Hello again YouTube I'm Pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson you're watching Get Your Sax Together.
On this week's lesson I'm going to teach you how to play the ska
classic, originally done by Prince Buster, but most famously covered by Madness, and
that is - One Step Beyond.
One Step Beyond was originally recorded by Jamaican ska
artist Prince Buster and was released in 1964 as the b-side to his famous single
Al Capone. In 1979 the song was then covered by UK retro ska band Madness,
featuring the famous spoken vocal by Chas (Smash) at the start and the rough
gravelly saxophone of Lee Thompson. In this free sax lesson for beginners or
intermediate saxophonists I'm going to teach you exactly how to play this
famous sax hook and in the meantime, if you enjoy the channel, please do
subscribe, ring the bell to be notified when I release new videos, go and check
out my Instagram feed, and of course don't forget to go down into the
description right now and go and get the free pdf for this lesson which has
got this whole thing written out for alto and tenor sax which is a wonderful
resource. Go and print it off, and follow along as I teach you how to play One Step Beyond.
Let's talk about the structure of One Step Beyond first of
all - dead simple, it's A-A-A-B-A. So you've got the first phrase and you play that
three times, then you've got the different phrase in the middle, that's
the B phrase, and then you finish with the first phrase again but there's a tag
and you repeat the end of the first phrase three times to finish. So let's
learn the first A section, and here it is played slowly...
Now here's that A section played at full speed...
Next we're going to cover the third "A", which is the third chunk of four bars,
which is very very similar to the first one, with a slight variation, and here's
how it sounds, played slowly...
Now here's that third "A", played at full speed...
next we move on to the B section and here's what the B section sounds like
played slowly...
Now here's the B section played at full-speed...
Now here's the final A section, which is almost the same as the first one, with slight variations,
including the tag. This is what the whole final A sounds like played slowly...
Now here's the whole final A played at full speed...
Now we've got all the notes you need to play the whole thing, so here's what it
sounds like all joined together... ["3, 4, 1, 2..."]
I always emphasize that the notes are just the beginning of learning how to
sound good - you must copy the phrasing and the sound exactly. You can follow that
card for a video on my transcription series, but also, on this particular song,
Lee Thompson has this really gravelly, growly rough sound, so i've done a video
about how to growl on saxophone and you can find the card for that linked up
there. So if you can, try and get that nice gravelly tone going to really sound
like the original.
Hope you enjoyed this week's lesson learning how to play One Step Beyond.
Please do subscribe to the channel, if you enjoyed the content - click
the bell to be notified when I upload new videos, go and check out my Instagram
feed, and, once again, don't forget to go down into the description right now, go
and click the link and you can get your free pdf with the music for One Step Beyond
written out for alto AND tenor saxophone, and I'll see you next week on
Get Your Sax Together.
...and famously covered by Madness [massive burp] lol let's try again...
there's a free pdf down there.. oh man oh no no no no no... hope you enjoyed this
week's lesson learning how to play [coughs] clear your throat. Frog.