You need to learn how to play in the altissimo, and I don’t mean the occasional heroic squeal at the end of your frenzied solo. Start now, basing your altissimo study on your progress at tone matching above. You may have inadvertently squawked into the altissimo already. At the end of this book are some of the altissimo fingerings I use, but there are usually several more fingerings that work for each note, and they can also vary with each player, instrument, or musical situation. The seminal work for altissimo is Sigurd Rascher’s Top Tones for Saxophone. It is still in print, and every saxophonist should own a copy. There are several other excellent works on the topic, by the authors listed below:
Larry Teal, The Art of Saxophone Playing
Rosemary Lang, Beginning Studies in the Altissimo Register
Ted Nash, Ted Nash’s Studies in High Harmonics
Rheuben Allen / Dan Higgins
Donald Sinta, “Voicing” An Approach the Saxophone’s Third Register
Many students can’t find a starting point for altissimo, no matter what fingering they try, or how many hundreds of pounds of jaw-clamping pressure they put on the reed. First of all, know that altissimo has little to do with jaw pressure and everything to do with oral cavity position. Altissimo is playing the saxophone as if you are playing a bugle, finding the harmonics that are present and accessible on every note on the instrument.
Begin by trying a few altissimo fingerings and see what comes out. At this point there is no such thing as a wrong note. Experiment, explore, play. Make funny noises. Try to squeal, or squeak with no thought about what is correct, or proper. Try to sustain these piercing tones while paying attention to how your embouchure and oral cavity feel.
Please be sure that anyone you truly care about is miles away while all this is going on. Don’t do this in an apartment, or in any metropolitan area for that matter. Years ago, when the University’s practice rooms were dangerously close to the housing for DU’s law students, I made this assignment to a young saxophonist, as a joke instructing him to persist until he received a complaint from the neighbors. He burst into his next week’s lesson exclaiming, “It was great! I kept going until this lawyer was pounding on my door, screaming for me to stop!” Mission accomplished.