How can you tune your high E on the alto sax?

Answer 1

Get a tuner. Play high G. (the first three fingers on your left hand, with the octave key). If the tuner says you are sharp, pull out the mouthpiece a little. if you are flat, push it in. Keep doing it until you get the black line in the middle, and the green light is lighting up on the tuner.

Answer 2

I had this problem for a long time before I figured out how to make it sound better. The simplest solution is to graduate from a student horn to a professional horn, because the intonation is manufactured better in professional horns at the higher and lower ranges and the sound quality is immensely better. However, if you're poor like me, buying a $4k~8k Saxophone isn't really an option without a lot of penny pinching, and by the time you save up it's probably about time to move on to a different piece that doesn't have a high E in it (but that doesn't mean there won't be another one down the road somewhere, and if you're serious about music you should buy one that you love).

High E can be really "poppy" when played, meaning it can easily be a lot louder and a lot sharper than all the other notes you'd play around it, and you'll want a tuner when you practice playing this note. A lot of times E will be so sharp on a student horn that a tuner will register as an F, so as a starting point, whenever you play high E, think the words, "Super Super Flat" and "Super Super Soft", and lip the note down in order to get it even in the same ball park (lipping down notes is pretty much you jutting your lower jaw forward on the reed). I always like to sort of "hear" the note in my ears before playing. When practicing, start by playing a high G and then lip it down to where it's in tune. Once the high G is in tune, move up to a G# and lip it till it's in tune. Then move up to an A, then A#, and so on until you get up to a high E. If you can play it in tune then, then great! If it's close, that'll work too. (The human ear is very fickle, on how it sort of expects high pitches to be a little sharp and low pitches to be a little flat. That's why some band directors tune piccolos to be a little sharper than perfect and tubas to be a little flatter than perfect.) Repeat the excercise several, several times because if you don't repeat it, it'll be hard to replicate the intonation when you're performing.

Always remember to never sacrifice tone quality for the sake of being in tune. It's NEVER worth it to have a perfectly in-tune high E if it sounds like crap. Always use warm, fast air and dark tone quality, and that will probably help with the intonation at the same time.

But after all that work, in the middle of a piece that high E is still going to be about 35~50 cents sharp, and in order for it to not sound horrible, you want it to be around 7~12 cents sharp. If you play a lot of high Es in the piece, you might want to think about tuning your saxophone a little flatter than normal and lip up every other note in the piece. Same is true if the E is surrounded by a bunch of rests -- pull out for the phrase with the E in it, lip the rest of the notes up, and then push back in once that phrase is over. But... that doesn't help with the fact that the note itself is way out of tune.

Oh and: This may go without mention, but I remember in high school one of my bandmates was always severely out of tune for high Eb, E, F, and F#, and later we figured out that she wasn't fingering with the correct side keys. The fingering for high E is the two side keys in your left hand that are closest to your body, and the top side key in your right hand. And if you don't press the right-handed side key all the way down, it makes the note flatter.

Every half-decent saxophonist on the planet will tell you that the saxophone is the coolest instrument ever with one of the crappiest design ideas as far as intonation goes (second worst to Clarinet, in my opinion). Every tone hole on the saxophone has it's own individual idea of what "in tune" means, and the player has to adjust their embouchure for every single note to make the instrument not sound like a chorus of geese in heat. That's another really not-so-fun project you have to do with a tuner, but always remember that the only difference between a professional and an unprofessional sax player is consistency.

That's a really long answer, but I hope it helps. Intonation on a saxophone is a dog to get right, but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Answer 3

as your playing the sax if you have to tune it try pulling the head part out a mcupple inches