Online Saxophone

A cone, a reed and twenty-two keys

A saxophone is a brass cone with a single reed at its narrow end, and every note is a state of that cone: which of its tone holes the keys have closed. The drawing on this page has every key a player uses in the normal range — the six main keys under the fingers, the octave key under the left thumb, three palm keys and the front F, the bis, three side keys and the two pinky tables. Tap a note and it shows exactly which are down.

You can play it two ways. In Notes, tap the note you want and watch the fingering; the strip above the keys marks where the octave key and the palm keys take over. In Fingers + air, you play the saxophone itself: tap the keys on the drawing to press them, then hold the air button and blow. The note you hear is the one that fingering really plays — including fingerings no chart lists, which sound roughly where a real saxophone would put them and are marked as off the chart.

Six keys, seven notes

With nothing pressed the saxophone plays written C♯5. Put down the left hand’s first finger and it drops to B; add the second for A, the third for G. Then the right hand: F, E and D. That is the whole first lesson — seven notes from C♯5 down to low D4, one key at a time — and in Fingers + air you can hear it happen. The sharps and flats come from two more ideas. Lift a finger above one that stays down and the note drops a semitone: the second finger alone is C, the left hand plus the right middle finger is F♯. And a few keys each do one job — the G♯ key, the bis and the side B♭, the side C, and the little-finger keys that take the bottom down through E♭, C, C♯, B and B♭.

The octave key

Finger low D4 — all six keys down — and blow. Now add the octave key under the left thumb and blow again. You get D5, exactly an octave higher. A saxophone is a cone, and a cone resonates at every harmonic, so the vent the octave key opens pushes it onto the second one. That single fact builds half the chart: the whole second octave, D5 to C♯6, is the first octave’s fingerings with the thumb added. It is why the saxophone is one of the fastest wind instruments to learn, and why a clarinettist — whose register key jumps a twelfth — has twice as much to memorise.

The one awkward spot is the step from C♯5 to D5, where the horn goes from nothing pressed to everything pressed plus the octave key: 7 keys change in one semitone. Try it in Fingers + air. Above C♯6 the fingers run out, and the palm keys take the horn up to high F6, one semitone per key.

Saxophone fingering chart, low B♭3 to high F6

Every note of the standard range, in written pitch, with the concert note it sounds on an alto. 8va is the octave key; the dots are the left hand’s three main keys, then the right hand’s (● down, ○ up); everything else is named. The second column has the other fingerings the chart gives — the bis and the forks for B♭, side C, the alternate F♯ key, and the front F — each useful in a different passage.

Four saxophones, one set of fingers

The chips above the drawing pick which saxophone you are holding. They all read treble clef with the same fingerings — the chart itself says its fingerings are the same on every size of saxophone — and each sounds the written note somewhere else. That is what makes them transposing instruments, and it is why a saxophonist can pick up any of them.

The alto in E♭ is the one most people start on. The tenor in B♭ is bigger and darker, the voice of jazz and rock-and-roll. The soprano is the small, usually straight B♭ horn, bright and reedy. The baritone is the big E♭ horn with the loop in its neck, an octave below the alto and read exactly like it. The sound of each is modelled on its size rather than recorded.

Written pitch and concert pitch

Everything on this page — the keys, the labels, the song tabs, the chart — is in written pitch, because that is what a saxophone part and every fingering chart use. The drawing names the concert pitch as well, the note a piano would have to play to match you. On an alto, written C sounds the E♭ below it; on a tenor, the B♭ an octave and a step below. The key menu is in written keys too, and it changes the numbers in the song tabs, not the saxophone.

How to play it

Hold a note to blow it and let go to stop — a saxophone sounds only while air goes through it. Slide along the keys without lifting to slur from note to note in one breath; the voice hears that the air never stopped and leaves the tongue out of the next note, which is what a slur is.

In Fingers + air, tap the keys on the drawing to press them; tap again to lift. Then hold Hold to blow. Change keys while you blow and the note moves without a new attack. Turn on Keep blowing to leave the air on while you finger — the easiest way to explore with one hand or a mouse. The caption under the drawing names every fingering as you make it, and says when it is one the chart gives, an alternate, or something no chart lists.

On a computer keyboard, in Notes, the letters run up a semitone at a time from Q, which is written low B♭. In Fingers + air the keyboard becomes the saxophone’s two hands: F, D and S are the left hand’s main keys, J, K and L the right hand’s, V the octave key, E, R and T the palm keys, A the G♯ key, ; and / the right little finger’s E♭ and C, and Space is the air. Hold F, D and S and press Space: that is G. Add V and it becomes the G an octave above. Every key on the drawing shows its letter.

Tone: normal, subtone and growl

The Tone menu plays the same saxophone three ways. Normal is the full sound. Subtone is less lip and more air — soft, breathy and dark, the ballad sound, best in the low octave. Growl is humming into the horn while you play, so the note goes rough and gritty, the sound of rock-and-roll and R&B saxophone. Vibrato is on to start with, a moment after each note speaks, because both classical and jazz saxophonists use it; switch it off for a straight, modern sound.

Songs to play

Press Play a song under the instrument and pick one. In written C the saxophone plays 21 of the 22 public-domain songs here; in G, F and A it plays all of them. Play plays a song for you and shows each fingering as it sounds, which is the fastest way to learn them. Practice waits on the next note and marks the keys it needs in gold before you play it, and it works in Fingers + air too — press the gold keys, lift any marked to come up, and blow. Play along closes a ring on each note in time with the music, and Record keeps a take you can play back and save.

What it sounds like, and why

A saxophone is full and warm when played softly and bright, edgy and loud when pushed, and both come from the same physics as the octave key. The cone keeps every harmonic, so the sound is never hollow the way a clarinet’s low notes are, and the harder the reed is blown the more of the upper harmonics come through — until the open tone holes below the note let them escape. The voice here is built that way, from a reed on a cone rather than a sample of one horn, and the soprano, tenor and baritone move that ceiling with their size.

More instruments you can play here

The online clarinet is the saxophone’s closest relative here — the same single reed on a cylinder instead of a cone, fingered on the same kind of drawing, register key and all — and the online trumpet is the other horn whose notes are fingerings. Got a real saxophone that sounds off? The saxophone tuner listens through your microphone and walks you through the mouthpiece and concert B♭ for every size.

Frequently asked questions