When you start looking at Jazz lead sheets, you might notice a Chord with the Alt modification. This is an altered chord.
Continue readingAltered chords
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Category Archives: Saxophone
Swinging eighth notes via articulation
Someone asked (on Reddit) how to swing eighth notes. Here’s my response, somewhat cleaned up and expanded.
Don’t. If you try to swing them, they will be over done.
Play straight eighth notes. The “swing is done via articulation.
18 Triadic Permutations
I use the term permutations loosely here. But for any given chord inversion, there are 6 variations of the tones in the pitch you can play in order to play each tone once. What makes this an impure use of the term permutations is that the second and third notes of the sequence can go both above the starting note in one variation, and below it in another.
Continue readingDecisions when playing Chromatic Triadic patterns
George Garzone is the Sax players sax player. He is a teacher that has taught the best of the crop that is out there right now. I had the privilege of studying with George back in high school. I can honestly say that no subject I studied before or since taught me how to think better than Jazz improvisation.
Continue readingI know JACK!
Well enough to be dangerous. I was able to get the JACK Daemon running on my Lenovo Laptop running Fedora 32, and us it to record MIDI-based music.
Continue readingThe Bird Run
The Summer Youth Music School (SYMS) at the University of New Hampshire runs each summer. I attended it a couple years back in High School. The second year, I prepared a piece called Au Privave (No. 1) from the Bird Omnibook. This is a transcription of solo by Charlie Parker.
Charlie Parker played on alto, but I played tenor sax, and prepared the version from the B flat book, which was transposed down a fifth. It turns out that this radically alters the fingerings. Parker played insanely fast, and in doing so, he naturally sought out the fingerings that flowed smoothly and naturally on the Saxophone. And then he played them at superhuman speed. It turns out that transposing it up a fifth radically changes some of the fingerings, and also puts many of the notes out of the range of the Saxophone
I bombed the audition.
Continue readingBenefits of Saxophone
When you play Saxophone, your whole body plays music.
Continue readingSomething to think about during Jazz Improvisation
Jazz improvisation performance. You’ve been preparing. You have mastered your instrument with long tones, scales, and exercises. You have worked on general knowledge of music theory, chords, and the relationship between them. Now what?
Continue readingReimagining the Saxophone
During a trip to Manhattan last winter (Jan 2016 or so) I heard some buskers in Union Square station making sounds that were at once familiar and new.
Continue readingEmilio’s Craftsmanship
My Saxophone is back from the workshop of Emilio Lyons. It is a pleasure to play on it. I would say “like new” but for two things. First, the horn was twenty years old when I got it, so I never played it new. Second, Emilio has customized the feel of the horn enough that o suspect it never played like this. What did he do?