Greetings from Germany

[bloozer]

Hi Jonny and everybody else,
i am a 73 years old Alto Player from Hannover, Germany. I play the saxophone now for nearly 9 years. The last 4 years i sometimes played in a Rock Band and here comes my problem. I play with a ‘jazzy’ tone and feeling and always get in conflict with the solo guitarist who complaints about my missing rock feeling, Style and tone. Well i know how to growl and play a decent vibrato but to give it a kind of dirty but melodic rock saxophone sound that is what he misses and really is missing. Rock saxophone is a different beast compared to Jazz saxophone, although pentatonics, blues scales and chords you will also find in the jazz world except that jazz is more a 2-5-1 thing than a 1-4-5. Nevertheless i am very glad to have found your Internet site. i ordered via Amazon your great “How To Play Killer Blues & Rockin’ Sax Solos With 7 Notes Or less” and love to practice with your demos. By the way let me tell you that you have such a great Rock sound and feeling that it is a pleasure to listen to your playing.
Cheers,
Dietmar

🙂

[john]

Hey thanks a lot Dietmar! Glad you are enjoying the book. There are some altoists that are good rock players with a good rock sound, Edgar winters come to mind and older than that is one of the guys I mentioned in the Killer Blues book; Earl Bostic. But for the most part you will find most rock bands will have a tenor.

I played in Hannover a couple time and toured with a band called BB and the Blues Scacks from that area (Hildesheim) do you know of them?
Anyway good luck with your alto!
Johnny

[bloozer]

” But for the most part you will find most rock bands will have a tenor.”

Yes, i am aware of that. I played the tenor for several years, but always didn’t like my air support on the tenor. So last year i switched to Alto.
Is there a chance that you will eventually play once again in Germany? When i was a young man in the early sixties i often heard british Rock bands in Hamburg. They mostly came from Liverpool and played songs of Little Richard or Chuck Berry. These bands often had a horn player with them. Some years later all horn players were abandoned.

[john]

Yes, the guitar took over big time!
For years I went all through Europe and especially all over Germany, as there are many music festivals there with such a large population etc, but things get expensive with flying my large band over there and then it’s too difficult to make enough money and so we and the promoters lose interest. But one day it can happen again!

[Author]

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