TAMING THE SAXOPHONE VOL 1 by Pete Thomas

Tone without tears, no more boring long notes 

Exercises to improve your saxophone sound: breathing, interesting long notes, vibrato, dynamics, overtones, mouthpiece exercises and more. 120 pages of tone fun!

This book is useful for everyone from beginners to advanced and will provide years of useful tone study. Absolute beginners please note: this is not a tutor on how to get a sound from the instrument, it assumes you can already play at least a few notes, and want to learn how to get the best. 

Pete Thomas

“Someone ought to erect a monument to Pete Thomas for services to rock music”

- MUSIC Magazine Dec 1983 

Quite a remarkable statement on its own, but the fact that the person honoured in this way is not a guitar hero but a college trained sax player and composer is even more remarkable. Pete has recently been paid a further compliment by Virgin Vision when they asked him to make a saxophone instruction video for worldwide release.

But then Pete Thomas doesn’t mess around. One of his first professional gigs was with Fats Domino. Pete is probably one of the first British musicians to feature with this 11 piece New Orleans band both as a soloist and as a member of the legendary horn section.

It was this connection that led to a musical partnership with Joe Jackson as co-arranger and saxophonist on records and world tours. This partnership was resumed on Joe Jackson’s film score and soundtrack album for Francis Ford Coppola’s movie “Tucker” for which Pete features as a soloist. 

More recently he was commissioned by Island/Polygram to produce the live recording and mixing of PJ Harvey’s Forum concert for MTV and video documentary “Reeling” as well as co-producing with her the tribute to Kurt Weill: “Ballad Of The Soldier’s Wife” for Sony Classical.

Not satisfied with simply helping others to create great music he has recently been involved in composition and production himself with some highly acclaimed work which has led him into the demanding world of TV films, commercials and record production. His successes in this area include composing music for Michael Caine’s feature film Blue Ice (commissioned source music), American Kick Boxer II (full score), The Late Show: “Movies From Hell”- BBC2, Signals - Channel 4, Best - The Movie and a series of stylish, unique and highly musical TV ads for Tennent’s, Dry Blackthorn, Sainsbury’s, Orangina, Holsten Pils, Playstation, Pantene and many more.