Playing your saxophone in tune with others in your band requires much more than simply playing a reference note into a tuner and adjusting the mouthpiece on the instrument. In order to really understand the tuning process and how best to tune your saxophone it helps to know the physics behind the sound that you produce while playing. When we are talking about physics and the saxophone we are dealing in the realm of invisible vibrations called sound waves.
To better understand these sound waves it helps to think about a guitar string. When you pluck a note on a guitar the string vibrates at a specific rate or frequency. The length of this string dictates what frequency the string will vibrate at. By moving your finger up and down the fretboard you can change the pitch to any of a dozen or so pitches. Now think about a fretless guitar. Instead of a dozen pitches you could potentially have hundreds of pitches, each very slightly different that the other. Saxphones behave in this same way but use a vibrating column of air instead of a vibrating string.
When you add or subtract fingers on the saxophone you are changing the overall length of the tube, creating shorter...
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