the Wall

[Anonymous]

sxpoet has hit the wall! seriously.

Rather than continually trying to play harder sheet music, i need to stop,
and just focus on improving the quality of the existing level of sheet music i’ve covered for the next foreseeable months at least, otherwise i’ll just get fed up of playing.

In the mean time whilst doing that, “after a lengthy and long drawn out discussion with my instructor (5 mins chat lol)”, rather than jumping back into improvising, he’s wants me instead, to work on developing a busking list of tunes. Ie learn to play them from feeling around the sax, with or without a backing track and NOT memorise everything straight from a music sheet which is a better processing of learning to work your way round a sax and in the long run will go a long way to help in improvising.

His idea is if i can learn to play an average of about 25 well known tunes from memory by working out on the sax where each note is rather than memorising the sheet which is an altogether different process, then that will give me more freedom to improvise later on and find my way round a sax, when it comes to doing newer stuff. ie the sax becomes an extension of the body rather than an object you pick up and play.

By doing a busking list, i should get my mojo back focusing p on enjoying the freedom of playing tunes to a track or no track without the restrictions of looking at a sheet, and get the satisfaction of feeling you can do something without a sheet.

Still in the meantime practicing the existing level of sheet material, until i get more proficient at that level

See how it goes.

my busking list

fly me to the moon
moon river
summertime
what a wonderful world

apparently ‘Autumn leaves’ is one of the easiest song to start and should be at the top of a busking list, but it also depends on what tracks you have available

[Mel]

Good post sxpoet. That’s a good start to your busking list.

[Anonymous]

cheers Mel!
Made a mistake, the second song in my busking list should be “Blue Moon”, not “Moon River”. lol

The good news is – Mr Ferreira has provided three of these tracks in a different key.

My lesson went something like this.

Teacher “Have you heard Blue Moon?”

sxpoet “Yes”

Teacher “Ok, it starts on middle G, now try and play it on the sax”

sxpoet – plays middle G, then fumbles around the keys on the sax, and manages to hit some correct keys and hits some wrong keys which he has to fumble around and find the correct key by trial and error.

sxpoet – has a couple more goes, and manages to play the main part of the tune.

Teacher “Well done, now just practice that each day. Next week i want to hear all four songs”

If you can hum or sing a song, then by trial and error you can play it on the sax eventually. Once you manage to do that, you should be able to retain it a lot longer or pick it up a lot quicker later on , than if you sit down and look at the sheet and try and memorise a few bars at a time which is harder.

However, if you cant sing or hum the song in your head, then you are not familiar with the song, and need to listen to it played.

[Author]

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