Music has this amazing power to touch a person’s heart and conjure up emotions. But not every song can do this. Only when a jazz saxophone player understands how to tap into the soul of a song can the audience really experience, or “live”, the music. That leads to a very important question – how do you infuse that level of emotion into a song?

Simply playing the notes isn’t enough. To make your sax playing become less stuffy and instead, become more natural and expressive, here are five tips you can try.

1. Know the Basics:

When first starting out, you always need to begin at the beginning. And when it comes to jazz sax chords, that means learning the basics – fingerings, posture, and more. As you become more comfortable with these basics, they will take less work and gradually become less stilted and more natural. Honing these skills will give you the starting point for learning how to express emotion in your music.