Alto Sax Tuner — Free Online E♭ Alto Saxophone Tuner

An alto saxophone is in E♭, which is the whole reason a general-purpose tuner confuses you: play your written G and the room hears concert B♭. The dial reads what the room hears — and can be switched to read what you are looking at.

Tap “Start Tuning” and allow microphone access — audio is analyzed on your device and never leaves it. No microphone? You can still play reference tones for every note.

Written G, concert B♭, one instrument

An alto saxophone is in E♭: it sounds a major sixth below the note printed on your part. That single fact is behind almost every confused tuner reading an alto player has ever had, and it is why a general-purpose tuner — the kind built for guitars — is actively unhelpful here. It will name the pitch correctly and you will not recognise it.

When a director calls for concert B♭, your note is written G, and what comes out of the bell is B♭3 at 233.08 Hz. Tap it below to hear it before you play it — matching a pitch you have already heard is a different and much easier task than chasing a needle.

Try itAlto saxophone — written note to concert pitch

Every tone here is the concert pitch; the written note that produces it is in the label. The highlighted row is your tuning note.

The cork is the only thing you can actually move

A saxophone has exactly one mechanical adjustment: how far the mouthpiece sits on the neck cork. Push it on and the instrument goes sharp; pull it off and it goes flat. There is no barrel, no slide, and no second joint — everything else that affects your pitch is you.

It is also a coarse adjustment. On an alto, a couple of millimetres is most of a semitone, so the mouthpiece is a setup decision you make once and then leave alone. If you find yourself moving it between pieces, the thing that changed is your embouchure or the temperature of the room, and moving the cork to chase it will leave the horn out of tune with itself.

The routine

Play for five minutes first. A cold saxophone plays flat and a warm one does not, and the difference is far larger than anything you are about to correct. Any reading taken on a horn straight out of the case is a reading about temperature.
Play written G, mezzo-forte, with a relaxed jaw. Not softly — soft playing on an alto goes flat, loud playing goes sharp, and the pitch you want to set is the one you actually play at. Watch for concert B♭ on the dial.
Sharp: pull the mouthpiece off a millimetre. Flat: push it on. Then play the note again from scratch rather than sustaining through the change.
Check written C♯ and written D at the top of the staff. These are the two notes most likely to be out on any saxophone — C♯ has almost no tube closed below it and tends sharp. If the rest of the horn is centred and these two are not, that is normal, and it is fixed with your voicing rather than with the cork.
Check the octaves. Play a low written G, then the G an octave up. If the upper one is noticeably sharp, the mouthpiece is too far on; if it is flat, too far off. This is the test that tells you the cork position is right rather than merely lucky.

Make the dial read your written note instead

Everything above names the concert pitch actually in the air, which is what a tuner is for and what the rest of the ensemble hears. But it is not what is printed on your part: a E♭ alto saxophone sounds a major sixth lower than it reads, so written C comes out as concert E♭.

This tuner can close that gap for you. The Transposition setting adds the interval back before the note is named, so the dial reports the note you are reading rather than the note you are sounding — the one thing a guitar tuner has no reason to do, and the reason to keep this page rather than the first tuner in the results.

Open this tuner set to E♭ → — or reach it yourself from the gear icon on the dial, under Transposition. The choice is remembered on this device and it travels in the link, so a section leader can send that URL to a stand full of alto saxophones and everyone arrives set the same way.

Switch it back to C — Concert pitch whenever you need to check yourself against the room, tune to a piano, or find out what a written note is actually sounding.

The other three horns

The saxophone family shares one fingering system, so the same written G works on all of them — but it does not produce the same concert pitch, and that is exactly why each horn has its own page here.

Horn	Key	Written C sounds	Concert B♭ is written
Alto (this page)	E♭	a major 6th lower	G
Tenor	B♭	a major 9th lower	C
Soprano	B♭	a major 2nd lower	C
Baritone	E♭	an octave + major 6th lower	G

If you double, the useful thing to memorise is the pairing rather than the four intervals: alto and baritone read the same note (written G for concert B♭), and tenor and soprano read the same note (written C). The saxophone family page has the whole comparison in one place.

Frequently asked questions

What note should I play when the band tunes to concert B♭?

Written G, in the middle of the staff — the G above the treble clef’s bottom line, played with the left hand’s middle finger alone. On an E♭ alto that comes out as concert B♭3, 233.08 Hz. If the director calls concert A instead (more common with strings in the room), your written note is F♯.

Why does the tuner say B♭ when I am playing a G?

Because an alto saxophone is in E♭ and sounds a major sixth below what it reads. The tuner names the pitch actually in the air, which is what the rest of the ensemble hears and what a tuner is for. If you would rather see your written note, set Transposition to E♭ in the settings — or use the link further down this page, which opens the dial already set that way.

How far should the mouthpiece go on the cork?

There is no fixed number, because it depends on the mouthpiece, the reed and your embouchure — but the useful landmark is that a typical alto setup sits with roughly half to two-thirds of the cork covered. Much further on than that and you have run out of room to go flat; much further off and the horn stops playing in tune with itself, because moving the mouthpiece changes the effective length of a cone and therefore the intervals, not just the overall pitch.

My alto reads sharp no matter where I put the mouthpiece. What is wrong?

Almost always the embouchure rather than the instrument. Biting raises pitch quickly and a beginner under pressure bites harder, so a horn that was fine at home reads sharp in a rehearsal. Test it by playing a written G with a deliberately loose, relaxed jaw and plenty of air: if the pitch drops twenty or thirty cents, the cork is not the problem. A reed that is too hard produces the same reading for the same reason.

Is an alto sax the same as an E♭ alto clarinet?

They share a key and nothing else. Both are in E♭ and both sound a major sixth below the page, so the transposition on this dial is identical — but a saxophone is a conical single-reed instrument that overblows at the octave, and a clarinet is cylindrical and overblows at the twelfth, which is why the fingerings, the register break and the tuning behaviour have nothing in common.