How To Play the Saxophone

Recently, I had a saxophone hanging from my neck. I realize this sounds as though I was soaping up in the shower one morning, looked down, and discovered I’d sprouted a brass wind instrument overnight, but this is how I recall it, sans soap and water. I wasn't sure what I was expected to do with it. It was too heavy to wear as a necklace, and couldn’t possibly qualify as a musical instrument if I'm the one blowing into it.

I had a Real Live Musician™ instructing me, so I did as told as best as I could.  I put my fingers on the "pretty ivory colored things"(I'm five in musician years), wet the reed with my lips, and blew. This resulted in a sound usually heard when whales mate, only not quite as sexy. 

I know enough guitar chords to play Bob Dylan songs. On top of that I know two others. I can read music, given the time to point to a note and mouth, "Every Good Boy Does Fine." When I was six, I gave a violin performance at the mall. And last but not least, I share 50% of my DNA with a drummer. I should be able to rock the sax. Right?

Apparently, it's a little more complicated than that. One must properly wet the reed with her tongue, pull her lips around her teeth and apply just the right amount of pressure before she begins to blow. Simultaneously, her fingers must press the right buttons at the right time. The experience  served mostly to make me question my abilities in other areas, but I figured I must have learned something. Those who can't do, teach, yes?

This is a lesson in playing the sax, no musical ability required:

1. Make your lips the shape of kissing something dangerous: a palm tree, an octopus, someone you can never have.

2. Wrap them around the mouthpiece as if keeping something fragile safe in the cave of your mouth: a butterfly, a secret, someone you love enough to have, but no longer want.

3.  Embouchure: The most difficult part is in believing that air has pitch without the application of your vocal cords. Think of the last time you actually made a wish over a cake filled with a number of candles. Think of the wish has having tone. Think of the last time you blew all the fur from a dandelion. It's lower, that note, than a wish. Now think of making fog on a window. This note is almost soprano, but not as much as, say, the air of relief. 

4.  Force: Don't just exhale. Exhale with faith that you no longer need your arms. They are now their own entities, annelid, and can function independent of you. Let go of the handlebars or the reigns or the other things you've lead them to believe are necessary to the survival of your balance. On the contrary, do not blow as you would into a balloon. Attempting to manipulate the shape of a saxophone is an insult. The relationship should be symbiotic. Don’t give up your shape, either.

5.  The remaining instructions are technicalities like, "put your fingers on the pretty-colored ivory things." I know nothing beyond this point except that it must involve naming the lines and interpreting the spaces between them, that sharps and flats are likely involved and this complicates rumored truths like Every Good Boy Does Fine.

6. This has been a lesson in making sound out of air, something out of nothing. If you expected to actually be able to play music, I apologize for misleading you. However, if you are anything like me, you have been wondering what to do should you ever encounter a saxophone in the middle of the road. This is your first chord:

Greet it like a stranger who might one day love you, like a lover you will walk away from once you've become, from yourself, estranged, like a friend you keep by never telling him who you really are.