Johnny’s Major Scale course inquiry, great for this song?

[William Cingolani]

Michael and Johnny, I’ve been looking into that thing called improvisation so I hunted around on my desk top for Johnny’s Improve course and I found it. So today I’m attempting to improvise. My music is “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. There are about 16 bars of solo.So I play the melody for a while and solo for a while over these Chords: A minor, E7, A7, and down the way the chords are D minor, G7, C, After watching Johnny improv on “What Does It Take” I said to myself, time to get serious and start playing my own music. So, using Johnny’s improv method I.ll be improving on “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. I play the melody for a while and improv over the solo part. I’ll keep practicing and I’ll record it in the near future and post it. Rock on!

[Michael Bishop]

@ Jeff–A good thing to do is practice notes, scales, Arpeggios, Johnny’s ‘eeh-ahh’ exercise, etc.. with just the MP/reed only. We all know the Sax isn’t a perfect instrument and it’s not always in tune, so we have to play in tune. If we can’t control the MP/reed without the Sax, then don’t expect to be able to control our sound with the Sax. One of the things we can do with Johnny’s eeh-ahh exercise–and I was actually doing this just about 30 min ago– is that we can pick just about any note on the Sax and do it, not just 1 note like Johnny is showing above. Just take a simple C Major scale and try it, 1 note at a time, slow and easy, and really hone on the ‘sweet spot’. Find that sweet spot, then hold it like a long tone….HUGE benefits to doing this. Once we find that sweet spot and compare it with a tuner, we usually find that we’re almost right exactly in tune. I also love the Jazz that has some structure–that’s a good way of putting it there Jeff…but to my ears, it’s still not as good as the Blues 🙂 When it comes to Jazz, the Man I’m working with teaches Bebop and using Diminished Scales–he doesn’t like to go beyond that because from a playing perspective it’s not very practical, which is what I was saying above. He said the biggest compliment he loves to hear people getting from others is “Man, you sound awesome”…so he said take this stuff that I’m learning and use it in a way that’s useful to us/our own playing v.s. worrying about all the minute technicalities that Sax players sometimes get caught up in.

@ William: Right on 🙂 If Johnny’s song of “What Does It Take” don’t get you motivated, then nothing will 🙂 It’s a cool song he picked for sure….I’m so happy he made this available to buy on his site too…got any idea how many people love to hear that song? Not too many people out there know how to play it..which gives us a huge step forward 🙂 I think it’s up there in the category of “Mega tunes” for the Saxophone, who doesn’t love to hear Junior Walker’s Music? For sure, have a go at those 2 songs and upload them when you’re ready….I should be ready to start uploading in November.

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael, we fishermen know all about hooks and lines hey?

My YAS-26 sax is just perfect for me! You see, that’s why I say one must buy a sax of really good quality, then you have more chance of acquiring a well-tuned instrument.

Being able to change the pitch of the notes is very important as you say. Which is why I stopped using my 4C MP and acquired a hard-rubber MP. The S80 being hard-rubber really allows me to bend the notes! Nudge-nudge-wink-wink

[William Cingolani]

Johnny’s Improv course; Great course; Keep it close by. I now pay close attention to the structure of a song. One of the songs I’m working on is full of vi minors, and vi7ths, and iii7ths, and finally a ii, v, i shows up. The 1st chord in the song is an A minor and the last chord in the song is an A minor. Is the song in the key of C or A minor? The ii, v, i is Dm-G7-C. Check out Johnny’s improv course.

[Michael Bishop]

@ Jeff: That’s a great Sax for sure, been around for years. If you know you’re gonna stick with the Sax for the rest of your life, heck yeah put some $ into a great Sax–that’s what I did because it saves money in the long run…but I didn’t get my Trevor James Saxophones thinking that they we’re the ‘ticket’ to sounding good. 90% of our sound comes from our own internal anatomy, our MP/reed/ligature combo. With those 2 factors in mind, we can take our MP/reed/ligature set up, put it on any Sax, and we’re pretty much gonna sound like ourselves, no matter what Sax we’re on. There’s some things about the Sax itself that can have some impact on our sound, but not much. Older Saxophones tend to have a broader, bigger body–this will have some affect on our sound. I know my SR Tenor has a bigger/broader body than my Selmer Bundy and I can hear some difference, but you can still pretty much hear my own sound/tone. Check this out: Let’s say we ever got the chance to try Johnny’s Selmer Mark 6 and his Guardala (that would be awesome). Even with his Sax and his set up, we’re still not going to sound the same as Johnny because our Oral Cavity, diaphragm, etc. is totally different than his. Johnny’s tone/personal sound comes from him, and our tone/personal sound comes from us. That’s a pretty cool thought when we think about it too–it’s great that we do all have a different sound–what if everyone sounded exactly the same? I think that would get very boring! 🙂
@ William: Good stuff–I was very, very happy when Johnny released this course. I remember about a year or so ago he sent out this survey to members, I had put on their that I wanted to see more Improvisation lessons….I’m totally hooked on this stuff 🙂 But from what he was saying, Improvising was at the top of the list from the things that members wanted more of…with his Major Scale course, he responded to that demand in a BIG way 🙂 That stuff works no matter what kind of song, chord progression, style of playing, etc.. Like he says in that course, it’s a Rock-solid way of playing. But when we put all this stuff together that he teaches–Learning how to play the Blues, Altissimo, knowing how to use Modes in our playing, etc.. we suddenly find ourselves getting better and better, sounding great on the Sax, expressing ourselves, and having loads of fun in the process! On a side note, don’t forget about his free Blues lessons on the home page where he’s showing how to use Pentatonics in a 12-Bar Blues progression–good stuff in there. I’ve went over that stuff so many times and I’m always picking something up that I didn’t think about before, good stuff in there for sure. Rock on William 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael regarding your statement, “90% of our sound comes from our own internal anatomy, our MP/reed/ligature combo.”

How are you calculating this percentage? The way we play, whether in tune and how we articulate each note comes down to personal skill which can be learnt.
Sure I agree that the personality of the playing will be unique and the shape of our body has an influence, but the equipment plays a large role in the type of sound produced.

How would you measure the percentage change in the sound from a hard-rubber MP compared to a Jazz metal MP?
When switching from my 4C to the Selmer S80 MP the sound went from ‘slightly irritating’ to ‘pleasant to listen to’ (according to Beverly).
It’s still me playing, so that change in sound quality can only be credited to the S80.

Most listeners don’t bother with percentages and opt for a binary rating – i.e. they either love it or hate it.

[Anonymous]

What’s required is a standard sax playing android to test a number of saxes and MP’s for sound comparison by frequency spectral analysis.

[Anonymous]

Arnie in action!!!

[Michael Bishop]

@ Jeff–The equipment we use has little to do with our overall Sax sound. Talk to any established pro player and they will tell you the same thing. When I say “90%” another way to think about it is the ‘majority’ of our overall sound. The MP/Reed/ligature also plays a huge part in our overall sound–way more than the actual Saxophone itself. Here’s some pro players talking about this very thing (we should actually leave this for another topic/post on Johnny’s forum–we’re talking about Johnny’s Major Scale course here), but they don’t just talk about it, they demonstrate this. You can read the description in their videos for more info/comment on their video to ask them a question.

[Anonymous]

@Jeff Thanks for sharing those robot videos, i didn’t even know these robots existed, i guess in time to come, they will be outplaying the very few top sax players in the last hundred or so years.

The question is will they have enough artificial intelligence to come up with their own music? and if they do, will they think our music is a just a bunch of repetitive junk?

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