in the book. If you really want to get the most out of Arban's, you need to go off the page. This is particularly true in the scale section which is far from exhaustive. There are great ideas, but you need to go beyond the written ranges both up and down. Many exercise (including the scale ones) need to transposed and not just played in the written keys to be maximally beneficial.

If there is an approach that better attacks a particular problem in a very practical way, you should take that rather than spending all of your time trying to master a less useful exercise in Arban's just to check off a box. You could force yourself to learn every scale exercise in Arban's at tempo with all articulation variations and still not be nearly as fluid as you would working out of either of the two non-trumpet scale books I mentioned above, or even just Clarke Technical.

Humans have an inherent bias toward the old, familiar, and dependable. Musicians are probably even worse and end up being staunchly traditional and not only resistant to change, but progress. If you say there's something better than Arban's, people seem to get defensive like it's a personal think to them. It's considered near blasphemy to even suggest it's not that great. Maybe it's that they feel like since they trained with it, it must be the best and don't want to think that maybe they weren't practicing the best material all these years. I grew up with people (and still know plenty) that hated ideas like cell phones and the internet, etc. because it wasn't what they grew up with. That didn't mean it wasn't better, but they were resistant.

There are honestly better books out there. None as comprehensive that I'm aware of, but there are definitely books that cover almost every category in Arban's and do it better. Just because your teacher or your teacher's teacher thinks nothing can never outperform Arban's doesn't mean it's true.

So own one, but don't feel like it's the be-all-end-all of trumpet pedagogy because it's nowhere near it.

If you have the Universal Method for Saxophone, by Paul Deville, that is the Bible. Here are some more suggestions. The Ferling is tough.

The Ten Best Saxophone Books Ever

48 Famous Studies op 31 by Ferling

Technique of the Saxophone: Scale Studies by Joe Viola

The art of Saxophone Playing by Larry Teal

http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Saxophone-Studies-Joseph-Viola/dp/0793554098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323452039&sr=8-1

^^ this is a good book. My teacher has me using it.