Fingering for Alto Saxophone

Fingering for Alto Saxophone

Low Fingering

C on a Bb saxophone (tenor/soprano) is a Bb on piano.

C on an Eb saxophone (alto/bari) is Eb on a piano.

C# and Db are enharmonic equivalents – they’re written differently, but sound the same.

D is usually just written as ‘D’, technically it could be E double flat or C double sharp, but generally not.

Low Eb and D# on the saxophone.

E is generally known as ‘E’, but E and F are a half step apart and you’ll occasionally see Fb.

F is also commonly known as ‘F’, occasionally you’ll see it as E#.

Middle Fingering

Low F# has two possible fingerings on saxophone, but the first sounds a lot better.  The other one should only be used if it makes your execution of the music cleaner.  For faster tempos, it becomes more useful and the sound that isn’t quite as good becomes less noticeable.

G on the staff on saxophone is actually one of the easier notes to play.  The whole middle change comes out a little easier than the very low or very high notes.

Ab or G# has a lot of options. There’s the main G# key, but you can use any of those table keys in its place. Makes going between the low notes and G#/Ab a bit easier.

A is known as ‘A’, the notes G double sharp and B double flat would sound the same, but they’re not too common.

Bb on saxophone has a number of possible fingerings.  We tend to favor one or the other, but having faculty over all of them will make your playing more smooth.

B on the staff or ‘middle B’ for saxophone.

When you play ‘C’ on saxophone, on piano it’s Bb for tenor/soprano and Eb for alto/bari.

C# and Db are both commonly written in music.

D can be a bit stuffy on saxophone…. so be aware and sometimes also using the D palm key can help make it more clear.

Adding this one key to go up a half step from D makes Eb a lot less stuffy on saxophone for some reason…..

Just one way to play middle E on saxophone, not exciting alternates here.

High (top of staff and up):

The F top of the staff.  Here’s how to play it on sax.

An octave below the top of the normal range of Saxophone!

G on tenor/soprano is concert F and G on alto/bari is concert Bb – which is often used as a tuning note.

Got a few possibilities here!  But generally the regular one is fine.

A above the staff on sax.

Like an octave below, this Bb on sax has a few possibilities.

B above the staff on sax.  Just one fingering here.

One main fingering and an alternate for C on sax, like an octave below but with the octave key.

One fingering here, only key pressed on the saxophone is the octave key.

The first note on saxophone that uses the palm keys.

The transition from high Eb to high F on sax is difficult to execute cleanly using the regular F fingering with the palm keys, so you usually want to go from Eb to F using the alternate fingering for F.

Dealing with the palm keys can seem uncomfortable, especially at first.  One reason is that we don’t play the extreme ends of the saxophone all that much.  Just practice slowly and things will get better.

Two options, depending on context you pick.  Both sound fine on sax.

Two options for high F# on saxophone.  One uses the ‘high F# key’ and the other doesn’t.  If your saxophone doesn’t have a high F# key…. you’ve got one option, but it works fine, so don’t worry about it.