1. **Glider skills**/electronic-wind-instrument/electric-saxophone-ewi.html
- **Understand the principle of glissando**
- Glider refers to the technique of smoothly transitioning the pitch from one note to another during the performance. In the electric blowpipe, glissando is mainly achieved in two ways: one is to change the pitch by sliding the fingers on the keys; the other is to use the gradual change of breath to control the continuous change of pitch. For example, when sliding from a lower note to a higher note, it can be achieved by gradually opening the higher-position keys with the fingers, or gradually strengthening the breath.
- **Finger glissando practice**
- Start with simple glissando of the same degree, that is, sliding the fingers on the same key. For example, on a key of the electric blowpipe, after gently pressing it, slide your fingers slightly left and right or up and down to feel the slight change in pitch. Then practice glissando between adjacent notes. First, choose two notes that are close to each other, such as a semitone or a minor third interval, and slowly slide your fingers from the key of one note to the key of another note. Pay attention to keeping the pitch transition smooth and avoid pitch jumps or interruptions.
- During the practice, gradually increase the interval distance and glissando speed. You can strengthen your finger glissando skills through some simple exercises, such as adding glissando effects between adjacent notes based on the melody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". For example, slide from "1" to "2", from "3" to "4", etc., play repeatedly, so that your fingers gradually become familiar with the glissando movements and rhythms.
- **Breath glissando practice**
- Breath glissando requires more precise control of breath. First, feel the effect of breath intensity changes on pitch through long tone practice. Play a long tone, then slowly increase the breath intensity and observe the rise of the pitch; conversely, slowly reduce the breath intensity and observe the fall of the pitch. After mastering the basic relationship between breath and pitch, practice breath glissando.
- Start with simple breath glissando with rising or falling pitch. For example, after playing a lower note, gradually increase the breath to make the pitch rise smoothly to a higher note. During the practice, pay attention to the uniformity of breath changes to avoid too fast or discontinuous pitch changes. You can also practice with etudes, adding breath glissando in time during the performance to enhance the continuity and expressiveness of the melody.
2. **Tream skills**
- **Understand the way of tremolo**
- There are two main ways to tremolo an electric blowpipe: finger tremolo and breath tremolo. Finger tremolo is to produce fluctuations in pitch by vibrating the keys quickly and regularly with your fingers; breath tremolo is to change the pitch by vibrating the breath regularly. The effects of these two tremolo methods are slightly different. Finger tremolo is relatively flexible and has a clear rhythm, while breath tremolo can better reflect the soft and natural fluctuations of the sound.
- **Finger tremolo practice**
- Start with the tremolo practice of a single finger, choose a key that a finger is responsible for, and vibrate the finger up and down quickly at a uniform speed and strength to produce a tremolo effect. At the beginning, the frequency of the tremolo can be slow, such as vibrating 2-3 times per second, to feel the movement of the fingers and the change of pitch. Then gradually increase the tremolo frequency, while paying attention to maintaining the stability and uniformity of the movement to avoid finger fatigue or loss of control of the movement.
- Practice combined vibrato with multiple fingers, because in actual performance, multiple keys may be vibratoed simultaneously or alternately. For example, when playing some complex melodies, the fingers of the left and right hands need to cooperate to vibrato. Some specially designed vibrato exercises can be used to train the combined vibrato ability of fingers, such as adding vibrato to the scale, playing each note from the bass to the treble, and gradually improving the coordination and flexibility of fingers.
- **Breath vibrato practice**
- Breath vibrato practice requires a stable breath control foundation. In the process of playing long notes, try to control the vibration of breath by regularly contracting and relaxing the abdominal muscles. When starting to practice, you can control the amplitude of breath vibration to be smaller and the frequency to be slower, such as vibrating 1-2 times per second, and feel the soft changes in pitch caused by breath vibration.
- As the practice deepens, gradually increase the amplitude and frequency of breath vibration, but pay attention to maintaining the uniformity and naturalness of pitch fluctuations. You can practice by imitating the breath vibrato effect of some excellent performers. For example, when playing some lyrical slow music, add breath vibrato to make the music more appealing. At the same time, during the practice, you can use a recording device to record your practice process and play it back to better adjust the breath vibrato effect.
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