Saxo

The saxo app is single-voice melodic training for wind controllers, built and tested with the TravelSax. Scores are engraved transposed for E♭ alto, exactly as a saxophonist reads them.

The layout

The score scrolls on the right; on the left, a minimalist full-key saxophone shows the fingering for the current note: keys to press glow, keys to release show red, and the note name sits right above the chart.

• Mirror toggle (⇄) — by default the sax is mirrored, the way you see your own hands looking down; toggle for a front-facing chart.
• Breath meter — a live column showing your breath level, read from the controller (CC 2 / 7 / 11 or channel pressure).

Live key display (no breath needed)

The TravelSax reports which keys your fingers are holding independently of breath, and each switch on the chart is mapped to its physical key on the device — so the chart lights exactly what you’re pressing before you blow, handy for checking a fingering or switching cleanly between notes without an accidental note sounding.

Pitch and transposition

The scores are in written pitch for E♭ alto and the app expects your controller in its default octave: the TravelSax sends the written pitch class one octave below the staff, and the app compensates automatically. If notes register an octave off, adjust the controller’s octave setting.

Wind controllers work best on the desktop app

The desktop app reads your controller through the operating system’s own MIDI stack, so the TravelSax is picked up the moment you plug it in — including on Safari- and Firefox-only machines, where Web MIDI does not exist. Nothing else changes: same scores, same fingering chart.

Learn by ear

The By ear mode trains you to hear a melody and play it back without reading it, exactly as on the piano. The app plays a phrase, you play it back from memory, and each time you get it right the phrase grows by one note. The score shows empty bars until each note has been played. You can also pick a passage with the handles on the minimap.

The fingering chart never gives the next note away. It shows the fingering of the note you just played right, and “not that one” after a wrong note. It still shows the keys you are holding, since that is your own hand. Your controller’s octave is handled as in the other modes.

The same minimap handles loop a passage in Rhythm and Practice.

Accompaniment

Give a piece a recording to play along with: a backing track, a band, your teacher. Open 🎧 and choose Accompaniment → Add…, then pick the file. Anything your browser plays works: WAV, MP3, AAC/M4A, FLAC, OGG, Opus and more.

• Line it up once. The recording’s waveform fills the view, with the piece laid over it as a band, bar lines drawn in. Drag the band so bar 1 sits where the music starts, and drag its end so the piece lasts as long as the recording does (that sets the tempo). Zoom in on either end to be exact, or nudge it with the buttons or the arrow keys. ▶ Check plays the recording with a click on every beat of the piece, so you can hear whether they agree.
• It plays along in Rhythm mode, following play, pause, seeking and loops. The piece plays at the recording’s tempo, so the tempo slider is locked, and the metronome is quiet.
• The recording can be longer than the piece: an intro, an outro.
• It stays with the piece on this device: bundled, from the score server, or in an uploaded collection. A piece opened from a single local file keeps it for the session only. The song list marks pieces that have one with 🎶🗑, which deletes it.

Jazz scale generator

The song picker’s 🎼 Jazz generator entry engraves jazz practice material on the fly, the saxophone counterpart of the piano scale generator.

Pick a root on the circle of fifths in concert pitch — the key the band is playing — and the part is engraved transposed for your horn: alto, tenor, soprano or baritone. The panel always shows both, so a B♭ blues reads as “sounds in B♭, you read G”. Switch the toggle to written key if you would rather name the key you read.

What you can build

• Scales — the four bebop scales plus the ♮7 bebop minor; the parent scales they came from; the melodic-minor modes (lydian dominant, altered, locrian ♯2 and the rest); the symmetrical scales (half-whole and whole-half diminished, whole tone); and the pentatonic and blues family, including the 9-note jazz blues.
• Patterns — the scale itself, scales in thirds, the digital cells 1-2-3-5 and 3-5-7-9, triad pairs, and three kinds of chromatic approach and enclosure around every chord tone.
• Range — full horn traverses the whole instrument: start on the root, climb to the top of the keyed range, descend to the bottom, return to the root. Or take the usual 1 to 3 octaves.
• Rhythm and repeats — quarters, eighths, sixteenths or triplets, up to four times through.
• Jazz articulation — slurs each offbeat into the downbeat, the way the line is tongued, and accents the top note of every leap wider than a minor third.

Chord tones on the downbeats

A bebop scale is its parent scale plus one chromatic passing tone, placed so that the chord tones land on the beat when you play the line in straight eighths. The builder shows a ♪ chord tones land on the downbeats badge on the scales where that is actually true, and the generator keeps the property through the turnarounds at the top and bottom of the horn, and across repeats.

Everything stays inside the real keyed range — written B♭3 to F6, or F♯6 if you tick the high F♯ key — so an exercise never asks for a note your horn does not have. Generated exercises play like any other piece and keep their own stats:

Playback is straight, not swung: scoring follows the engraved rhythm, so swinging the eighths would be marked as wrong notes. Swing them once you are off the trainer.

Jazz licks

The song picker’s 🎷 Jazz licks entry is the vocabulary of the masters, to practise: the 653 most common patterns of eminent players, found by the Jazzomat Research Project in the Weimar Jazz Database — phrases like the bebop dominant descent, C B B♭ A G F E over C7, that the players came back to again and again.

Every lick comes with how it is usually played, measured from its instances in the database’s solos: its most common rhythm, and where in the bar it starts; the chords it is most often played over (lick #10 runs over Cm7 → F7 → B♭maj7, a ii–V–I); how often it is played exactly so; how many times in how many solos; who played it most; and the earliest recording.

• Pick a lick from the list — each shown with its notes and chords over C — and filter by kind (scale runs, leaps and steps, chromatic, arpeggios), shape, length or player.
• Set the key on the circle of fifths: the root of the chord the lick is played over, in concert or written pitch, for alto, tenor, soprano or baritone.
• Choose the rhythm: as played, or even quarters, eighths, triplets or sixteenths, with or without the chord symbols.
• One key, or round the circle of fourths — all twelve, each in a new bar.

The lick is spelled from its chords (B♮ between C and B♭ over C7), with no key signature since the keys change, and kept inside your horn’s keyed range. The 50 most common licks are also in the library, as the jazz licks collection — and in the piano library, with the chords as shells in the left hand.