[Saxfella]

Thank you all for weighing in on “proper set-up”. Your comments, added to comments from Dave Liebman’s Master Class in France (which I hadn’t seen/heard before), will enable me to look at this topic with a little more rationale than guesswork. All I have to do is hop on a plane and go to Toronto (it’s closer) and hope my sax is in one piece when it comes out of baggage.
I still shudder at the memory of baggage handlers throwing a piece of luggage out of the side of the airplane they were unloading. It didn’t appear to be deliberate, but either the handler by the conveyor built couldn’t catch or the other handler couldn’t throw. When I left for my outgoing flight (in Ottawa) the baggage was still on the tarmac. To be fair, I have travelled to BC, with a securely wrapped sax case, and no breakage problems.
Again, my thanks to all who took the time to reply.

[Saxfella]

Watching the movie (okay, I know black & white, but Manha de Carnival (Black Orpheus) captures that sound and spirit of the Mardi Gras in Rio. The audio for both songs is the same but the lyrics tell two different stories. Good watching and listening.

[Saxfella]

Thanks Johnny. I couldn’t figure out what they were actually hearing that would warrant different chords because I told them the chords just as you have described. A classic case of K.I.S.S. I’m still trying to get a handle on the guitarist mind, i.e., why they refer to a key or a note as a sharp rather than as a flat. It’s not a big deal but when I want to know what note the guitarist just played, answering A# instead of Bb does make a difference for transposing. I’m getting use to this response so I now double check.

[Saxfella]

Check out audio for Black Orpheus.and then the movie.

[Saxfella]

Thanks Baboon. Perhaps I should ask a more direct question. Is there in the Killer Blues… eBook separate links to backing tracks for the Major and Minor Pentatonic scale exercises? These scale exercises are different than what is presented in Johnny’s separate three-part series on the pentatonic scales. In my eBook edition it seems as if the backing tracks should be there but they appear as grey/blue rectangles and can’t be activated.

[Saxfella]

Hi Matt, I’ve been at this awhile and I still can’t do altissimo, but we press on. My solution for a practice routine is to just arpeggiate the E, F and F# chords as if one were playing them normally. Give the notes support but don’t think in terms of having to bear down on the high notes. If we think this way we generally pinch the notes with the ensuing poor results. It helps as well to have the sound of the note in your head, which is what is needed to play altissimo, among other things. Hope this helps.

[Saxfella]

An observation I would make regarding the question about what mpc to beg,borrow, buy or steal. It would seem that is the eternal question for saxophonists and one usually gets a guarded reply which to me is correct. Given everyone’s particular oral cavity shape, the absence or present of x number of teeth, make of sax, reed choice and mpc there can be no definitive answer. One has just got to experiment.
The real question is more likely where do I find a source for all the experimentation that must take place. If you live in the Halifax, NS area, as I do, one is basically out of luck. One can order mpcs from the one major music store but this is a very laborious process. Insofar as finding a used mpc source I’m not sure those wonderful source people that existed years ago have not moved on to greener pastures.
Saxophonists seem to believe that they will be “touched” in some way, but there is no silver bullet. That thought, while depressing is realistic.
Some or most of us have several mpcs, which while not working for us, might work for someone else. But how can we help each other? Forum members may choose to weigh in and I would welcome your observations

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