Blues Saxophone Improvisation

Learning Blues Saxophone Improvisation

Johnny Ferreira

As someone that was attracted to the saxophone sound, you must be a fan of some type of blues saxophone music, rock, jazz or a combination of these styles among others. As you start learning to play your sax you will undoubtedly become interested in not only playing it but eventually want to experiment with making up your own solos. This is called improvisation. We just play what comes to mind and make our own solo over the music.

But what can we play to make our notes fit? How do we know which notes will fit and sound good over the song we’re improvising over? 

These are the most common questions every beginner asks. The good news is, I have some very simple answers!

Fortunately we have this thing called the pentatonic scale. The word “penta” means five. So this scale consists of five notes. There is a major pentatonic scale and a minor pentatonic scale. Both of these scales can be used in blues songs, pop songs, funk, swing, jazz, and rock music. It’s a very useful and versatile scale to know and it’s where you should start your blues saxophone improvisation studies.

The Penatanic Major and the C Major Scales – See the Difference?

Above is the C major pentatonic scale. It consists of five notes. You count six but the last note is a C an octave higher than the first C so it’s the same note…a C. If you’ve been practicing your major scales (and you should be) then you can easily learn a pentatonic. It’s the same as a regular major scale except you omit the 4th and 7th notes. Have a look at the written musical notes above. You’ll see that the pentatonic is made up of the 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6th notes of the regular C major scale. We omitted the 4 and 7. Easy right?

So How Do We Use This Scale?

When playing over a major blues tune, we can use any or all of these 5 notes and they will work. Of course the trick is to come up with interesting riffs and licks that are musical, interesting and entertaining. First for you and then ultimately to your audience.

This is what we’re going to work on and develop in the following lessons below.

When you read lessons online and articles discussing how to play the blues or how to practice saxophone blues improvisation most will say which scale to use (as I just did) and then tell you to start using it. But what if you still don’t know where to start and how to put it together enough to make it sound like something good and musical?

Baby Steps

In our first C blues improve lesson we’re going to start by using only 3 notes of the 5 note pentatonic scale. Play a riff with the 3  notes then add a 4th, then a 5th. Kinda like a juggler adding another ball each time to make it a little more exiting. We keep it simple but sounding good the whole time.

You’ll follow along and after practicing over and over it will become much easier and start making more sense. Soon you’ll be going beyond these example exercises and start branching out into your own patterns of riffs and licks….this is what blues saxophone improvisation is all about.

Let’s get started!

Pentatonic Major Scale
Part One

The Pentatonic scale is the easiest place to start soloing over blues because it’s only got 5 notes. We start first with 3 notes, then adding 4, then 5. This makes it easy, even for the complete beginner.

Pentatonic Blues In C

This lesson is intended for those who are totally new to improvising. Not only will this get you learning how to improvise but it will help you to be better at playing with a group because there are play-along backing tracks.

Pentatonic Major Scale
Part Two

In this Part 2 you will learn 3 Pentatonic Major Scales and apply them to the 12 bar blues progression. Doing this will give you more scope, give your solos more range and widen your possibilities that much more.