Greetings I'm pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson and this is Get Your Sax Together
On this free sax lesson you're going to learn how to play the famous
sax break from Careless Whisper by George Michael
This free saxophone lesson is part of my Sax Hall Of Fame series where I walk you through the
RIGHT way to play your favorite iconic sax hooks. If you're enjoying the content
please subscribe down below "ring the bell" to be notified of new videos and if
you look in the description you'll see that there's a free pdf to accompany the
lesson, so go down there check out the PDF and let's get into it!
Careless Whisper was a massive 1984 hit for George Michael and contains one of
the most famous sax hooks of all time. Michael knew how important the sax was
to the success of the track and went through some 12 different session
musicians before finally going with the Steve Gregory version that we all know
know and love. The line itself was played on tenor sax on the recording by Gregory
but instead of playing it in D minor which is the original key of the song
the engineer slowed the tape down and Steve Gregory played it in D flat minor
avoiding the awkward high F sharp first note on tenor. The tape was then sped
back up to the original key giving the sax line a really unique tone unlike
anything else you can hear on famous sax solos - not quite tenor not quite Alto but
really gives a distinctive sound to the track. So if you're a tenor player and
you've ever tried to copy that line and you can't quite understand why it's not
sounding like the original that is probably why! To keep things simple for
this video I'm going to teach you on alto sax so all the pitches I give you
will be for alto sax. If you want to play it on tenor transpose it up a fourth,
that's five semitones, higher. Okay let's do this!
So without further ado let's break this down into four separate phrases and the
first phrase starts on a D middle and you're gonna very quickly ri p up a D major
scale - E, F sharp, G, A, B and then finish on the C sharp. Then followed by B, F sharp, D,
C sharp, B, F sharp, D. So putting together the whole first phrase then...
Second phrase we start on an A, so A, G, D, B, A, G, D. So joining out the whole second phrase a
phrase 3 is going to be G, F sharp, D, B, G.
so the fourth phrase we're gonna start on the low f-sharp and we're gonna make
our way up a D major scale, so, F sharp, G, A, B then C sharp, D, E, F sharp, and then we
quickly rip up the rest of the D major scale so G, A, B to get to the top C sharp
where the phrase starts again.
And we repeat the whole thing again. There's
only one difference the second time round and that is at the end of the
final phrase, that's phrase four, we go from the F sharp instead of ripping up
to the C sharp to start again we just go back to B.
And that is the whole first sax break! Okay great, now finally you can play
along at full speed
So I hope you enjoyed the video today, if you find it useful please do subscribe
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I'll see you next time for more free great sax lessons and vlogs on Get Your Sax Together