About SaxTutor

Simplifying the saxophone since 1995

WHAT IS SAXTUTOR:

TRANSPOSITION, FINGER PLACEMENT, SCALES

A lot of people ask me why I coded SaxTutor and the answer is that it grew from the smallest of ideas. SaxTutor was born back in 1995 when I sat down and decided to draw myself a saxophone fingering chart. It still amazes me when I think about where that simple decision took me.

The first step was easy, I drew a template, and then started to fill it in based upon all the fingerings I knew at the time. I decided also to produce a few graphics so that I could refer to both the sounded note and it's transpositional equivalent. One thing led to another and I decided that I could build a simple database to keep all the special fingerings I learned in one simple place. Like all would-be programmers that didn't really satisfy me. I started to write little bits of code to manipulate the Saxophone key images so that I could make various wall charts for some of the more exotic scales I was learning at the time.

That was when the obvious struck me. I just needed to code a program which would bring up the saxophone finger chart images one at a time relative to the scale I wanted to learn. If I could display an image of the same note played on a keyboard, and also display the note on a stave in both it's transposed and sounded form, then I would be able to crack learning the scales in half the time they were currently taking.

In 1995, after using it myself for a while, I released the first 'complete' version on my personal webspace. I got plenty of feedback on the program (some good, some bad and all of it useful) and I promised myself that I would develop the code outwards to form a more complete 'Saxophone Tutorial Program'

There have been a number of versions of SaxTutor since my that first version including upgrades to 32 bit along the way. Interestingly Sax Tutor has been very stable, the only real changes I have made through the years have reflected the march of technology and changes to the ways that Windows works.

With the introduction of Windows 7, I once again found myself receiving a few messages from people who were struggling with the program because of changes to the way windows installation works. With the introduction of version 6.0 I have upgraded Saxophone Tutor to reliably install on Windows 98, XP, Vista (32 Bit) and Windows 7 & 10 (32 Bit). There are so many things I would still like to include in the program. Items relating to embouchure, mouthpiece control, arpeggios, musical theory, tuning, posture, there are so many possibilities.



If you would like to see something included in a future release please let me know. You can click on the top link to email me, or simply address your message to info@saxtutor.co.uk 
either way I would love to hear from you.


In the meantime welcome to SaxTutor!