Welcome back to Get Your Sax Together, I'm pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson. I hope
you had a great week, welcome back! As usual, I am gonna sax up your Sunday
as I do each and every Sunday on this channel. This week I'm gonna teach you
how to play Clarence Clemons legendary tenor solo on a massive tune by Lady
Gaga called "The Edge Of Glory" so let's get straight into it and learn how to play it!
If you've been watching this channel for a while you will know that
I'm all about teaching you how to play bonafide sax classics that I'm
passionate about. If you want to learn how to play in the vocal line of a pop
song, like "Havana" or whatever, you're gonna need to go to another channel because
it's all about the sax here on Get Your Sax Together. I'll teach you how to play
things that were originally played on sax and THIS was originally played by
one of the most famous sax players, who used to play with Bruce Springsteen,
Clarence Clemons. Rather poignantly, this was one of the last things he
recorded, it's with Lady Gaga - "The Edge Of Glory", so let's get into it. I've broken
it into eight phrases. Here's the first phrase. As usual I'm gonna break it down
nice and slowly so you can see the notes, you can see all the fingerings, and it's
gonna be there for alto and tenor. So here is phrase 1...
Don't worry if you can't remember all the notes, just go down into the
description box, click the link, and I'll send you a free PDF which is a
transcription of the whole solo, like this... The Edge Of Glory transcribed, right there for
you, so go down into the description and click the link to get your free pdf. Then you
can follow it through, all the phrases are marked in with numbers in a bracket
underneath the transcription, so that's a pretty cool feature as well. Go and print
it off and you can follow it through as we now move on to the second phrase here
it is slowed down, slow motion...
And now phrase three...
In case you hadn't noticed this whole solo is built
around a pentatonic scale. Now if you want to know what a pentatonic scale is
then go to the card linked up there because I've got a whole video as an
introduction to pentatonics, what the notes are, how you use them and what the
bluesy variations of the pentatonic are. So if you go up to that card you'll find
my video and that will teach you everything you need to know. Now almost
every pop sax solo is made from pentatonics and you'll find them all over
this channel so it's a really convenient video so go and check out that one. Okay,
let's move on to phrase 4... how's phrase 4 lookin'? Yup, still
looking okay, let's check it out here we go...
So when I was checking if phrase 4 was okay I was gonna see if it was the one
that went up high but it's actually this one, phrase five, that goes up to a top F#
on tenor. It's only a top C sharp on Alto so this is
actually quite a good solo to do on alto which is why I've got the fingerings for
both Alto AND tenor on this one. Okay, let's do phrase five - here it is. It's got this really
epic long note and then the beat kicks in underneath it. Great phrase this. Here it is...
Throughout this solo Clarence Clemons uses his trademark growly, gravely tone.
If you wanna know how to do that go to the card linked up there and I've got a
whole video teaching how to grow on sax. Pretty cool video that. Really important
for this solo and many other solos on the channel. So let's go on to phrase
six, it's got all these repeated notes on the offbeat's.
Very simple, powerful phrase throughout this whole solo, let's slow it down and
you can learn phrase six, here we go...
Let's check out phrase seven, this is the penultimate phrase, here it is
nice and slow...
One of the key features of this Clarence Clemons solo on Edge Of Glory is
repeated notes, and there's more repeated notes in this final segment of the solo,
phrase eight. So here it is, and this is how he rounds off the solo, here we go...
So that's it! You've now got all the material you need all eight phrases to
learn the whole solo on Lady Gaga's Edge Of Glory. I'm gonna perform it for you in
a second. I haven't got a backing track for this one - it's a bit of a complicated
backing track - lots of weird, like, gated synth sounds and stuff, like that, it's
not one I could quickly knock up I'm afraid so I'm just going to play the solo. One
feature of what he does is these fall offs these glissandos off the note. Now
stay tuned, because next week I'm going to teach you exactly how to do that - how
to do glissandos, falls, rips, Van Winkle's lol you name it'll be in next week's
video. Okay, let's have a stab at the whole thing. I'm gonna play the whole
solo. The notes will also be displayed for you, so that's also a useful thing
for you to learn the solo with. Here we go, fingers crossed
I'll make it pretty good stab at it. Okay hope you enjoy - here is the Edge Of Glory...
Now - do not forget - do not forget - do not forget - I'm gonna say it three times
because it's so important - it's very important to copy the exact phrasing and
sound of the solos that you're trying to learn otherwise they won't sound
convincing. So you might hear me play it and go "oh, it doesn't sound like
that when I play the notes?" Well, there's a few different things going on. One is,
maybe you're not doing the growl right, and remember I carded a video earlier,
one is maybe the falls aren't right - tune in next week and you can learn how to
do that. You might want to learn how to transcribe it properly and to do that
you can go to the card up there - I've got a whole series, three part series, on how
you can transcribe, and that is the number one thing that's going to
transform your sax playing. That is the secret that you're not going to find in
many places on YouTube about how to play sax. But copying the phrasing is
everything. Getting the right sound, the right timing, you know, the right attack,
the right tonguing. So go to the series on transcription and you can learn how
to do it for yourself. Empower yourself man! So that's it for
this week learning how to play Lady Gaga's Edge Of Glory. Hope you enjoyed
the material. If you're enjoying the channel I'd love it if you would
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is GMT Greenwich Mean Time 7 a.m. every Sunday - so if you're in America, if you're
in China, if you're in Europe that's one hour ahead. I was gonna do a fancy thing
where I was going to tell you what time it would be in your timezone, but, work it
out for yourself! Every Sunday 7 a.m. GMT, because I'm in the UK, that's when
they come out. What else could you do to help me? Go comment - engagement it's
really great I'd love to hear your comments. I will definitely answer all
your questions and all your comments, until I get about a billion subscribers,
which I'm pretty far off at the moment! lol So that would really help me out, check
out my Instagram, and of course don't forget to go down into the description
and get your a fantastic PDF transcription of this solo. By the time
I'm done on Get Your Sax Together, in I don't know how many years, this will be
the ultimate place to come and get every famous sax solo and learn how to play it, as well as
how to get great technique, how to improvise and all the other good stuff
you find right here on Get Your Sax Together. So have a fantastic week, keep
practicing, and I'll see you the next week take it easy, bye!