Hi I'm pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson, you're watching Get Your Sax Together,
and on this week's lesson I'm gonna give you a roadmap which is gonna show you
how to play jazz on saxophone.
This week's free online saxophone lesson is
gonna be a bit more informal than previous weeks not gonna have any fancy
graphics and all that stuff and what I'm gonna do is give you a very broad
outline of the kind of things that you're going to need to get in place if
you want to play jazz on saxophone. There's a free pdf for this lesson you
can get by going down into the description and also please go and check
out my free one-hour saxophone success masterclass which is my gift to you guys.
It's as much as I could fit in one hour about everything that I know about
playing saxophone - just go down to the link in the description to pick that up
or you can go to www.getyoursaxtogether.com/masterclass.
Learning jazz is, of course, a lifetime's work so there's no way I can actually
teach you how to play jazz in totality in one short video. However, I've broken
the approaches down, or the steps, or the methods, into four distinct different
categories. The first one is learning how to play jazz from the theoretical,
academic standpoint. The second approach is by learning from previous jazz
masters like the ones pictured behind me and like the saxophonists featured in my
Hall of Fame series. The third important milestone for learning jazz is you
have to master your own instrument - you have to be technically proficient at
playing this lump of tubing, stick of wood and pads. So you gotta "get your sax
together" lol And finally the fourth phase, or the fourth step, is synthesizing all
those steps and then trying to forget about them to really express
what you want to say from your heart.
Before we kick off, let's talk about jazz
itself. This is not a lesson on the history of jazz or what jazz is, but jazz
means something different to absolutely everybody. For some people jazz might be
Louis Armstrong "St James Infirmary", for somebody else it might be
bebop, Charlie Parker, or hard pop like Hank Mobley or John Coltrane in the 50s,
for somebody else it might be cool jazz like Dave Brubeck "Take Five", for somebody
else it might be bluesy - I did a video recently on the
blues - you get blues jazz, THAT might... some people might think that's jazz. And
then there's the sort of journeying, epic jazz of the 60s like later John Coltrane
and the free jazz movement - THAT might be jazz to some people. And then of course
later on jazz fused with lots of other kinds of music like jazz rock, jazz
fusion, jazz funk, Grover Washington, Kool And The Gang. You might like smooth jazz,
you might like modern jazz, whatever that is, big-band jazz, you might even like
jazz fused with electronic music and DJ culture. For you THAT might be what jazz
is. So for everybody we've all got a different concept of what jazz is so
it's very difficult to teach people what jazz is because you've got everything
from Kool AndThe Gang to Louis Armstrong and everything in between.
But whether it's straight ahead jazz, bossa nova, afro-cuban music or even folk
jazz like Jan Garbarek for example, some of the key elements are gonna remain the
same in jazz and that's what we really want to get to grips with if we want to
learn how to play jazz. so the important thing is to get very clear in your head
what jazz is for YOU and what you want to achieve with your jazz. Do you just
want to play famous tunes like Summertime or Take Five, or do you want to
be able to improvise? Do you want to be able to improvise on a simple blues scale
or do you want to be able to play over complicated changes, or maybe modal music?
So the first step is to really have a think what jazz is to you and what your
goals are and what you want to achieve by playing jazz.
So first of all let's talk about the first approach and that is learning the
theory of jazz. I guess you'd say this was my early path. I went to the Fife
Youth Jazz Orchestra and I went to various jazz summer schools and I really
went through the jazz education system which of course is not traditionally how
jazz was learned in its infancy back in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
But yep, I'm a total product of the jazz education system which has got its pros
and cons which we'll talk about later. So how can you learn the theory, the
cerebral part of jazz, the knowledge, the nuts and bolts? Well, you
can obviously take private lessons. I know that many of you who've got a
teacher and hopefully that teacher can teach you this kind of theory. You can
also buy books there's many books, great books, on jazz and now of course just
like you're watching here you can go to YouTube which is increasingly becoming
the most popular resource to find out about jazz. This is all quite sort of
more bite-sized stuff compared to going to music college itself which is a very
detailed and intensive education into music. I went to university to do music
and then I went to the Guildhall School of Music to do a postgraduate degree in
jazz and studio music and I learnt a hell of a lot there. In fact let me just
grab my notes... So here are just a few of my notes that I took at the Guildhall
School of Music. It's all very detailed and this is just
the tip of the iceberg. So, the kind of stuff that you can learn when you go to
music college or from books or even from YouTube is: chord types, the modes of the
major and melodic minor scale, chord scale relationships, common chord sequences,
what two five ones are, how to use enclosures, how to use rhythmic devices,
improvising techniques, best practices for playing jazz, group interplay, you can
learn all these things at music college, which is exactly what I did,
and if you study with me I can teach you the theory of all these things as well.
All this stuff is super important, however, it's not the be-all
and all as you'll see when we move on to approach two.
So approach two is learning
from the masters. Behind me you can see some classic albums and you can see some
of the most famous players of jazz saxophone in history. Now for me
this is what I did after college. When I went to music college I studied the very
theoretical, cerebral parts of jazz which I could then apply when I started
studying the Masters and what I did was I transcribed as much as I could.
Loads of different solos of classic players, classic recordings. So the main
body of work you can do in learning from the Masters is, of course, transcribing
them. I always say it but you can go to my video linked up there on transcribing
to learn how to do it. What I did was, after I'd finished music school and I'd
accumulated all that theoretical knowledge, I then started transcribing
all the best players in jazz, and I don't know where the rest of them have gone, this is
only a small percentage of what I did. I learned the solos. I wrote them
all out. I saw what these people were doing: Sonny Stitt, Sonny Rollins, loads
of John Coltrane, even modern players, you know, Branford and all the rest of it and
I studied those recordings until I learnt how these people did it. So what do you
get from studying the Masters? Well, you learn phrasing, you learn articulation,
how to sound really in the pocket and authentic, you learn that from
transcribing solos. You learn rhythm and a great feel and a great time feel
because you have to exactly copy how they play it, you learn great licks, you
learn the basis of jazz language, you learn the feel of how to play jazz, you
learn to emulate the sound of your favorite players, and of course, you learn
a lot of different jazz tunes while you're doing all your transcribing. So
for me, approach two has to be done hand in hand with step one which is
learning theory. Without the theory, you could just
go straight to the masters and learn, which is probably better than just doing
approach one to be honest, but then using the theory you can put the two together,
and then you can look at the masters knowing what the theory is as well and
THAT'S the real golden ticket. So step two - learn from the Masters and
transcribe your heart out!
Now step three is learning how to play your instrument. You can have all the
theory in the world and you can transcribe as many solos as you want,
but if you can't play saxophone you're in big trouble. So for me this has just
been ongoing work throughout my whole life. Working on technical exercises,
studies with a tuner to improve my intonation, lots of tone stuff, so this is
stuff that you must work on. Studying the great players in approach two will
actually help your technique because you need to get that technique to play a lot
of the stuff that they play. So you can have a private teacher again, you can go
to youtube, you can get books, you can go to music college, all the same ways of
learning how to really master your instrument, and of course watching this
channel. And you're going to learn how to get a fantastic tone, you're gonna learn
to master the technique of the saxophone, finger technique, body position, breathing,
articulation, tonguing, you're gonna learn how to use overtones, you're going to
develop embouchure strength, you're gonna improve your intonation and
you're gonna extend the usable range of your horn - definitely to the bottom and
hopefully into another octave above the normal saxophone range. So these are all
the things that you're going to learn when you master your instrument - now that is
going to let you play the transcriptions that you've made and it's also going to
help you apply the theory that you've learned. The double whammy
is using exercises which use the theory you've learned and developing new
technical expertise. So for example in my video linked up there now on scales,
how to practice scales part two, you can practice your scales in thirds but using
your theoretical knowledge you can or you can also start memorizing what
chords it is you're playing. So for example if I'm in C major and I play 7th
chords going up the C major scale it sounds like this...
If you know your theory from step one you can start ingraining in your head
that that's C major seven, D minor 7, E minor 7, F major 7, G7, A minor 7, B minor 7 flat 5 as
you are playing it - so you're getting your technique together and you're
starting to learn about chords.
The final step four, is synthesizing that's easy to say isn't it,
synthesizing everything that you've learned from one to three. So you've
learnt the theory and you have to mix that in with the transcriptions that
you've learned from the masters and analyze what they're playing using the
theory and then learn from it and then using your technique you can execute
those ideas. But at the end of the day you have to try and make as much of that
automatic as you can. So really you learn one two and three and then you have to do your
very best to forget it all because the most important thing about music is
expressing yourself - your heart and soul. Everyone lives and breathes music.
Imagine a world without music - it would be absolutely miserable. You know, I've
made my whole life about saxophone and music and I LOVE it! I love it love it
love it!! And presumably YOU love it because you're watching this video, so
when you play jazz sometimes it can be too overwhelming dealing with everything -
chords - Ugh! Where am I? Where's the chord sequence? But practicing enough will help
you internalize enough of that so that you can really express the emotion of
what you want to communicate through your sax and of course the greatest
musicians have all done that. They, they go above and beyond technical
considerations to be the Masters that they are. That might be quite a lofty
aspiration for most but try at the end of the day, whenever you play, just to
make music. Leave space, listen, try and communicate an idea, something meaningful.
So that is the fourth step of putting it all together.
so that's it for this week. Hopefully I've given you an overarching roadmap on
the kind of things that you're going to need to get together if you want to play
jazz. You need to learn some theory, some knowledge, you need to study the great
players and see how they're doing to make it sound like jazz. You need to get
your saxophone together and finally you need to synthesize it all into an
expression that's meaningful musically and that can communicate some emotion, people!
Thanks again for watching, I really appreciate you guys watching
these videos and giving me all your support. Remember to go and have a look
at the 1-hour saxophone success masterclass at www.getyoursaxtogether.com/masterclass.
I've put together a PDF for this lesson, which you
can get from the link in the description, which is summarizing the main points of
what I've been talking about and giving you some of the resources that you can
go to from my previous videos to help you on your journey learning how to play
jazz on saxophone. It's been a pleasure - I look forward to seeing you next week,
keep practicing smart, keep enjoying your instrument and I'll see you later. Bye!