10 Left-Handed Improvisational Etudes for Saxophone

How (and why?!?) did this all come about? A few years back, during a practice session, I decided to challenge myself by playing ONLY with my left hand. I made a couple of videos and kind of left it at that (no pun intended), but it was always in the back of my mind to go further with it. I had witnessed pianists like Phineas Newborn Jr., and others (as well as numerous classical pianists) play solos with only their left hands and I thought, if they can do it, so can I! I discovered it wasn't quite as easy as it sounded. Cause it sounds kinda easy, right

All of these etudes are improvisations over jazz standards. I played through them a number of times using iReal Pro as the backing track, and once I was ok with what I had played, I transcribed each solo. I changed a few little things here and there to make the etudes a little more clear, or to clean up some of the notes I didn't necessarily mean to play. I absolutely blame my right hand for not helping out more!!

All my books are meant to benefit not only my current students but also the many students I have worked with over the years. I find there are certain fundamental aspects of the saxophone that usually need to be addressed and I have tried to address those various fundamentals in my books.

Playing these particular etudes on saxophone has many benefits. They help in 'voicing' the notes more naturally and consistently. They also help with intonation, phrasing, voice leading, melody, rhythm, time, interval leaps, harmonic and rhythmic displacement, pattern recognition (sight reading), and more.

To play these, you have to relax and sort of let your body take over the process. They aren't easy but they are certainly not unplayable. Most importantly, you're gonna learn some things and they are fun to play! They are not meant to be played too quickly so take your time and really hear the phrases. I always recommend playing things slowly at first, that is to say, REALLY SLOWLY. Getting the lines clean and making them feel as smooth and consistent as possible is the goal.

I first played these on tenor sax so, if you play them on alto be sure to transpose your backing track. You should play along using the iReal Pro app, because that's what I used when I played and recorded these. You can download a recording of me playing each of these etudes (on tenor and alto sax) on my website at www.jeffcoffin.com/lhetudes

You will notice that there are many 'fourth line D' notes in these etudes. For clarity, I am using side D (Palm D). I was tempted to use side Eb (Palm Eb), and altissimo, but avoided both because I felt that doing so would overcomplicate these already complicated etudes.

So here it is, my book of Left-Handed Improvisational Etudes for your educational edification. I truly believe these will help musicians of all levels take their saxophone playing to an entirely new level. I certainly noticed a number of things in my own playing that were helped by doing these. Thanks so much for checking these out and please let me know what you think of them. Peace, JC