Blues lick

[lauren]

Hey Johnny, what key is the starter lick in on your Killer Blues Course? I wanted to try messing around with it a little but unsure how to go about it!
Beginner for sure!!
🙂

[Dazza]

Het Lauren. I think you will find it’s in C. In the blues scales you have some flat 3rds and fifths in there as well which add a great sound. I have been playing these today for a few hours and learning the pentatonic scale exercises and what a lot of fun. Its really cool to adopt these exercises in conjunction with the licks in the free improvisation exercises Johnny offers. I have been guilty lately of trying to do too much so I decided today to choose five songs, learn them to memory, play them with the backing tracks then add one song at a time while practicing long tones and altissimo and improvisation. I think I have to give up work to get all this is in in one day!! Does anyone feel sometimes that there is so much to learn you wonder how you might ever master this machine well enough to play the way you dream of.

[Anonymous]

i have the exact same problem – theres juat too many things to cover in a day!

Theres so many skills on the sax to master (good tone, perfect fingering, exact timing, ace sight reading, hearing good pitch, memorising songs etc… the list goes on)

performing – should be like the main course of a meal
practice – should be like the starter of a meal, where you look forward to the main course
desert – that might be the feed back from the performance?

For some people the easy option is just to pick one area and focus on it for several months before moving onto something else – the only problem with that is you could spend your whole lifetime just getting it perfect, so in my case i prefer to work on several projects to a reasonable standard.

Its a case of priorities – work on the weakest skills first and rotate thrm.

my main goal is to ve able to play any sheet straight through in the first few takes, without having to struggle to learn it bar by bar,

To do that i practice a lot of sight reading exercises, i then go back to JF’s harder songs, and find months later they are getting easier in that respect.

[Michael]

Hi Lauren,
That’s cool that you’re getting into the Blues thing, it’s great fun to play for sure. There’s a lot to take in with this book as I’m sure you can see. When I first started learning this style of playing, my wife thought that it was a “small” book, but once she took a good look at it’s contents she realized that there’s actually a lot to take in. When you’re working on this book, don’t just ‘memorize’ the stuff and then fool ourselves into thinking that we know it. Rather, take the time to break it all down so that you can see what makes this kind of Improvisation ‘tick’. Provided we know our scales inside-and-out, we can apply this stuff to any scale and before you know it, it’s part of “us” if you get my meaning. I’m starting to use this stuff freely in my own playing…cool feeling to say the least! But I still have a long way to go.
In the Blues Scales, while the fifth is important as it defines part of the chord of the scale and should certainly be used in our Improvisation, the key notes that really define the blues scale is the minor 3rd and that flat 7..those are the 2 notes that really give our playing that “blues” type of sound. If you look at Johnny’s exercises for the Pentatonic Scales in the book, you’ll see how he talks about adding those 2 notes to even a Pentatonic Scale. A good place to use the flat 7 is when we’re heading into the 4 chord, but that’s certainly not the only place. In the Blues Scale, we also can also use a flat 5 in select places. Especially when we really emphasize the flat 5 as say, a passing note, it adds a lot. Take a look at how Johnny uses them in the Blues Scale exercises.
Like JB and Dazza were saying, there’s so much on the Saxophone to learn! Killer Blues has been the main focal point in my practice/playing since last October…there’s only so much time in the day LOL My goal is by around Spring of this coming year to be done with Killer Blues and then move onto Johnny’s new Improvisation course. It’s starting to really click with me for sure, but I want to make sure I’ve got it all totally 100% under my belt and that this kind of playing is “me” before moving onto anything else. My practice sessions revolve around a 20 minute warm up, Killer blues, practicing 1 song on Alto and 1 on Tenor Sax–and even with the songs I only work on learning a few notes at a time…I just don’t have the time to do anymore than that…time, time, time LOL I wish there was more of it.

[Anonymous]

i kove to pick up music sheets, and have a go at trying them out.
At my age, its just too late in life to start memorising songs, so instead my route is definitely the sheet playing one.

Because of that, my lifetime goal, is just to get better at it, and in my case doing alto sax grades is just ideal for achieving that, theres 8 grades spread over 8 years – so a long haul for me. I wan’t to do the grade 3 this november or in early 2016. Also to supplement that i’m working through a year long music theory course which is quite in depth.

Over here in the uk – its hard to get anyone to take you seriously if you haven’t done any grades on what ever instrument you play. Most kids over here, if they want a career in music, by the time they are 18, they’ve normally done all 8 grades, gone on to university or giging for a living.

For late starters in life, doing grades aren’t that appealing, so for these guys they really can be lost at sea as to what they are supposed to be doing unless they’ve got some musical background, or help from a teacher/pro.

But just because my main focus is on sheet music, mastering grades, and studying music theory (to help achieve this), it doesn’t stop me from slowly working my way through JF’s improvising course in the back ground.

I’ve also got JF’s blues course, and a Jazz imorovising course lined up (which funnily enough says dont get stuck in the blue improvising 1st), but i don’t want to start them yet, for me i feel they would be a lifelong course, not something to spend a few months on. So i’m looking forward to them later on.

[Abe Sloan]

Lauren,
I suggest that you take a look at the book THE MUSICIANS WAY by Gerald Klickstein. It is a good guide on how to approach and achieve your goals from how to approach your practice sessions to how to prepare for a performance. You can see some excerpts about practicing on the Amazon web site and that might be all you need right now.

[Author]

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