Playing the saxophone isn’t only about the right finger positions and the ability to create a smooth sound. A large part of your ability to play will depend on your so-called musical ear. You need to be able to listen to the subtle differences in intervals, scale degrees and chords, as this will boost your own ability to play them right.

Learn the Scale Degrees

Before ear training can kick off, it is essential you learn about the scale degrees. If you don’t yet know about them, here’s a quick guide to scale degrees:

• Scale degrees are essentially the labels applied to any note, highlighting the position the specific note has in a scale.
• First note in the scale is called the first scale degree, the second the second scale degree and so on.
• In a song, the notes in tonal piece of music come with a scale degree. This allows you to know the scale degree of each note simply by figuring out the key.
• Another term to understand is tonic, which is the first scale degree of a diatonic scale and the tonal centre.

Find the Scale Degrees

The first ear training exercise involves these scale degrees. Take a piece of music and figure out the corresponding scale degree of each note in the song. You can do this first by looking at the music sheet, but eventually you want to start hearing the scale degrees when you listen to music.

Identify the Tonic

Another version is to listen to a song and to identify which of the note in the song is the tonic. When you are listening to a sax song, figure out the tonic and sing it out loud.

Why is the ability to identify the tonic important? Because it allows you to recognise all the other notes and chords in the song. Being able to figure out the tonic will make it a lot easier to play music by ear and you’ll pick out subtle mistakes you make much better.

Before you become confident in figuring out the tonic, it’s a good idea to use your saxophone as a helpful tool. When you think you got the right tonic, play it with the sax to see whether you were right.

Mix it Up

Once you get good at figuring out the tonic, you want to kick the difficulty up a notch. Instead of focusing on the tonic, i.e. the first scale degree, try to find out the second scale degree and so on.

You can take advantage of the backing tracks and saxophone lessons from our website for these above exercises. Furthermore, it is a good idea to start with songs that have a stable tonic. These include:

• Old McDonald
• Somewhere Over the Rainbow
• Oleo
• The Star Wars Theme

So pick your favourite sax songs, turn on the stereo and start listening to some sax magic to improve your playing skills!