Hi folks! I'm Pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson from get your sax together dot com.
In this video we're going to cover part two of my complete beginners guide to
assembling your saxophone.
in part one we covered how to safely and correctly
assemble the neck and mouthpiece mechanism and you'll find a link for
that video up there somewhere on the card... in this second part we're
gonna cover how to connect the neck of the instrument to the body
and how to use your neck strap correctly, so let's do it!!
Right the first thing we want to do is find your neck strap which is going to
look something like this and as you would expect you just pop it round your
neck and you can adjust how long the neck strap is with this adjuster on the
front. So just hold the clip and then you can move it up and down. So just before
we move on there are different types of neck strap. Yours might look a bit more
like this, a kind of skinny one, or what I use is a harness which looks like...THIS.
So this harness is what I prefer to use as the weight of the instrument is taken
on your shoulders and not your neck and you can sometimes get quite a sore neck
after a while with a regular neck strap. Once you have your neck strap on we're
going to pick up the saxophone, making sure you pick up the saxophone by the
bell and not these keys because they could get damaged quite easily, so pick
up the sax by the bell and then all you're gonna do is take your neck strap
and clip it into the hoop on the back of the instrument making sure you don't
connect it to these keys by accident. There should be a definite hook and that
is where you put the clip of your neck strap and then the saxophone is safely
harnessed round your neck while we go and put the other bit in.
So, with the body of
the instrument safely attached to your neck strap we go to the final stage,
which is putting the neck into the instrument. One thing to look out for
when you take your saxophone out the case is that the top of the body will often
have a cap to protect this small key - or, in
my case, a champagne cork...
so you'll see that there is a thumb screw on the
right-hand side of most saxophones - not to be confused with the one on the left
which some saxophones have and how that's to put a very small music
stand-in for marching bands - you won't need to worry about that. Most of the
screws that control the neck will be on the right-hand side, so just slacken it a
little bit and then take the neck being careful not to damage these keys again,
and gently slide it in. When you've got your neck into the body of the
instrument try and make sure that the small key sticking up from the body is
around about the middle of the curved piece of the key on the crook - and when
you're safely in just gently tighten up that screw. Just like the ligature you
don't want to overdo it but just make it firm so the neck doesn't wobble about
and move. And there we have it - your fully assembled saxophone!!
Okay let's
have a little reminder of the steps we need to do one more time. N
umber - one put
your neck strap around your neck. Number two - pick up your saxophone by the bell
and connect your neck strap to the loop on the back. Number three - slightly loosen
the screw on the right hand side at the top of the body.
Number four - gently insert the neck into the main body and gently tighten up the
screw on the right hand side.
So congratulations you've now got your
saxophone successfully assembled and you're ready to make a noise, and THAT is
what we're going to cover in part three of my beginners series, and you'll find a
card for that up there somewhere...
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you next time on get your sax together dot com!