Saxophone from Clarinet

[thisagain]

DD14 is year 10 and taking her grade 5 clarinet shortly. Also plays piano Grade 6 shortly. How hard do you think it would be to pick up the saxophone (instead of clarinet) after his exam? How similar are they? She would have to stop clarinet lessons to start saxophone because she does so many other out of school activities (mainly dancing) and practice is already an issue. Any comments welcome.

I never played clarinet but did the sax. The fingering is essentially the same as a recorder - v simple - so if she's played a recorder, she should pick it up relatively quickly. And the mouth shape/breath control etc should be similar to clarinet - this was the bit I found harder when I started but should be fine for your DD.

DD learnt sax from the start, but most of the clarinet players at her school also played sax. The then woodwind teacher was of the opinion all clarinet players should learn sax too. Mostly they just had one lesson and did bits of both I think.

DD got to Grade 8 sax and is now learning clarinet, but still playing sax in bands.

I'm told the embouchure is a bit different.

The embouchure can be much different, depending on whether classical or Jazz.
It's a lot looser, not so much pressure on the reed.
A lot easier to learn than clarinet, all the sax players who learnt it first find clari much harder.
If they play both classical and Jazz they have different mouthpieces.

I used to play the clarinet and I was told that a lot of saxophone teachers preferred their students to have played the clarinet first, as the embrochure is better developed.

I teach both, and many children of her age and level will find themselves at Grade 4-5 saxophone after a year, especially if they played the recorder too. I had a boy who did it the other way around - he played in jazz band etc, but wanted to be in the orchestra. He saved up for a clarinet, taught himself a little and then had lessons with me. I think he took grade 4 within the year, and qualified for the orchestra.

I played sax at school after first learning clarinet and can't even remember the transition it was that easy!
That being said, school is a long time ago now!