Book excerpt: This book provides the beginner alto saxophone player with all the skills you need to get started. Following simple illustrated lessons, you will learn to play in a variety of styles – from funk and pop to soul, jazz and blues. Easy-to-follow lessons will help you pick up the essentials – creating a warm, rich, even sound, mastering rhythm and notation, and improvising – until you are ready to join a band and start jamming! The backing CD provides accompanying tracks to help you play the right style, and demonstrations of the material for you to listen to and emulate. The book isn’t only for alto sax players, students of the tenor sax will also get plenty from the lessons and the scale library, allowing them to create simple improvisations and letting them ‘jazz up’ a melody. About the author Ollie Weston is Professor of Jazz Saxophone at the Guildhall School of Music and currently runs both the Jazz Workshop and the Jazz MA courses for the Junior School. As well as numerous smaller groups, he writes and arranges music for his own quartet, and co-leads the Zephyr Saxophone Quartet. His session credits include 19 Management, Island Records, Edwyn Collins, Jamie Cullum and Amy Winehouse. Ollie has also played in many West End productions.