Alto Sax Altissimo Fingering Chart

Alto Sax Altissimo Range

Realistic expectations for alto altissimo

Altissimo on alto sax begins immediately above written high F♯ — high F sharp. Everything below that, down to low B♭, is the standard range and is covered on our standard saxophone fingering chart. Above high F♯ the notes stop being produced by opening tone holes in sequence and start being produced by venting the tube so an upper partial takes over, with your voicing deciding which one you get.

This alto saxophone altissimo fingering chart covers thirteen notes, from altissimo G up to the G an octave above it, with eighty-four fingerings in total. That is a deliberately generous set, because alto altissimo is the most documented of any saxophone and players disagree productively about which options work best.

A realistic working target for an alto player is altissimo G up to C — six notes, reliably, in tune, at any dynamic. That covers the overwhelming majority of what the repertoire asks for, and what sounds good in a musical context. Above altissimo C the fingerings become markedly more instrument-specific and more dependent on your mouthpiece and reed.

Why alto is the best horn to learn altissimo on

If you play more than one saxophone, learn altissimo on alto first. The mechanics of the alto saxophone operate in a helpful middle ground of resistance. There is enough back-pressure that the horn gives you clear, immediate feedback when your voicing is imprecise — the note simply will not speak — but not so much that it demands the air support a baritone does. Tenor, by contrast, is slacker, and will let you produce an altissimo note with a tongue position that is only roughly right, which feels easier but teaches you less.

That feedback is why alto players tend to build more accurate voicing, and why altissimo learned on alto transfers to other horns better than altissimo learned on tenor. The fingerings will not transfer — those are horn-specific — but the voicing control absolutely will.

The alto saxophone canon has a rich tradition of altissimo, from Earl Bostic through to Sanborn through to contemporary session playing. Your best chance of developing a strong altissimo register is developing a complete aural awareness of how it sounds in context.

Interactive Alto Sax Altissimo Fingering Chart

Click any note to see its fingering

Select a note to see its main fingering and every alternate, with the keys highlighted on the horn. The three bridging fingerings at the top of the standard range are included to give you options to find comfortable paths over the break to the altissimo in various contexts. On alto in particular, a clean front F is the launch point for your first altissimo note.

Altissimo G on Alto Sax

The gateway note

Altissimo G on alto sax — often just called high G — is the note immediately above written high F♯, and it is the standard entry point to the register — not just on alto, but for most saxophonists regardless of which horn they start on. It is the smallest voicing leap from the standard range, the most forgiving of imperfect technique, and the note with the most published fingerings to choose from.

Alto gives you six options for it. This means the choice matters more here than on any other note.

The main fingering, and its one catch

Octave key, LH1, high F♯ key. Three keys, and about as simple as an altissimo fingering gets. This is the one to try first on alto and it speaks readily on most horns. Try adding the RH1 key to assist getting the note to speak.

This fingering tends toward slightly flat intonation. The instinctive response to a flat altissimo note is to bite up to correct it - a terrible habit to form, that will stop the notes above G from sounding. DO NOT lip it up. Accept that it sounds a little low, and either adjust your voicing upward — a fractionally higher tongue position, not more jaw — or move to one of the alternates below. Try to see this fingering as a gateway to High G.

The alternates worth knowing

Alt 4 — octave key, LH1, RH1, side B♭. The most useful alternate for most players. Adding the right hand stabilises the note considerably and generally brings the pitch up compared with the main fingering. If the main version is too flat on your horn, start here.

Alt 5 — octave key, front F, LH1, RH1, side B♭. The same idea built from the front F position instead. This is the one to learn if you are coming up from high F, because the hand barely moves.

Alt 1 and Alt 2 add LH3 and vary the right hand, and are worth testing if neither of the above locks in on your instrument. Alt 3 uses the bis key, which is unusual for altissimo and awkward to reach in most passages — useful to know, rarely the one to build on.

How to play altissimo G on alto sax

Do not start by fingering it. Start by finding the pitch as an overtone, from a low fingering, using voicing alone. It will be unstable and it will not sound good — that does not matter. What matters is that your body learns the oral cavity shape that produces the pitch.

Then take that shape and apply it to the fingering, slurring up from high F♯ rather than tonguing the note cold. Tonguing an altissimo note from silence is a separate and harder skill; build the note first and learn to start it afterwards.

A correctly voiced altissimo G on alto should feel easy. No clamping, no straining, no more air than you would use for a high D. If it only comes out when you bite, you have not learned to voice it — you have learned to force it, and the difference becomes obvious the moment you try altissimo A.

Front F: The Bridge Into Altissimo

Finding your way in

The front F key is the small teardrop-shaped key sitting just above LH1. Most alto players learn it as an alternative way of playing high E, F and F♯ in fast passages, use it occasionally, and never think about it again. It is worth thinking about again, because on alto it is the bridge into the altissimo register.

Two reasons. The first is mechanical: a large proportion of alto altissimo fingerings are built from the front F hand position rather than from the palm keys, so if front F is unfamiliar the fingerings themselves feel awkward before you have even addressed the voicing. Looking at the chart above, the front F fingerings run right through the register — the G alternates, C♯, D, D♭ and F♯ all have front F options.

The second reason matters more. A well-voiced front F already requires a slightly raised tongue position and faster air than the palm-key equivalent. It is, in miniature, exactly the adjustment altissimo demands. Players who have a secure, in-tune front F have already done a meaningful part of the work without realising it.

Getting front F secure first

Before you attempt altissimo G, spend a week on this: play high F with the palm keys, then the same note with front F, and match them for pitch and tone until they are indistinguishable. Then do the same with high E and high F♯.

This is unglamorous work, but it builds the voicing adjustment in a register where you can still hear clearly whether you have got it right — which you cannot yet do in altissimo, because you have no reference for what the note should sound like.

Altissimo A, B♭, B, C and Above

Working up the register

With altissimo G secure, the rest of the register arrives faster than the first note did — the hard part was never G specifically, it was learning to voice at all. Add one note at a time and make each one dependable before moving on.

Altissimo A on alto sax

Altissimo A is where alto gets interesting, because the main fingering is one of the most involved on the whole chart — octave key, LH2, LH3, low B♭, RH1, RH2, RH3, low C, using both pinky keys. It is stable and well in tune, but it is slow to reach and awkward in a fast passage.

Which is why the alternates matter more here than anywhere else. Alt 4 — octave key, LH2, LH3, side B♭ is far more practical and is what most players end up using in real playing. Alt 1 is simply the octave key and RH2, which is about as simple as a fingering can be.

Most alto players end up knowing two fingerings for altissimo A: the full one for held notes and slow passages where intonation is exposed, and a quick one for everything else. Be aware that A demands a noticeably higher tongue position than G. If A will not speak while G does, the fingering is not your problem — go back to overtones.

Altissimo B♭ and B

B♭ usually follows readily once A is secure. Altissimo B is simpler still — on alto the main option is just the octave key and palm D. Do not read simplicity as ease: B is where steady air support starts to matter more than tongue position, and it is a note that will speak but then sag or drop out partway through if the support underneath it is not consistent.

Altissimo C

A sensible ceiling for an alto player and enough for most repertoire. Consolidate properly here rather than pushing straight on. Five or six altissimo notes you can play in performance are worth far more than ten you can only manage in a controlled environment like the practice room.

Above C

From C♯ upward the fingerings get more instrument-specific and more dependent on your setup, and published sources disagree with each other more the higher you go. Altissimo F♯ on alto sax, for instance, has four quite different options in the chart above, and which one works on your horn is unpredictable. Treat everything above C as a menu to test rather than fingerings to memorise.

Altissimo Fingerings for Alto Sax — Every Note, Written Out

The full list in text

Every fingering in the interactive chart, written out note by note so you can read, copy or print it without the tool. Main fingerings first, then alternates in the order worth trying them.

Alternate Fingerings and Why They Vary by Horn

Why your alto disagrees with the chart

You can hand an alto fingering chart to a baritone player and every note on it will work, because the standard range is just tone holes opening in order on proportionally scaled instruments. Try that with an altissimo chart and most of it will fail. Understanding why saves you a great deal of pointless troubleshooting.

An altissimo fingering opens holes in places that make the fundamental impossible to sustain, leaving an upper partial as the only stable option left to the air column. Where those holes need to fall is dictated by the pressure nodes of the partial you want, and on an alto those nodes sit at particular points along a tube of that specific length and taper. Change the horn and you change the geometry, which is why a fingering that locks solid on alto can be dead air on tenor.

Those things differ between an alto and a tenor by a wide margin. They also differ between two altos from different manufacturers, and noticeably between a vintage horn and a modern one. Alto has the added wrinkle of being the most-played saxophone, which means it has accumulated the most published altissimo fingerings — and the most disagreement between them. That is why this chart gives you up to six options per note rather than one.

How to use the alternates properly

Treat every fingering here — including the main ones — as a strong starting point. Test two or three for each note and keep whichever speaks most easily and is closest to pitch on your instrument.

Where a fingering is marked as slightly flat or slightly sharp, that is only an indication of how it behaves on most altos. Several alto fingerings carry that flag, including the main altissimo G.

Record your choices somewhere permanent — pencil them into the chart, keep a note in your case, whatever you will actually look at. Alto gives you up to six options per note, which is a gift the first time and a memory problem the fifth time. A fingering that works on your horn will keep working; there is no reason to rediscover it every spring.

Voicing and Overtone Exercises for Alto

The work that makes the fingerings usable

An overtone is a note you produce using a fundamental fingering. Hold a low B♭ then reshape your mouth until the horn abandons the low note and jumps to the one above. Keep going and it climbs again. Because the saxophone overblows at the octave, that low B♭ will give you B♭, the octave above, the F a twelfth up, the next B♭, then D and F — six notes from one hand position.

This is the vital importance of the act of practising your overtones. Remove the fingers from the equation and there is nowhere left to hide — you cannot change the note intentionally without good voicing technique. Time spent practising these overtone exercises translates to producing well-rounded altissimo notes.

Tailoring it to alto

Alto’s moderate resistance makes it the best horn in the family for this work. The overtones take a little more effort to produce than they do on tenor. The can be frustrating for players beginning their overtone studies, but stick with it. If the partial speaks on alto, your voicing is correct, which will form good habits for the altissimo register.

The practical consequence is that alto players can trust the feedback. If an overtone is not coming out, adjust the voicing rather than reaching for more air — on alto, more air is rarely the answer and usually pushes you towards clamping down the reed.

A ten-minute daily routine

1. Low B♭, full and relaxed. Do not push.
2. Without moving your fingers, let it lift to the octave. Think the vowel moving from “aw” towards “ee”. If it will not go, slur down from the fingered octave B♭ first so your body learns the target.
3. Work up the series one partial at a time, holding each until it is steady rather than snatching at it.
4. Repeat from low B, low C and C♯. Different fundamentals put the partials in different places and expose different weaknesses.
5. Front F matching. Play high F with the palm keys, then with front F, and make the two indistinguishable. This is the alto-specific step and it is the one that pays off fastest.
6. Overtone matching. Play a note normally, then the same pitch as an overtone, and make those indistinguishable too.

Overtone matching is some of the most valuable work you can do, not just for developing saxophone altissimo, but for your overall sound across the range. The matching exercises force you to hear the difference in timbre between a well voiced note and a weak note that is merely keyed.

The other route: overblowing in sixths and ninths

There is a second way into the register that suits alto particularly well. Instead of climbing the overtone series from a low fingering, take a fingering from the top of the standard range — anywhere between written A above the staff and high F♯ — and overblow that. The pitch that emerges is roughly a sixth above what you fingered, and pushing further gives you roughly a ninth. Both are in the altissimo register.

Alto players have an advantage here because those upper-range fingerings include the front F shapes you should already be working on. Overblowing from front F, rather than from a palm-key fingering, puts your hand in almost exactly the position several alto altissimo fingerings use — so the exercise and the fingerings reinforce each other.

This also explains where the chart above comes from. An overblown fingering often speaks easily but is badly out of tune; adding or removing a side or palm key shifts the venting and pulls it into line. That is precisely what the alternates on this page are. Alto can be extended by an octave or more this way, which is why the alto chart runs to thirteen notes.

While you are learning to produce these, aim for the centre of each tone. Go for a full sound, rather than for exact pitch. DO NOT use a tuner. Focus on timbre. There is a fuller account of the method in our complete altissimo guide.

The mechanics of voicing — what moves, what should not, and how to feel the crossover point — are covered in more depth in our complete altissimo guide, along with diagrams and in-depth analysis.

Common Problems on Alto

What goes wrong on this horn specifically

If you have worked through these and altissimo still is not happening, it is very often something a teacher spots in seconds and a player cannot spot alone — jaw movement and tongue position are close to impossible to self-diagnose. Saxophone lessons are available in person in South East London and online, and altissimo is one of the most common things alto players arrive with. Get in touch to book.

Recommended Reading

Two worth owning

Alto is the horn most altissimo literature was written with in mind, so you are well served here. Two books do most of the work.

Both are covered, along with two more, in the reading list on our complete altissimo guide.

Printable Alto Altissimo Chart PDF

For the music stand

A printable alto sax altissimo finger chart covering all thirteen notes with main and alternate fingerings, sized for A4 and Letter.