Complete Beginners Guide
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King CurtisFor many players and fans of the saxophone, King Curtis was the definitive rock and roll sax player.
Both in style and sound and of course all those early rock & roll records he played on. He was heavily influenced by the very first generation of players that were on the scene before it was called rock & roll.
Guys like Illinois Jacquet who were in the for-front of this music in the late 1940’s. Curtis then became a major influence of the generation that came after him.
Personally, I discovered him in the late 1970’s. A friend of mine had one of his solo albums and I was hooked. I copied his licks and of course his sound influenced me a lot. I guess this take of Soul Twist is pretty good proof of that!
I hope you like it too and also will take something valuable from these lessons…
Check out the King Curtis version and my version which was heavily influenced by his..
King Curtis
Johnny
Backing track
MP3 Audio Backing Track:
Bb Saxophone Music
Eb Saxophone Music
Tenors are using the F# and Altos are using the C#. The dominant 7 scale is what we use to improvise with.
You should be able to play the scales from memory, smoothly up and down.
Also the chords:
practice 1, 3, 5, 8 for the major chord
practice 1, 3, 5, b7 for the dominant 7 chord
Pentatonic major scale:
Easily figure out the pentatonic major scale by looking at the regular major scale and using the 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6th notes of that scale:
so an F# pentatonic major scale is F#, G#, A#, C#, D#. The C# pentatonic major scale is C#, D# E#, G#, A#.
