Welcome back to Get Your Sax Together. Nothing says pop cheese quite like Gary
Herbig's epic 1987 tenor solo on the hit from the movie Dirty Dancing "(I've
Had) The Time Of My Life", by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warner, and I'm gonna teach
you how to play it! "Yay!!"
Okay, first of all, full disclosure, this is not an easy sax solo, okay? This is
very hard, especially on tenor, and I know many pro saxophonists who struggle with
this solo, so that's the first thing - it's difficult. But it's one of the most
famous sax solos of all time. I absolutely love it and that's what I'm
all about on this channel, so we're going to cover it! Alright, let's crack on. Here
is the first phrase played very slowly for you...
If you go down into the description and click the link there's a free pdf
transcription of this solo... lets find mine here... beautifully transcribed by myself,
so go and print that off, it's got all the phrases marked in, all the different
numbered phrases are marked in there, so print it off and follow along as we learn
this solo. Right, moving straight on, here is the second chunk, the second phrase...
Okay, on to the third chunk now. This has got very fast triplets in it, so again,
practice it slowly and then build up your speed over time until you can do it...
hopefully! lol Here it is played really slow...
It's worth mentioning at this point that these phrases - they join into each other
at times, so I've broken them into manageable chunks but remember you have to practice
them flowing in, and once you've got the music printed off, remember the link's in
the description for the PDF, you can see where all the phrases are to join them up and
make a whole phrase out of it. Okay moving on, here is...what phrase are we up
to?... phrase 4, here we go, slow...
All right, things are getting tasty, it's phrase five. Now then on tenor this goes
up to a high G sharp, which is a very dodgy note - it doesn't really want to come
out very strong most of the time, so you got to work on that, work on your altissimo. On
alto you're okay, it doesn't go into the altissimo at all, so here is phrase five,
slowly...
Okay great, moving on to phrase six, here it is broken down...
I love phrase seven. This is wicked. Really nice
bluesy phrase. Here it is broken down nice and slow for you...
Okay, more fireworks on tenor with the final phrase 8. We're going up to a high
A, high G sharp. Now that is tricky to play, so again
an alto you're alright, here is the final phrase...
Wicked, that is all the material
you need. Now when you join that all up it's gonna sound that something like this...
Okay folks that's all we've got time for this week. You have just learned how to
play one of the most famous sax solos of all time - "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life",
played by Gary Herbig, who incidentally is
also the sax player that you may hear on the theme from Roseanne, for those of you
that follow American TV. Okay next week more fantastic sax related content,
please do subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, click the bell to be
notified when I upload new content, go and check out my Instagram feed, and of
course, don't forget to go and get your PDF by following the link in the
description. Look forward to next week, keep practicing and I'll bring you more
saxy content... god, that's a terrible link! lol See you later, bye!