Fly me test

[Anonymous]

Hi jeff,
started work on ‘fly me to the moon’

see what you think?
cheers
sxpoet

[john]

I notice much improvement with your tone and intonation as well….keep it up!

[Mel]

Sounds like a great start!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Johnny,
my teacher is pleased with the sound in my recordings, coming up to my fourth year of sax playing, and looking back at how i sounded when i started out.

Thanks for putting out your Altissimo course, i am in debt to you, as every altissimo book and all the exercises in them, i’ve found to be a complete waste of time and don’t work if you try and learn it on your own, unless you have teacher on hand to decipher them and demo it.

The same thing goes for exercises in music books. I always ask beforehand, the following questions – “Why am i doing this exercise, and what will i benefit from doing this exercise?” and if the teacher or the book can’t give a logical reason, then imho that exercise is a waste of my time and gets binned. Be selective with exercises, and work with a metronome in every exercise!

[Anonymous]

Hi sxpoet, It can’t be easy improvising extra notes into the tune. I’m wondering how you make the sound so breathy.
Is it another effect or do you have your mic really close to the sax?
Two recordings in one week! I’m going to have to do some recording of my own to catch up. Nice one.

[Anonymous]

Hi jeff,

the extra notes, probably come from playing lots of scales up and down the sax, letting the mind play what it wants without thinking about. I don’t know, it just feels natural for me to play that way. it could be due to the fact i spent over 3 months playing lots of boring key combinations exercises in various scales over and over and over, but i vaguely remember a moment when i started playing without thinking where i was on the sax while i was playing.

same effects as the last recording, but less echo. combination of playing with the least possible mouthpiece in the mouth, a reed that loves to live in water when not used, playing over an hour before recording so the body’s running, changing the angle of the sax in relation to the mic but keeping roughly the same distance, playing in a dead room (carpets, bed, wardrobes, side boards).

cheers
jeff

thats all the recording for now, my wife says i sound awful, because i’m spend more time trying to get notes to sound good and practicing in time with a metronome, so she’s hearing less tunes and more squeaking and squawking. look forward to you upload

some blues lyrics for you

Me missus burnt me meal
de dawg clapped on the floor
and now me moto nah workin
and i cant get out de door

[john]

sxpoet, you’ve been attacking it the right way and 2 years later it’s showing. I basically want to slap my forehead every time guys on youtube ask me how to play an altissimo high G! like I can just tell them the fingering position I use and voila!
a good teacher (as you now know) will insist on things like long tones and some of the other (maybe boring) exercises you did on the altissimo course which I’m sure when people are going thru it are skipping over them and still not able to play the high notes…it’s all in those little details.
you are proof to everyone now that going thru this stuff not only gives you control up top but also improves your overall sound.
keep rockin!

[Anonymous]

Johnny – Thanks for the kind encouraging words. You Rock!

A few years ago i remember you mentioning about using a metronome, this year i started using a metronome all the time while practicing, rather than occasionaly in the past. After a few months, the significance of using one while practicing has really sunk in – in terms of feeling the difference it makes.

Also with backing tracks, i’ve now stopped playing along with the sax player, and just play with the straight backing track – now i’m begining to feel better where i am in the track. It’s far from perfect, but things are starting to stick out in the backing instruments while playing, where as before there was no connection.

[john]

so true. when you practice things like scale and arpegio exercises the metronome is a must to force us to play perfectly precise and in time. it also forces us to correct sloppy technique because when we don’t use the metronome we always slow down slightly when going thru a more difficult fingering or passage.
when I heard you first a long time ago playing along with a track your timing was all over the place, now it’s not. the metronome works!
when we practice songs to a backing track it forces us to play correctly just like the metronome does with the exercises…think of the backing tracks as our metronome. when we practice scales or songs without using either of these we’re cheating and fooling ourselves.

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnny,
Thanks kindly, for taking time out to reply! You Rock!

One of the things that the metronome showed up which i wasn’t aware i was doing wrong.
When you start out playing, at the end of every bar or two bars etc, i have to grab air just before starting the next bar.
As a beginner in 4/4 time playing 1/4 notes, you get used to grabbing air at the end of the bar’s, the mistake was that you have learn to grab that air a lot faster and in a shorter time when you come to the end of 1/8 or 1/16 notes in a bar.
So i was coming to the end of a bar that ended in shorter notes, and grabbing air too slowly, and then coming into the start of the next bar too late, which often made it sound like i was putting in a rest that didn’t exist. Something i’m currently working on to improve.

[Author]

Posts