Hi, I'm pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson and you're watching Get Your Sax Together.
I sax up your Sunday every week, with free online saxophone lessons
bringing you great technique tips, player profiles and breakdowns of your favorite sac solos.
On today's free lesson - one of my favourite funky sax breaks of all time - oh my god this is so good!
It's Ernie Watts hook from The Dude by Quincy Jones.
I swear to god, the sax break in The Dude is one of the grooviest things I've ever heard.
I almost don't want to touch it because I love it so much, but it's my sacred duty to bring you guys
the world's greatest sax moments, so here we are. The Dude is from Quincy Jones' 1981 album of the
same name, and features a star-studded lineup of some of the world's greatest musicians, including
amongst many others, Herbie Hancock, Louis Jordan, Jerry Hey, Stevie Wonder and Patti Austin. The song
itself was written by Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton and Patti Austin, and somewhere in there you can
even hear Michael Jackson on backing vocals. Not a name that creates universally good vibes these
days but that's how good this track is -one of the biggest stars of the era was on backing vocals!
The horns are by Jerry Hey and his crew and that funky tenor sax hook is handled by the one and
only Ernie Watts. Ernie was and is one of the most in-demand jazz and session saxophonists of
all time, and you can hear him on record with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Frankie Valli,
Marvin Gaye and James Taylor, as well as countless others. He's on The Dude and he is The Dude! And if
that wasn't enough, he also plays the theme from Cagney and Lacy. So... If you like these hall of fame
breakdown videos, go to the card linked above now, because believe me there's a bunch more of them,
and hit the link in the description to get your free PDF transcription for The Dude, for alto
or tenor - you know the drill by now - plus there's more free goodies in the description,
including my new Deluxe Saxophone Fingering chart and my free one hour Saxophone Success
Masterclass. Ok, without further ado, let's start learning this riff. If you're a beginner
on sax this one is going to be quite easy for you. Well, on alto anyway. If you play tenor, you've got
to work out that pesky top F#! Keep watching to the end, because after I play it through I let
the backing track run for you to play along with. I've got a couple of special guests on
this backing track as well and I'll tell you about them after we've learned the phrases.
There's only three phrases to learn for this one, and apart from one chromatic note at the end,
it's all on a concert G major pentatonic. The card above links to my video on pentatonics if
you don't know what I'm talking about. So it's gonna be an A pentatonic for tenor and an E
pentatonic for alto. Here's the first phrase in slow motion.
Here's the second phrase now. If you need help with the top F# on tenor, be sure to check out my Altissimo
video linked on the card above now. If you play alto you'll be fine as it only goes up to C#.
The third phrase starts off like phrase two, but has a different ending.
So you've now got all the phrases you need to assemble the whole eight bars.
If you go and get your free PDF transcription for The Dude, you'll see how the structure works.
You play phrases one and two three times, then finish with phrases one and three. Each
phrase is one bar long, so that makes up the eight bars. One two, one two, one two, one three.
Sounds like a sound check! I put together my own backing track for this one, and a special
thank you and shout out goes to my two guest musicians. Greg Hagger from Greg's Base Shed is
on, surprise surprise , bass. You might remember he played bass on the Forget-Me-Nots video
and my bestest buddy Simon Finch makes his Get Your Sax Together debut on trumpet. Go and check
out Finchy's twisted trumpet and beat making, on his self-titled YouTube channel. I'll put links
for Greg and Simon Finch in the description. Right, there's a one bar count in and then
we're in. After I've run it down you can play along with the backing track yourself. Have fun!
So that's it for this week, consider your Sunday well and truly saxed up. I hope you enjoyed
learning Ernie Watt's iconic tenor riff on The Dude by Quincy Jones. I know I say it all the time,
but this really is one of my favourite sax moments of all time. Don't forget to pick up your free PDF
using the link in the description, and if you want to learn some more in-depth sax stuff,
go to getyoursaxtogether.co/masterclass to get your free, one-hour lesson with
me. You can help me out by subscribing, click the bell icon for notifications when I upload or go
live and give me a thumbs up and a comment. Until such time as my subs go ballistic, I read every
comment so I will see your remarks. And of course you can keep up to date with my Insta and Facebook
pages. If you want to contribute even more you can Buy Me A Coffee using the link in the description
and thank you so much if you've already done that, it's much appreciated and your generosity
always blows me away. I read every comment on Buy Me A Coffee but I'm a bit behind replying
to them all at the moment, so apologies for that. Once again I've got no idea what next week's
lesson is going to be, but until then, practice hard, practice smart, and enjoy your music. See you later.
no bloopers... no bloopers... what am I going to put in the blooper reel now?