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micahaphone wrote:Glad to help another musician! Go forth and spread the gospel of the jazz!

One thing you should know:
As previously mentioned, all saxophones have the same fingerings (which buttons you push to make what notes come out). However, this is accomplished by having the saxophones in different keys. For example, the alto you'll buy will most likely be in the key of Eflat. The Tenor saxophone is in the key of Bflat. So while the G(not sure if this is the right note) of an alto will be concert Bflat (the common tuning pitch here in the USA), the Bflat of the tenor sax will be the Bflat concert key. Basically, the C of a tenor is the same as the Bflat of a piano, or a violin. Because of this, when you switch over, the instrument will sound a little odd.

Also, when you switch, you just need to get used to a bigger mouthpiece and using up much more air. It took me around 2 weeks to get used to using that much air, but other than that, it's easy to switch.

yeah, I figured that out while surfing the net. But, thanks!

Otherwise, I thought we were talking about saxophones, and not about acooustic guitars.

Oh, and I can't believe that I forgot to mention this before, but one of the more important pieces of equipment is a neckstrap. It looks like a thick, padded lanyard. It clips onto the saxophone and holds on to it so your thumbs don't fall off when you try to hold it. I would suggest getting one with a spring-loaded clip if possible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And another piece of advice for learning how to play music: if you don't have experience with musical notation, the sharps and flats may seem kind of confusing. For example, G sharp is the same as A flat. The easiest way to understand this is to look at a piano's keyboard. The white keys are the regular notes (C,D,E,F,G,A,B), and the black keys are the sharps and flats. So there is only one black key between G and A, and that key is both G sharp and A flat. It's just two different ways of saying the same note. And there extra confusing part is that B sharp is just C (and so C flat is just B), and E sharp is just F (and F flat is just E). I don't expect you to run into those for a long time, but just thought you should know.
You might be asking "Why have multiple ways of saying the same note?" It's to keep the sheet paper clean. For example, if you're supposed to play a row of A notes with an A sharp in the middle, instead of writing a sharp symbol, then a natural symbol in front of the next note, they'll just put in a B flat.

The saxophone is a fairly easy instrument to learn(compared to some other instruments), and it's very rewarding. Practice well, and you'll soon enjoy yourself. I just had an improv solo up on stage, and I was very nervous. I just went with the flow and played what I wanted to play, and it went great. I had many people afterwards congratulating me. I had to practice for a long time to get good with the scale, but when the concert came, I was able to play my heart out.