Real recorded saxophone notes on a piano keyboard: click, touch or type, and the saxophone answers. The saxophone is a woodwind made of brass: it is the reed, not the metal, that decides its family. Free, nothing to install, with note names, your computer keyboard and a metronome.
Recorded notes, the saxophone's own range, and the keyboard you already know.
Every key plays a recording of a real saxophone: 32 notes from C#3 to A5, each key pitched from the nearest one. The saxophone is single-reed woodwind instrument with a brass body: a single reed on a mouthpiece, like a clarinet, but on a conical brass tube, which gives it a louder, brighter and more flexible sound.
The keyboard covers C#3 to A5, where the recordings sound natural; a real saxophone plays D-flat 3 to about A-flat 5 (alto saxophone, sounding). Use the octave arrows to move, and More keys on a wide screen.
Play a blues scale - C, E-flat, F, G-flat, G, B-flat, C - and slide between neighbouring keys for a jazzy line. The note sounds as long as you hold the key, like a bow or a breath.
Famous saxophone music: Jazz: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane; Ravel, Boléro (two saxophone solos); Mussorgsky-Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition: The Old Castle. Pick out a melody by ear on the keyboard above.
Click or touch a key. The first note starts the sound; the saxophone recordings for the visible keys load in the background.
A S D F G H J K L play the white keys, W E T Y U O P the black ones (Q and Z on AZERTY). Z and X move an octave (W and X on AZERTY).
Set Labels to C D E or Do Ré Mi to see every note name, or to Keys to see your own keyboard letters.
Turn on the metronome and play along. Then try the same melody on the clarinet or the piano.
| Type | Sampled saxophone, playable on this page, free |
|---|---|
| Family | Woodwinds - single-reed woodwind instrument with a brass body |
| Samples | 32 recorded notes, C#3 to A5 |
| Range here | C#3 to A5 |
| Real range | D-flat 3 to about A-flat 5 (alto saxophone, sounding) |
| Notation | Treble clef, a transposing instrument |
| Controls | Labels, octave arrows, More keys and a metronome |
| Computer keyboard | Ableton layout by key position - QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ |
| Credits | Saxophone samples from tonejs-instruments by Nicholas Brosowsky, CC BY 3.0 - see credits |
| Requirements | Any modern browser with Web Audio - Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari |
Most online instruments are a synthesiser with a picture on top. This one plays recordings of a real saxophone, so the attack, the tone and the decay are the instrument's own. The saxophone is a woodwind made of brass: it is the reed, not the metal, that decides its family.
The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax, born in Dinant, and patented in Paris in 1846. Made for military bands and orchestras, it found its true home in jazz in the 1920s.
A real saxophone is written in treble clef, a transposing instrument. The keyboard here plays the sounding notes, so a melody you find by ear is the melody you hear. To go further, the free sheet music and chord pages work with any instrument you can read music on.
Yes. Every key plays a recording of a real saxophone - 32 notes from C#3 to A5 - pitched to the nearest key. The recordings come from the tonejs-instruments library, under a Creative Commons licence.
Yes. The middle row of letters plays the white keys and the row above it the black keys, by key position, so it works the same on QWERTY, AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards. Set Labels to Keys to see the letters on the keys.
A saxophone plays D-flat 3 to about A-flat 5 (alto saxophone, sounding). On this page the keyboard goes from C#3 to A5, where the recordings sound natural.
Jazz: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane; Ravel, Boléro (two saxophone solos); Mussorgsky-Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition: The Old Castle.
Yes, free with no account and nothing to install. It runs in any modern browser, on a computer, a tablet or a phone.
The saxophone on this page is free, with no account. GOONS Studio adds a sampled piano, drum machines, synths and a sequencer in the browser - free for 7 days, no card required.
Free on this page, no account. Play the clarinet →