Customer Reviews

Tipbook - Saxophone: The Best Guide to Your Instrument

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're looking for a short, concise saxophone primer that's suitable for the novice, this is it. The book is very concise and looks like a brochure (long and narrow). It covers the absolute basics -- buying, assembling, playing, disassembling and cleaning your horn.

It's nothing an advanced player needs to buy. I'm an intermediate player, and there were only a few tidbits (on buying saxophones and sax parts) that I hadn't heard before.

Bottom line: If you're a novice, buy it. If you're not, look elsewhere for additional material.

The size of this book may puzzle you first; it resembles an airline timetable or a travel guide. However the 132 pages promise a lot of content. This book is a really delightful surprise. Besides the fact that the print quality and typography is superb, the subject is thoroughly covered and illustrations are well rendered and informative.

The author Hugo Pinksterboer has utilized well-known European and American experts. I find myself going back to various sections again and again. They briefly cover the history and development of the saxophone, playing tips for beginners and practical tips for maintenance and even for traveling with the sax. What is really useful is the saxophone selecting and buying advice with price indications in U.S. dollars.

The web site, www.tipbook.com ties closely to this book. The book contains a total of 29 numbered "tipcodes" referring to the respective codes on the web site. This is an excellent way to refer to sound samples of various pitch saxophones, video clips on attaching and adjusting reeds, etc.

Who should buy this book? This should definitely be the first book to land in the hands of a newcomer to the saxophone world. All the necessary information is there. A more experienced player planning to replace his/her rental instrument or inherited sax will also find the instrument core sections valuable. There are also some interesting "exotic" tid bits, e.g. an alternative for the neck strap for supporting a saxophone (page 94). To top it off there is as an excellent combined Glossary and Index and reference section including magazines, books, organizations and saxophone web sites.

I own several saxophone instruction books and have reviewed a fair amount of them. The Tipbook: Saxophone stands out in its practical approach, covering various aspects of buying, owning and using the saxophone. As mentioned above, even it's size is practical. The book will travel in a tenor saxophone accessory box or inside the bell of an alto sax, if you want to bend it. Even advanced players may find some interesting tidbits; the beginner and intermediate player will certainly profit from this book and its associate web site as well as band directors and teachers.

Even in the unlike case that you've never even hold a sax in your hands and wants to learn to play, this book will guide you from scratch. It deals with every aspect of the instrument, from its history to a synopsis of each of todays renowned brands. You will learn the nuts and bolts in choosing a new or used instrument, how to care and mantain it and which accessories to pick. Advice: it does not cover musical issues, just the very basic fingering, so you'll need some other book also if you want to learn tunes.

If you're starting out on saxophone, this book is an absolute gem. A pocket guide crammed full of very interesting and highly relevant stuff - you'd take weeks on the internet to find all this information out. And you'll find that as you develop as a musician, and want to get more out of your instrument, you'll refer to it again and again.

I found this book to be very helpful in learning how to harness my musical technique, & appreciation for the saxophone. This book was also very detailed in saxophone maintenance, & product care. 2 thumbs up indeed!

Gives a lot of knowledge to all areas of the instrument including different opinion's on various topics. if you want to get to know about saxophones start here!

I expected more tips for sax playing. Instead, there is a lot of information regarding the instrument care and how it is made of. Anyway, it is good and useful. Therefore, I definitely recommend it.

What should be an excellent beginners book has a few too many substantive errors to really get top recommendation:

Page 40 - "Low A Baritones are still Bb Instruments!" They are Eb horns!!

Page 55 - "HP Instruments are about an inch shorter than saxes with standard tuning; low pitched instruments are about an inch taller." - The length is proportional to saxophone's size, and there is only "HP & LP", not "HP, Standard and LP".

Page 112 (Mouthpiece Manufacture) - "The final steps include corking and stamping." Saxophone Mouthpieces are not corked.

There are others, and errors in the website's corresponding Tips.

An experienced player would gloss right over these woopsies, but they deserve the editor's review and correction a second edition. This series is done in several languages, and at revision perhaps the translation could be polished.

This book would still be a nice gift book for a young student, but not really a substitute for the "must own" saxophone works a student will really need.

I've been play (or struggling) with the sax for 10+ years. Wish I had bought this book 10 years ago. "Secrets from the Temple" might have been a better name. Everything you wanted to know but didn't know who to ask.

I fond the Saxophone Tipbook to contain a lot of valuable information for me as a novice saxophone player...