Dude, such a great episode. It's funny because when I started playing altissimo in the late 1980's I would just spitball the fingerings. Then I was lucky enough to share the stage with Sanborn and he showed me his fingerings. His comment was "always remember to sound like an opera singer up there". I'll never forget that advice. Be well, Patrick, and thank you.
You know this anoying Thing when you clean from the lower oktav hole? If you take it out (i just did, also took off all the Palmkeys) you can over blow everything and play evry Oktave the same fingerings if you still have it in e and eb and db just dont work! Without a Bigband its crap but on a good day i manage g3 now😊
Thanks for this man. Its amazing of you to give this info for free, taking your own time to edit/record/set up for this kinda stuff. Appreciate you dude!
This summer, I went with some friends to a free Gerald Albright concert, just for something fun to do, and I kid you not, on the ending of the last tune he played he did the *exact same* ascending altissimo line. I don’t remember if it was on Georgia on my Mind, but I remember that blew my mind a bit. I talked to him after the show a little, and what was even crazier to me is he was playing on a Legere 1.5 American Cut. 1.5. And he got wayyy up there.
I use the same position with the same reason: Gerald Albright 😂😂😂 I live in Brazil and at the time I saw this finger charts on cannonball music web site. Is very impressive your fluent on the altissimo and your memory in the solo transcription. Congratulations, man.
Hey I use most of those fingering .. didn't know they're strange lol If you wanna go real high real lazy you can overblow the palmkeys once again. Other consistent fingerings for high e I found are 2+palm eb or 245 and for high f 1346 or yet again overblown fork. thanks for your videos and thanks to Gerald Albright, Marc Russo, Earl Bostic and all the other crazy guys out there getting us hooked on altissimo for high f
Not sure if this is a widely used term, but when I was testing multiphonics fingerings for John Gross, he referred to a concept of 'short' and 'long' fingerings. For multiphonics, it refers to how many pitches you could get by manipulating the venting of the air stream. The further down the horn body you could get the airstream with a fingering, the 'longer' it was. As it pertains to altissimo I think Tivon Pennicott is talking about what Gross would call long fingerings as I have found that venting has a profound impact on altissimo tone. A short fingering is a fingering that gets the desired pitch while using less of the resonating length of the saxophone body. This would be caused by venting the air stream higher up the body of the saxophone. Typically these fingerings are simpler than the long fingerings and are really good for fast passages, but do not pop and can be pretty difficult to control. A long fingering is then a fingering that tries to utilize a greater portion of the saxophone by maintaining pitch but preventing venting and getting the air column to travel further down the horn. So Patrick's altissimo A. The 23 fingering is a short fingering, the 23|456 eb is a long fingering. It's not always the case that the short fingering is simpler, I would say palm F is a short fingering and front F is a long fingering.
For your first G# fingering, you can also add the actual G# key for stabilization. It's *NOT* ergonomic by any means, but if you need to land on it or hit it real quick, that could help a lot!!
Damn! Thank you for sharing! I’m a clarinet main and saxophone doubler. I’ve got a few “false” fingerings for some altissimo notes that work on my alto. Can’t wait to try out some of the ones you like. Thank you 🙏 🙏🙏💚💚💚💚💚
The way you discovered upper altissimo sounds similar to how I figured it out in high school too. The recording that was a revelation to me was the 4th CD from the Cowboy Bebop limited edition set, the live Seatbelts concert. It became an obsession to me and that was about 20 years ago. Wasn't nearly as easy to find answers back then.
Hey, man, this is a very good lesson for alternative altissimo fingerings because it's a difficult subject and some of my students find it difficult to produce these sounds with the conventional fingerings. Thanks.
Man, I first have to say I've been an absolute fan since I first found you. You are carrying the tradition in a way that inspires in every way! So I actually feel silly to mention this, but I found it years ago when trying to cop the "Christie Lee" solo from Billy Joel. Try either 2|2 Eb or 3|3 Eb for that high E. Both are stable depending on the horn. Or overblow that B (palm D) fingering another 4th. But man, take that for whatever it's worth. You have re-inspired me; PLEASE continue to do what you do.
The palm keys are exactly how I learned my high altissimo fingerings! Sirvalorsax mentioned in a video I watched years ago that he preferred voicing the horn as close to the harmonic series as possible to simplify his finger technique, and it seemed pretty intuitive to me coming from clarinet. My only gripe is that my yanagisawa doesn’t like them as much as I do 🙄 After I began dating a vocalist, I realized how closely vowel shaping maps onto wind instrument voicing. Try finding vowel sounds that compare to the different sensations you experience across the range of the horn, that’s how I teach my students and it seems to work great!
That's crazy, I was actually taught these fingerings for the upper altissimo in college. Todd Rewoldt has an altissimo technique book that basically involves overblowing the palm keys up a major 6th for altissimo B-D# (high F# with the high F# key for altissimo D#) and then overblow the palm keys again by a 4th for upper altissimo E-G#. The main difference is that when playing altissimo B, C, E and F you stabilize it with side C, so your kind of sliding between the side C and high E keys.
Great video, Patrick. Got onto you when you did the live interview with Jamie Anderson a few months back. Couldn’t believe your sound. I would say you and Eric Darius are 2 of the greatest sounding alto players in this modern era. As @rayludo1 mentioned, I do what I call double over-blow the palm-keys to get over high E (on tenor) and with some experimenting with the double overblowing palms have even gotten to G and A. On tenor anyways, double over-blowing the palms keys is effortless. I recently switched from alto to tenor and had to relearn the altissimo but started experimenting and using some weird fingerings but getting some great notes. Though as much as I love my tenor, I have to admit that altissimo on alto just sounds better. It’s got more punch! 😊
I have a 95-year-old Martin handcrafted alto saxophone, do you have information on this instrument? Thanks to you, I got to know the new world of Altisimo.
Amazing vid man! Funnily enough I learnt the same B-D fingerings that you use, but I mostly learnt them cuz they felt the most intuitive for me while I was learning. Weirdly enough, I use a similar thing for when I play E up to the second altissimo G I actually find it pretty easy to pitch those by playing a harmonic up again on the palm keys, when you really push the notes out it's easy to mispitch but they're the most stable fingerings I have for that register.
Interesting to see what fingerings you use! I'm 99% sure the recording of Gerald Albright is from his version of "Georgia on my Mind" and I had the same reaction when I first heard it lol
glad to see the fingering diagram generator got a good showing lol. Also great that now you made this you should get asked this less (incl the times I ask).
btw another G# that's more stable is play the 1,3 1,3 g plus side c key and another e to try is take off 2 and 3, just use the right hand of your current fingering.
One that I’ve been wanting to know about: you do something like hitting a palm key to fall onto notes like high B. Idk how to describe it tbh As well as other goofy sounds you make on the sax
It’s so funny that I started playing altissimo last week when i had to transcribe a solo that had a high Bb and was just the note i found would work with overblowing high c# but i thought it was unconventional. I then experimented with the palm keys and got like to altissimo E and thought i’d get scorched for doing so but seeing this one week later makes me really laugh
Awesome video, how often do you do a clean oil adjust or otherwise get your instrument serviced? Sounds great, just wondered what your regimen is like, can definitely make a difference having everything working well when it comes to altissimo, you certainly never seem to be struggling though!
I personally have been trying to learn altissimo through Ben Wendel's "Path to Altissimo" e-book. It goes into some good in-depth information........But I'm still bad at it, lol.
Hey Patrick, how are you? I want know something about your playing. Sometimes do you think in concert or always in alto language (Eb)? Hugs from the south of Brazil.
You mentioned voicing a few times and I really would like to hear your take. Voicing was something I didn't know about (none of my teachers ever mentioned it) until I got married to a clarinet player and started looking into it. Most interested in how you voice for plain altissimo vs your split tone. Also, I use the same overblow 6th fingerings for altissimo myself. They work on tenor just as well for me.
Thank you very much ! Does anyone know how to blow these weird "buzzing" overtones Micheal Brecker used to do in the altissimo ? Is it possible with an alto or it's only for tenor ? I can't say if they are multiphonics or specifics combinaisons of keys and a way of blowing them. Ps: After works, i figured out it might be "half harmonics", such a cracking sound because it's between two notes. For example, if you play high C hearing a G, your sound should crack not "knowing" where he should go. Pretty hard to master, if it's done that way of course.
So i wanna learn altissimo notes but the problem is the sound coming out muffled or smth might be my embouchure but any tips on how to prevent that. I usually get it trying to play an altissimo note from the get go and not going up the chromatic scale. usually on the side palm keys of e and f
It's likely your tongue position/voicing. Also add in the factor of pinching. You could potentially be closing the reed off entirely, not allowing it to vibrate, due to over clamping with your bottom teeth.
TIMESTAMPS (also in description):
0:00 - Play-in Intro
0:16 - Talking Intro
1:50 - JL Woodwind Promo
2:31 - Altissimo Explanation
4:13 - "F#" fingerings
6:07 - "G" Fingerings
10:10 - "G#" Fingerings
12:49 - "A" Fingerings
14:35 - "A#/Bb" Fingerings
15:46 - New Mouthpiece
16:36 - Palm Keys Intro (Beyond Bb)
17:29 - "B" Fingering
19:46 - "C" "C#" and "D" Fingerings
20:56 - Gerald Albright Demonstration
21:46 - "D#/Eb" Fingering
22:54 - "E" Fingering
23:49 - Outro
No way Patrick I use those same palm keys for altissimo that's really funny
Dude, such a great episode. It's funny because when I started playing altissimo in the late 1980's I would just spitball the fingerings. Then I was lucky enough to share the stage with Sanborn and he showed me his fingerings. His comment was "always remember to sound like an opera singer up there". I'll never forget that advice. Be well, Patrick, and thank you.
Oh damn! That's an incredible story. Dave was the first saxophonist I ever saw live 20 years ago. Thank you as always, Andrew!
For the absolut high end, i would check out all the Muskels that have to Do with the Glottis
So homwork read Wikipedia "Glottis" (Stimritze in german)
You know this anoying Thing when you clean from the lower oktav hole?
If you take it out (i just did, also took off all the Palmkeys) you can over blow everything and play evry Oktave the same fingerings if you still have it in e and eb and db just dont work!
Without a Bigband its crap but on a good day i manage g3 now😊
You can get E from overblowing palm D again as well as F from Eb and F# from E 😲🤔
Thanks for this man. Its amazing of you to give this info for free, taking your own time to edit/record/set up for this kinda stuff. Appreciate you dude!
This summer, I went with some friends to a free Gerald Albright concert, just for something fun to do, and I kid you not, on the ending of the last tune he played he did the *exact same* ascending altissimo line. I don’t remember if it was on Georgia on my Mind, but I remember that blew my mind a bit. I talked to him after the show a little, and what was even crazier to me is he was playing on a Legere 1.5 American Cut. 1.5. And he got wayyy up there.
Whaaaat 🤯 ?
That’s crazy 🤯😭
Marc Russo inspired me to get serious about altissimo 😤 This video is just what I needed.
I use the same position with the same reason: Gerald Albright 😂😂😂 I live in Brazil and at the time I saw this finger charts on cannonball music web site. Is very impressive your fluent on the altissimo and your memory in the solo transcription. Congratulations, man.
Hey I use most of those fingering .. didn't know they're strange lol If you wanna go real high real lazy you can overblow the palmkeys once again. Other consistent fingerings for high e I found are 2+palm eb or 245 and for high f 1346 or yet again overblown fork.
thanks for your videos and thanks to Gerald Albright, Marc Russo, Earl Bostic and all the other crazy guys out there getting us hooked on altissimo for high f
Bro I’m so happy rn. I finally hit a high G. Thanks Patrick!
Hi Patrick! This is awesome..I have always been struggling with the change between F# and G. Running to the shed now. Thank you!!
This is so generous of you to share Patrick! Thanks so much!
Great technique and altisdimo, seems to be a fun guy 👏👏🤷♂️
Patrick thanks a lot for the insights, really
Love this. Several years ago by dumb luck I found the high B using the side D key and intuitively just kept going up chromatically.
He makes it look so easy 😭😭😭
i can’t believe it it’s so demeaning 😭
yea, im trying as im watching and it's impossible
With enough time it is easy, it’s all in the repetition
20:19 caught me off guard lol. I was just thinking about Song of Storms when you played it!
you know pat, not all of them worked for me, but i learned a lot of new stuff I can add to my altissimo playing. thank you bro
Great Video Patrick! I plays John's horns too now!
Not sure if this is a widely used term, but when I was testing multiphonics fingerings for John Gross, he referred to a concept of 'short' and 'long' fingerings. For multiphonics, it refers to how many pitches you could get by manipulating the venting of the air stream. The further down the horn body you could get the airstream with a fingering, the 'longer' it was.
As it pertains to altissimo I think Tivon Pennicott is talking about what Gross would call long fingerings as I have found that venting has a profound impact on altissimo tone.
A short fingering is a fingering that gets the desired pitch while using less of the resonating length of the saxophone body. This would be caused by venting the air stream higher up the body of the saxophone. Typically these fingerings are simpler than the long fingerings and are really good for fast passages, but do not pop and can be pretty difficult to control.
A long fingering is then a fingering that tries to utilize a greater portion of the saxophone by maintaining pitch but preventing venting and getting the air column to travel further down the horn.
So Patrick's altissimo A. The 23 fingering is a short fingering, the 23|456 eb is a long fingering.
It's not always the case that the short fingering is simpler, I would say palm F is a short fingering and front F is a long fingering.
For your first G# fingering, you can also add the actual G# key for stabilization. It's *NOT* ergonomic by any means, but if you need to land on it or hit it real quick, that could help a lot!!
Damn! Thank you for sharing! I’m a clarinet main and saxophone doubler. I’ve got a few “false” fingerings for some altissimo notes that work on my alto. Can’t wait to try out some of the ones you like. Thank you 🙏 🙏🙏💚💚💚💚💚
That lick at the end of the AYG intro is so cool
The way you discovered upper altissimo sounds similar to how I figured it out in high school too. The recording that was a revelation to me was the 4th CD from the Cowboy Bebop limited edition set, the live Seatbelts concert. It became an obsession to me and that was about 20 years ago. Wasn't nearly as easy to find answers back then.
Hey, man, this is a very good lesson for alternative altissimo fingerings because it's a difficult subject and some of my students find it difficult to produce these sounds with the conventional fingerings. Thanks.
Bruh!!!! Your stuff just basically makes sense
Man, I first have to say I've been an absolute fan since I first found you. You are carrying the tradition in a way that inspires in every way! So I actually feel silly to mention this, but I found it years ago when trying to cop the "Christie Lee" solo from Billy Joel. Try either 2|2 Eb or 3|3 Eb for that high E. Both are stable depending on the horn. Or overblow that B (palm D) fingering another 4th. But man, take that for whatever it's worth. You have re-inspired me; PLEASE continue to do what you do.
The palm keys are exactly how I learned my high altissimo fingerings! Sirvalorsax mentioned in a video I watched years ago that he preferred voicing the horn as close to the harmonic series as possible to simplify his finger technique, and it seemed pretty intuitive to me coming from clarinet. My only gripe is that my yanagisawa doesn’t like them as much as I do 🙄
After I began dating a vocalist, I realized how closely vowel shaping maps onto wind instrument voicing. Try finding vowel sounds that compare to the different sensations you experience across the range of the horn, that’s how I teach my students and it seems to work great!
That's crazy, I was actually taught these fingerings for the upper altissimo in college. Todd Rewoldt has an altissimo technique book that basically involves overblowing the palm keys up a major 6th for altissimo B-D# (high F# with the high F# key for altissimo D#) and then overblow the palm keys again by a 4th for upper altissimo E-G#. The main difference is that when playing altissimo B, C, E and F you stabilize it with side C, so your kind of sliding between the side C and high E keys.
Great video, Patrick. Got onto you when you did the live interview with Jamie Anderson a few months back. Couldn’t believe your sound. I would say you and Eric Darius are 2 of the greatest sounding alto players in this modern era.
As @rayludo1 mentioned, I do what I call double over-blow the palm-keys to get over high E (on tenor) and with some experimenting with the double overblowing palms have even gotten to G and A. On tenor anyways, double over-blowing the palms keys is effortless. I recently switched from alto to tenor and had to relearn the altissimo but started experimenting and using some weird fingerings but getting some great notes. Though as much as I love my tenor, I have to admit that altissimo on alto just sounds better. It’s got more punch! 😊
I have a 95-year-old Martin handcrafted alto saxophone, do you have information on this instrument?
Thanks to you, I got to know the new world of Altisimo.
This helped me so much - thank you, Pat!
Amazing vid man! Funnily enough I learnt the same B-D fingerings that you use, but I mostly learnt them cuz they felt the most intuitive for me while I was learning. Weirdly enough, I use a similar thing for when I play E up to the second altissimo G I actually find it pretty easy to pitch those by playing a harmonic up again on the palm keys, when you really push the notes out it's easy to mispitch but they're the most stable fingerings I have for that register.
Thank you! Very nice video. Good stuff and good energy. I like that. Very impressive by the way. 🎉❤
YESS NEEDED THIS
Your altissimo is one of my favorite parts of your playing that I can’t get down
Interesting to see what fingerings you use! I'm 99% sure the recording of Gerald Albright is from his version of "Georgia on my Mind" and I had the same reaction when I first heard it lol
thank you sooo muchhhh!!!!!! im checking it out right now
Wait, people don't normally overblow the palm keys? That's what I always use from B till G.
I was literally just hoping for a video like this lmao 💀💀👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾
glad to see the fingering diagram generator got a good showing lol. Also great that now you made this you should get asked this less (incl the times I ask).
btw another G# that's more stable is play the 1,3 1,3 g plus side c key and another e to try is take off 2 and 3, just use the right hand of your current fingering.
Very nice great stuff! and you have so much swing in your speech ,that really reveals the same passion as when you play (sorry for my english)
Excellent
Did I, as a Trumpet player just watch this entire thing? Yes, yes, I did
Great video tons of great tips and just enough chit chat
Great video Pat! Gonna try them!
One that I’ve been wanting to know about: you do something like hitting a palm key to fall onto notes like high B. Idk how to describe it tbh
As well as other goofy sounds you make on the sax
oh my god I was just riding the japanese train and I swear it just squeaked out one of your altissimo notes
F key and high figh sharp key for saxes with a second side f sharp key for a first altissimo g
G#- octave 1345 side c
If Pat was in school band in high school… I can only imagine the faces turned when a freshman was playing altissimo, and *upper* altissimo at that
It’s so funny that I started playing altissimo last week when i had to transcribe a solo that had a high Bb and was just the note i found would work with overblowing high c# but i thought it was unconventional. I then experimented with the palm keys and got like to altissimo E and thought i’d get scorched for doing so but seeing this one week later makes me really laugh
How do you approach tonguing. For example double tonguing and different types of jazz articulations.
Sounding amazing as always! What kind of reed are you using in this video?
Patrick make a video about japan!
Where do you get those hats?? I want one
lol fr
Awesome video, how often do you do a clean oil adjust or otherwise get your instrument serviced? Sounds great, just wondered what your regimen is like, can definitely make a difference having everything working well when it comes to altissimo, you certainly never seem to be struggling though!
I personally have been trying to learn altissimo through Ben Wendel's "Path to Altissimo" e-book. It goes into some good in-depth information........But I'm still bad at it, lol.
Hey Patrick, how are you? I want know something about your playing.
Sometimes do you think in concert or always in alto language (Eb)?
Hugs from the south of Brazil.
You mentioned voicing a few times and I really would like to hear your take. Voicing was something I didn't know about (none of my teachers ever mentioned it) until I got married to a clarinet player and started looking into it. Most interested in how you voice for plain altissimo vs your split tone.
Also, I use the same overblow 6th fingerings for altissimo myself. They work on tenor just as well for me.
please do this for tenor!!!
Thank you very much ! Does anyone know how to blow these weird "buzzing" overtones Micheal Brecker used to do in the altissimo ? Is it possible with an alto or it's only for tenor ? I can't say if they are multiphonics or specifics combinaisons of keys and a way of blowing them.
Ps: After works, i figured out it might be "half harmonics", such a cracking sound because it's between two notes. For example, if you play high C hearing a G, your sound should crack not "knowing" where he should go. Pretty hard to master, if it's done that way of course.
doesn't the bis key stay down without pressing it for your g?
Patrick is my favorite living saxophon player but i wont copy these fingerings
So i wanna learn altissimo notes but the problem is the sound coming out muffled or smth might be my embouchure but any tips on how to prevent that. I usually get it trying to play an altissimo note from the get go and not going up the chromatic scale. usually on the side palm keys of e and f
also might be my mouthpiece cuz that 4c black hard rubber mouthpiece isnt doing justice. Sadly my syos mouthpiece broke
It's likely your tongue position/voicing. Also add in the factor of pinching. You could potentially be closing the reed off entirely, not allowing it to vibrate, due to over clamping with your bottom teeth.
I play altissimo like trumpet d to f# becoms g to b and g a g a g a up to c3
It s fo g major scale
Jesus!
Flute players eat your heart out lol
Them and the piccolo cuz the sax can go above the piccolo in the right hands😂