Jazz & Swing – big band

[Anonymous]

Hey Johnny – Today i joined a big band (40+ players, surrounded
by lots of very experienced players, and a professional conductor),
that was starting up for the 1st time.

We practiced for 3 hrs – guess what – 1st song we played was
watermelon man! The altos were divided into melody & harmony players,
completely random, & i got melody sheet music parts! there must
have been 15 altos.

It was fantastic, no problems with timing with a drummer at the back,
and a double base & base guitar.The rest of the band as made up of
Tenor Saxs, clarinets & trumpets.

The best part – Thanks to the amount of work i put into
using your daily sax routine – my tone was exactly spot on
with all the rest of the players – CREDIT to your routine
without which my tone would be CRAP!

I had lots of timing issues – but to me sounding GOOD – outweighs
everything else – if i had sounded crap – i would have packed it in.

So now its a monthly practice with the band – as its new – hopefully
playing public by the end of the year!

I also have to give credit to my teacher for sorting out my setup,
& credit to myself for practicing at least between 12 & 18 hours a week.
But i’m really pleased to be in a proper band after just starting 18
months ago.

I’ve still got a long way to go, but for me – to sound exactly like
them is ace!

cheers
sxpoet

[john]

That’s good JB. Nothing like working out with a live group like that. will do wonders for your timing too. just have “big” ears when rehearsing and you’ll do fine. we can practice all day long by ourselves but nothing is as valuable as working out with a live situation….especially a big band like that.

[Anonymous]

yeah – compared to the rest of the plsyers i was out of my depth, felt i was among a lot of music
teschers & older university music players! To be fair the band was
formed from a lot of existing orchestra players who wanted to
start up a separate jazz/swing band.

But for me i feel that i entered at the right time, it gives me more incentive to get the timing right & the dynamics right for
a lot of the phrasing – when i do
my own practicing! I told my
sax teacher – so now he’s giving
me a harder time with getting
things right! lol

The left hand side of the band
had 5 rows of sax players – 2 alto
rows, 3 rows for tenors and bari’s. The right hand side had
3 rows of clarinets, and 2 of trumpets, not sure if trumbones
were there. as i sat 2nd row from
front! Really wierd – i though you
could sit anywhere – lol, everyone
else knew where to sit.

Next month – spending a day playing in a real orchestra – that’s going to be a chsllenge!

[Author]

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