Bought “Take Five” song, question about download and transposing sheet music

[Michael Bishop]

Hi Johnny,

Bought “Take 5” and noticed there is a chart for Improvising to download for the song in addition to the sheet music. Is there a section of the song where this Improvisation chart will come in handy?
Also, when we are transposing sheet music for alto/tenor (when looking at the difference on the Improvisation chart we downloaded for this song in addition to the sheet music) From what I understand from your link here on the site/your youtube video; if I’m on a middle C-on the Piano-I would count DOWN 3 semi-tones for ALTO-which would take me to A on the Piano and go UP 2 semi Tones for TENOR; which would take me to D on the Piano; is this correct?
Looking forward to learning Take Five, a perfect song for the Alto 🙂

[jake]

You are correct. a “C” on piano equates to a “A” on alto and a “D” on tenor. I find myself transposing a lot of different songs. I found a free app for my ipod. Its called “Saxophone All in 1”. Just search ‘saxophone free’ and it should pop up. I paid the few buck to unlock the whole app. It gives you the transposing option along with a tuner, metronome, blues scales, and key charts. Its pretty helpful to say the least. I do have a question for Johnny if he reads this.
Why are instruments made in different keys? Is there a reason they are different? Why is there Eb, Bb, and C?? Always wondered that. As always, thanks for your valuable info!!

[Michael Bishop]

Thanks Jake–that’s interesting to hear about the app you found for your ipod. I’ll check it out.
Hey Johnny: Listening/watching you play Take Five (now that I had a few minutes to take a look at the sheet music/blues Improvisation) seems like your improvising in the middle of the song? That is a great question that Jake has about instruments in different keys; I saw a youtube video from a professor of Music theory and he was talking about all kinds of instruments, but it was the Saxophones (he mentioned the trumpet too) as the “meat” for his lesson on why we have to transpose sheet music to match concert pitch. But he never said why they are made in different keys like Jake is wanting to know here.

[john]

Just follow the music the way it’s written. After the entire melody is played it says “solo”.
The great thing about this tune is it stays on one chord for the entire solo.
Now check out the scales I included in the download, these are what you use for the solo.
Listen to my recorded version and to the original by Paul Desmond, all licks used are derived entirely from the notes of these 2 blues scales.
As you work on it you have 2 ways to go about it: make up your own licks from these notes, or pick one of the licks from mine and Desmonds versions and try to copy it. You already have the big secret revealed because you now know the exact notes used to play any of the licks you hear.

[john]

As for why instruments are in different keys….
it’s too complex for me to explain fully but I think it’s because they are different sizes, lengths (if you stretched out a tenor it would be much longer than an alto) so to have the same fingering it must be this way for the pitches to match.

[Michael Bishop]

Awesome Johnny–this song is a PRIME example of what I’m looking to do with my sax playing now in 2014–while it’s great fun to learn the notes from songs/how to play them, I don’t want to be the kind of player that is just memorizing notes to songs all the time (but that certainly has it’s place, great fun too). As I work through the solo, I’m going to most certainly watch your licks/original licks, but want to ALSO incorporate at least a few of my own licks into this solo. I have learned enough to know that Improvisation is one of the things that separates great sax players from the rest; like the sax solos you posted in the blog show. The lessons I book with you now, once every 3 months, it’s going to be mostly on Improvisation based off of Killer Blues. In this first lesson, I wanted to work on the Improvisation lesson based here on your homepage, now that I learned a couple months back I can Improvise in more than one Octave. I’m done with part 1 and started playing with part 2.

[john]

Just start easy by playing around with those 2 scales included in the Take Five download. All those notes work with what’s going on musically so just try stuff with them until something clicks.

[Mike Prinzi]

Hey, I downloaded Take Five and all it showed was the main melody, not the complete sheet music that i expected to see that Johnny plays in the video

[john]

I didn’t transcribe my solo on Take Five, but instead wrote out the scales used for soloing. You will see that sheet included with the download if you didn’t miss it. It’s a minor pentatonic (5 notes) and minor blues scale (7 notes). These are the basics for all rock and blues improvising and all the licks I played on Take Five were derived entirely from these simple scales.

What I have students do is learn these scales until they are totally well memorized and then play and experiment with the backing track. Slowly you will develop your own licks and patterns out of these scales which will totally fit the song. Along with this you can copy one of the licks from my solo as well as from the original Paul Desmond solo too, I actually copied a lot from him so mine isn’t that different.

If you take this approach you will get a lot out of it because you’ll discover things that will enable you to solo over other songs too. And the beauty of working out on this tune’s solo section is that it’s all on one chord so you don’t need to worry about any other changes.

[Mike Prinzi]

After downloading Take Five sheet music I found it only showed the main melody, I was hoping to see the whole song that Johnny plays in the video; is it available?

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