Review”She Plays like Charlie Parker reincarnated! She smokes!” — Jazz Central Station
“Sue Terry… Superwoman of Jazz.” –Hartford Courant
Pro Sax
Renowned saxophonist “Sweet” Sue Terry has collected 20 top professional saxophonists to describe, and play, the exercises that made them successful in Jazz, Classical, Pop, Broadway and beyond. Each artisan gives you a personal look at how to exercise that may aid you improve your technical capacity as you formulate your own personal sound and style. Included are exercises and tips relating to technique, tone, intonation, musicianship, scales and chords, articulation, ear training, and much more. The two associate CDs integrate even more information, plus each artisan playing examples and solos. Sue Terry is a Yamaha artist.
Many instructors will commend the Selmer S80 mouthpiece to students that have been playing for a little while on the normally cheap mouthpiece that came with their sax when they purchased or rented it. These are normally very cheap plastic ones and a beginner will outgrow them quickly.
Probably the most commended is the Selmer C star, (Selmer C*) because of it’s medium size (opening, see beneath for explanation). It’s been a great deal of years since I’ve played on a Selmer C Star but a beginner moving up to one of these from a cheap one will instantaneously observe a divergence in their sound and the way it feels… a noticeable step up.
Many refer to this as a “step up” mouthpiece. If you’ve been around a saxophone for any amount of time you’ll know that Selmer is one of the top names in the world for their quality saxophones, and yes, mouthpiece’s too.
I’ve always said that your mouthpiece and reed set up is even more essential than your saxophone. Obviously we all look for a finelooking feeling, top quality horn we may afford but as you’re coming up to your pro model you may still have huge success devising your tone with a good mouthpiece… even if you don’t have a great saxophone. The opposite is not true… you can’t play a top quality pro sax with a cheap plastic mouthpiece and get a great sound.
Every mouthpiece manufacturer has a somewhat dissimilar way of categorizing and labeling their mouthpiece sizes and the Selmer mouthpiece measuring scheme uses letters rather of numbers to rate the size of the mouthpiece: Letters A through H… A being the more closed, the smallest distance from the reed to the mouthpiece. H is the most opened.
The C is a medium to medium closed making it a good choice for beginners to get a good, full and warm sound. A closed mouthpiece will give a darker tone and a actually opened one will construct a more glorious tone.
Of course the player may still get dissimilar types of tones from any mouthpiece with the embouchure, reed size, air etc but the mouthpiece may be the divergence in this being easy or hard. The mouthpiece itself is a big part of the overall picture but don’t forget that embouchure, breathing technique, reed type and reed strength and your saxophone all play into it.
And yes, you may get the Selmer S80 for soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxes.
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Most helpful client reviews
23 of 23 persons found the following review helpful.
 Tremendous Book!
By John F. Temmerman
This is fundamentally a book of written and recorded masterclasses by top saxophone players based in New York City. There are a number of magnificent discussions and exercises on varied topics pertaining to saxophone playing: dexterity and speed, articulation, learning scales, changes, tone production, breathing, the overtone series and much, much more.
While I have seen snips of a few of the exercises elsewhere, closely all the exercises have a distinctive spun to them.
There are twenty dissimilar exercise routines or masterclasses, if you will. Each has a written summary of the topic and exercise and then the CD has the player explaning the conception in his or her own voice, most times followed by some phrases played by the player. The nice thing regarding the book and the CD is that they are not an precise copy of each other, so each becomes even more valuable.
I disagree with the other viewer, in that this is not a sequential method book, but a book of respective unsequenced methods. Players could gain by reviewing the entire book, choosing a conception to start out on, explore it long sufficient to master it and move on to the next one.
This would be utile for sax players who have played long sufficient to have a sound concept, some psychological result of perception learning and reasoning of construction of major and minor scales, and a lot of interest in improvising jazz. I think it’s best directed to high school students, even though there may be a few progressed middle school students who could gain from it.
I got a number of utile exercise ideas out of this, and I plan to use this with my high school and innovative middle school students.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
 Not for beginners
By Celso E. Pinheiro
The book is a collection of exercises proposed by dissimilar sax players. Although interesting, they have no connection one with the next and so on. There is only one huge fault on the CD that comes with the book: each sax line is played only once at full speed so it is difficult for the beginner (my case) to follow the music sheet on the book. If it had, like most guitar books have, one line at slow speed and the next at full speed, it would be perfect, saving us beginners a lot of trouble rewinding the CD a large total of times in order to get each lick right.
2 of 3 humans found the following review helpful.
 A waist of money…I’m going to return it.
By kenchappelle
Sorry I waisted my time and cash on this book. After reading a great deal of of the reviews on this book, I thought I’d give it a try. Now, after receiving this piece of garbage, I think the reviewers must have all been friends of Miss Sue Terry. I’m sure she’s a good Saxophonist, but she must stay away from writing (if you want to call it that) books. Sue’s contribution to this book was less than one page. The whole book it is self is very thin, not much to it at all. It may have been a better book if she had of written most of the content herself. Most of the featured artists wrote more in regards to themselves as to who they’ve played with and studied with, than giving us something we may use. Most of the Artists only wrote when it comes to 5 lines on a single page and showed us a lot of simple scale or patterns, we’ve all seen before. Nothing is talked regarding here in any outstanding detail. You may find much more and far better selective information on the Internet for free than in this book.
If you want a good book on tips for playing and practising the saxophone, check out: 101 Saxophone Tips…Stuff All The Pros Know And Use. By Eric J. Morones
101 Saxophone Tips: Stuff All the Pros Know and Use (Sax Instruction)
It was of a good deal of value and had a lot of good tips. Something we sax players are always looking for. He also has a good list of “high-note fingerings” a good deal of that I had never seen before and worked very well.
Hope I may save a lot of fellow sax players out there of a good deal of disappointment.
I likewise found Greg Fishman’s Etude books 1-3 and his Jazz Phrasing books by far the most utile out there to get you playing real jazz from your horn in no time.
Jazz Phrasing for Saxophone, Volume 1 (previously titled Jazz Phrasing for Beginners)
Jazz Saxophone Etudes, Vol. 3 (Book & CDs)
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