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Video transcript:

Part One

Such a great solo, isn’t it? We’re gonna have a real close look at this, so hopefully it’ll help you to put it together and eventually blow through it at the proper speed.

So here we go pick up to the solo. One two, so triplets, right? One two three, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba…here’s a triplet on the pickup. But there’s one one of the notes is a rest so you’re only playing two of them. Makes it a little trickier to start but you’ll get it.

I’ll play it again for you one too. Now the second riff. Pick up at the end of the bar for into bar five. Three sixteenth note there as the triplets. There’s a triplet on the downbeat and then the upbeat is the eighth note. One two, three…. might help you to accent the first down on the down beat of each of tho You know, so you get that Rhythm happening strong on the first beat one, two, three.

This solo is written by a tenor sax player Chuck Rio. When it’s directly transposed to be played on an alto, you’re playing a set of notes that is more difficult to play rhythmically than it was for the tenor. So that whole thing could be a bit of a nightmare for the alto at a fast tempo. You can practice it slowly and build it up, you know. Every day and eventually get it.

I have a workaround for that. It’s not perfect but it’s something that might stop you from pulling your hair out. On alto I would do it like this… use your side D. Normally when you’re playing a high octave D. That D now you’re using that in the middle register, which is not a hundred percent legitimate to do because you never play a middle D using your your high D fingering, but when you do that in the middle octave, you’re not getting up really good note from it. But because we’re moving so fast you’re gonna get a similar kind of sound with a fast movement that will get you through that part.

Part Two

The second half of the solo right? That’s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 then 8 bars. Of course there’s that forked F key that is a valid F fingering. But if you’re going to go for a long sustained high F I would advise against that fingering and do the all your palm keys and your this one. So you’re that your side palm key high F. Why? because it’s it’s more in tune. The fork tends to be flatter.

You’ll get it a nicer in tune F by doing this side fingering Okay, the next note is that high E2 and now you’re going to Trill it to that. So now you’re playing high E and you’re trilling it back to using that high F key if you use that forked F, you couldn’t trill that lower E, so that’s another reason why you can’t use that forked F fingering, and then the E with the trill on it.  We’re just hitting that high E and trilling it with that high F key which is your your lower palm key there and you’re going to be hitting that with this this finger here.

What you’re doing is you’re going to be trilling C natural, right? You wouldn’t do it like that because you can’t do it that fast. It’s clumsy. So what you’re going to do is finger your your high B note and then trill using this one here the C, this C. So it’s your middle side key down here, okay. And then he hits the high F again after the trill and then ending all that high ending that with the D.

So we’re bar, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 and of bar 11 of the solo there, right? Hitting that D, and I’ve got that fall off sign and I always do a nice backward glissando coming down, which is a, fall off. It’s just all the notes just a chromatic scale thing. I have some lessons on how to play some of these embellishments and the glissando is included so you might want to check those out at another time. It would make this video too long. If I got it all that.

Next part after the high part here from the high D it leads into that 11 12 13 14 13th bar, which is going to be another bar of triplets, right? Let’s look at that bar 13, so it’s a play the D That’s tied. Over from the previous bar. So once you get that. Triplets again quarter note triplets 3 over 2 beats. Now that’s easy enough, but if you want to do exactly what the guy did in the in the original solo, you have to add the flutter tongue, which is a technique he uses not only in the solo but also in the melody that you heard in the beginning of the melody, right?

So flutter tongue is simply rolling your R’s. And again, that’s another lesson. But some people have trouble rolling their R’s. I guess it depends on what part of the world you’re from or what what languages you speak but it is hard for some people to roll there are their tongue. So if you can roll your your tongue you could do the the this technique.

I think he kind of fades off the the rolling there. It’s not necessary to pull off the solo obviously, you can you can play the notes. But if you want it to sound like that original you should be doing that rolling your tongue technique there. Second last part of the solo. Right. It’s after the all the triplets picks up into… so that’s it for the solo.