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Ever since I first started doubling on woodwind instruments other than the saxophone, my goal has been clear: I want to be a saxophonist, and a clarinetist, and a flautist. I don’t want anyone to immediately be able to tell which instrument was my first.

It’s become more and more obvious that, even if I had nothing to do all day but practice (how sweet it would be!), there are simply not enough hours in a day to do each instrument justice. There needs to be a carefully choreographed rotation that allows a multi-instrumentalist to gain skill on his or her individual instruments while simultaneously maintaining all the others.

I wish I could say that I’ve found the perfect routine to offer you, but the truth is that woodwind doubling is a complicated problem and it will take more time to experiment. That being said, I have put some thought into how such a routine might work.

Time Commitment

How much time can you devote to practicing? Despite having quite a busy schedule myself, I optimistically gave myself 4 hours per day. Don’t worry if you have more or less time–as you’ll see later, how you divide your time and practicing daily are more important.

Instruments

How many instruments are you currently working on? If I include all voices of my woodwind doubles (soprano sax, alto sax, etc.), I’ve got a total of 8 that I own and can consistently practice. Occasionally I’ll borrow or rent an instrument for a show and that one becomes my highest priority.

Balancing Time

How will you allocate time to each instrument? Splitting my 4 hours evenly, that would give me 30 minutes on each instrument, which hardly leaves enough time to even set up each instrument, let alone make any progress on them. I decided to treat one instrument as the Primary Instrument and two others as Secondary Instruments. I practice the Primary Instrument for 2 hours every day for at least one month. Then I play the Secondary Instruments for 1 hour per day each, rotating them out every four days (the third day of Secondary A is the first day of Secondary B, and vice versa).

Balancing Material

What will you spend your time practicing on each instrument? I found that as I rotate through instruments, I have a tendency to always start with major scales, and worse, to start on each instrument’s C Major! Not only is that method incredibly boring, but also leaves many other skills rusty. To counteract this, I wrote up a “menu” of technical exercises and other skills, and numbered them. Then I can start each instrument in a different place on the menu and just go down the list on each rotation.

Growing Skills

How will you go beyond maintaining your skills and grow new ones? It’s easy as someone who has played saxophone for two decades to get complacent and think that I no longer need help improving my musical skills. Some of the world’s best musicians, however, continue to take lessons to challenge themselves for their entire professional lives. With this in mind, I would do all of the technical practice from the previous section on the Primary Instrument, while also working with a private instructor to come up with challenging and exciting goals.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. This is very much a work in progress, and if you have any ideas or have had any success using this woodwind doubling routine or other methods, I would love to hear about them!

For now, I’ll sum it up. Practice three instruments for a total of 4 hours per day. Spend twice as much time on the Primary Instrument as the others, and practice every day for one month with private instruction. Play each of the Secondary Instruments for 1 hour, maintaining fundamental skills and rotating every 4 days. Review skills evenly by going through a list of goals, and gain skills on the Primary Instrument by setting a larger, more ambitious goal.

Please let me know what you think by commenting below or reaching out on social media!

Happy practicing!

After a long period of practicing much less than I would have liked, I now have more free time than I know what to do with. I’ve been spending that time, among other things, thinking about my practice routine and whether or not there are more efficient ways to achieve my goals. The question I keep asking myself is, “How do I keep my technical practice interesting and effective?”

I recently watched a James Galway masterclass during which he suggests to the students that they become as fluent as possible with their technical exercises by focusing on only keys that are prominently featured in the repertoire. That reminded me of my former teacher and jazz great, Greg Fishman, who would rotate the tunes that he was working on through all 12 keys.

Previously, I had always tried to do mountains of technical exercises in every key, every day. Needless to say, this was unsustainable, as well as being totally inefficient. Perhaps focusing not only on one key at a time, but varying the style and difficulty of the exercises, would help me to be able to do the things that I want to be able to do with my instrument.

Although one of the core ideas is that practice changes slightly from day to day, here is a basic routine that I have come up with so far:

“Bouncing” exercises

Start on the lowest possible note of the scale that you’re working on. Go up by one note and then return to the starting note. Continue adding notes in this fashion until you reach the top of the range. (For alto sax F Major, it would look like this: Bb-C-Bb-C-D-C-Bb etc.) Then, do the opposite starting from the highest note.

“Sweeping” exercises

Starting on the root of the scale, play three, five or nine notes up the scale and then return to the starting note. Repeat until you’ve covered the whole range.

Diatonic Triads and Seventh Chords

Play the chords, either triads or seventh chords, built off of each of the notes of the scale. Do this both all ascending / descending, and alternating between each chord. Complete the full range of the instrument.

Intervals

Play all of the diatonic intervals building off the scale degrees from thirds to sevenths. This is a very common exercise, especially if you are in a college studio.

Common Chord Progressions

Improvise through common chord progressions in the key, like VI-ii-V-I. It can be helpful to play only roots and fifths of the chords at first until you can hear where the harmony is going.

Full-Range Scale

Play the scale normally, starting on the root. Go to the highest possible note, then to the lowest possible note, and finally, return to the root.

*See an image of my practice journal with these exercises here.

How many of these I actually get through on a given day usually depends on how much time I have or what I feel like working on. That being said, on days when I do get through the whole list, I only do them in one key and it usually only takes me about an hour. And, this maybe heresy, but I only use a metronome when I know an exercise very, very well. My reason for this is that unless I can confidently play something without mistakes, I’d rather focus on my consistency and understanding of the material than how fast I can sloppily get through it.

What are some novel practice ideas that you’re currently trying out? What techniques have worked for you for a long time? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Practicing!