Join together, learn together, play together!
Residential Jazz Saxophone weekend courses for a wide range of abilities
Here at Sax Weekends we know what it’s like to be consumed by a passion and to struggle, often by ourselves, to get what’s in our heads out through our fingers!
Lessons are great but can be expensive and slow. The internet is a wonderful resource, but can be so impersonal, and really overwhelming (what should I be doing with the Locrian mode again?) We don’t know what we’d do without backing tracks or Band-in-a-box, but by ourselves it’s so easy to get stuck in a rut and just play what we know. Sax Weekends has been designed to address all of these challenges, create breakthroughs in our learning and experience, boost our motivation, turbo-charge our playing and send us back to the practice room or the stage inspired to build on our new skills!
“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And Then, when you finally get up on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail”
Charlie Parker
We do this through a combination of residential teaching weekends, and tailored support from tutors and peers. We’re starting by focusing those that are already playing but are looking to take a big step forwards. These are our “Developers”.
These sessions cover off the basics but then build technique and vocabulary, developing new skills and understanding. We then bring it all together through playing.
Next we’ll be standing up our sessions for more advanced players, who we’re calling “Voyagers”.
We’re also interested in hearing from anyone at the beginning on their Saxophone journey. 1 million people took up an instrument in lockdown, and Sax was the second most popular instrument. If you’d like to talk about how you could accelerate getting started on the Sax, contact us.
To get the most from one of our courses you need to be playing with people of a similar level to yourself and to be focussing on skills that are appropriate for your stage of development. So where do you fit, and which courses are best for you? We recognise that sax-playing is a journey, and so we’ve steered clear of the usual definitions. Have a read of these and if you’re still not sure hit the Contact Us button below to get in touch, and we’ll point you in the right direction. Also if you’re a beginner and you’re wondering if we can help, again hit the Contact Us button and we’ll get back to you.
Perhaps you’re early in your journey. You’ve had some lessons, you can read music, and you’ve got a grasp of the basic major and minor scales. What you need is to put your knowledge to the test and to see where there are gaps that you can fill to take your playing to the next level!
Or maybe you’ve played in the past and are coming back to it. You may have played quite a bit in the past your skills are rusty and you’re looking to sharpen them up again. Or perhaps you’ve been playing for a while and you’re struggling to make a breakthrough.
You understand some of the theory behind what you’re doing but you want to take it to the next level and get your playing sounding natural and melodic. You may have some experience playing with others and perhaps even a little improvising, but you want to build your skills and your confidence
You’ve been playing for a while, and you’ve got the basics covered. You have a good grip of the theory, and a solid grasp of the building blocks. You’re comfortable playing and have some experience improvising and/or playing live with a band. You’re looking to take your skills to the next level and broaden your playing style, tackle new challenges and develop a broader language.
You might be looking to broaden the styles of music that you’re playing, add to your repertoire, or bring greater sophistication and variety into your playing. You might have some new performance challenges and you’re looking for the chance to build skills and capability to meet them
Sax Weekends is a new idea for Saxophone education, and we’d love you to be part of it right up front. This will help us build courses that are most relevant to the needs of all of our players in each category. We’re offering a discount for all courses booked in the first half of 2022 for players that would be happy for us to gather detailed feedback to shape our future courses. Please use the Contact Us button, and send us a message quoting “B Sharp” (yes, we know….) in the heading, and we’ll be in touch.