Abracadabra Saxophone (Pupil's book): The way to learn through songs and tunes (Abracadabra Woodwind)

This is really the saxophone equivalent of the Hal Leonard Guitar book which I reviewed a short time ago. My son decided to take up the instrument when he got to secondary school and this was the book recommended by his tutor. Though perhaps not as clear as the guitar book in terms of layout, it's still a fine and effective teaching resource as a support tool for practice and development between individual or group lessons, though perhaps less suitable as a 'teach yourself' manual. My son has been at it now for nine weeks or so and he finds the structure of the book very simple to use and easy to understand and the instructions clear to follow. Like the guitar book, it allows the student to play actual tunes from the very start, meaning the child (and you!) can hear progress from the start. The price makes it good value for money - we didn't get the version with the CD and our boy's teacher thought that was the better way of approaching the early weeks. But I'd certainly recommend it for anyone who would like an additional source of tution support.

Great book for someone who has never picked up the saxophone before. As a saxophone teacher, I have been using this for years with all my students and would recommend to anyone starting off. It has a wide selection of songs and duets, getting increasing harder towards the end. The CD backing tracks are also very useful and make the experience much more enjoyable!

This is pretty good. My teacher tells me that the third edition is a considerable improvement over past editions - the songs are more complete. There are some nice duets (and one or two trios), and most of the tunes will be well-known - making picking them up quite a bit easier. It is a basic book. It starts with 'B'. I didn't know you could write a whole song just using the note 'B', but there you go. Exercise three has two notes! B and...A! O.k., I skipped those pages. But it's o.k. - it displays the fingering for each new note, it includes alternate fingerings where appropriate and supplies exercises to practice the alt fingerings. By exercise 107, you'll be playing 'American Patrol' and exercise 125 gets into Lennon and McCartney territory. Finally, at the back of the book are Scales and Arpeggios for grades 1, 2 and 3 and then a few piano accompaniments. No CD with it - but I can't say I missed that because, although the book is designed for alto sax, I am using it for soprano, so I'd have to transpose everything. One thing I rather liked is that it generally progresses by fingering, rather than by key. So, that means you learn a new note and immediately get stuck into something in three or four sharps, meaning that you don't get a chance to get 'hung up' about multi-sharp or flat key signatures. It's a good start. You probably could use it to teach yourself, but it's more fun with a teacher playing the second parts and, of course, if you teach yourself, you can unwittingly fall into bad habits that get quite difficult to break later on. Also, in places it encourages you to improvise and, again, that makes more sense if someone is taking the main theme.

Used item with a very good condition and fast shipment, thanks!

As an adult beginner, I was a little wary that this would be aimed at a younger audience. And plenty of the songs are, but there are plenty of tunes that are fine for adults to be heard playing too!

I bought this about seven months ago on the recommendation of my sax tutor when I bought my first alto sax. I've pretty much completed it now and it made learning the sax surprisingly easy. New music notation, notes and keys are added in stages, and the cd is useful when the timing is more complicated. The only (very minor) negative point is that some of the tunes seem to be misplaced in the book i.e. easy tunes nearer the end of the book and a few very fast ones at the beginning. I used the cd sometimes with the abysm speed shifter to I could get to grips with the fast/ complex tunes before increasing the speed.

Excellent book for beginners

My daughter has found the book really useful and learnt so much from it already. She has never played the saxophone before and has only started taking lessons at school. Great book for saxophone beginners

Good selection for the beginning to advanced beginning sax player.

Great Book!!