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Becky – Alto and Tenor sax
Hello Everyone,
I used to play in college and worked locally quite a bit. My “superpower” was reading. I could swing and played great ensemble, but I could not improvise to save my life. Despite my weakness, I had a great musical life for a few years. Then marriage, career, and life in general, and I set the horn aside for a very long time. I picked it up every now and again when an opportunity presented itself, but seriously, I could go years and years and never touch it. Fast forward to now. I am near retirement. (Still a few years to go) and I am back in my home town with tremendous opportunities to play. I currently play classical with a group 9 months of the year. This has helped me get some chops back. About a year ago I decided to get more serious about playing and specifically with jazz. I am learning at a snail’s pace, and still can’t improvise worth a darn. And Jazz language? Still foreign to me, but I will keep slogging away. So here I am.
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8 Replies
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Hey Becky! You came to the right place 🙂 I pride myself on creating exercises that people who are great at reading music can easily memorize and begin to IMPROVISE with. Some things of course will be more challenging than others, but as long as you consistently return to the same material and commit ideas and knowledge of music theory to memory you will always be improving.
Looking forward to hearing more from you!-
OK Steve… I took the plunge and joined the Studio. I really dug the YT live you just did and I continually can’t get over what a super nice guy you seem to be! And of course, no one would argue you got da chops!
You told me once you are a converted classical player. I am hoping you are able to relate to my plight coming from training in the classical world and where my brain might be stuck when it comes to improv. I have made tiny improvements over the last year, but no giant steps. (Haha. Pun intended.) Anyway, my concert season starts after Labor Day and I am scheduled for major surgery in November, (nothing awful – need a knee replaced) but other than that, (and my full time day job!) I am looking forward to jumping into the September tune and seeing what nuggets I can take away to improve my meager abilities!
See you soon.
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Woohoo!! Awesome so glad to have you here 🙂
I promise, being a nice guy is not just an act. I feel I am genuinely a happy person and I have music as a career to thank for this sunny disposition haha… Thanks for the kind words about the live stream I have really enjoyed getting to produce them
I just have 2 basic rules that I always apply to anybody studying jazz and improvisation:
1. Don’t compare yourself to anybody but yourself. It will take the joy out of the process and cause you to practice things that you don’t need to be working on.
2. Always be working on a song and use the song and its chord progression to improve your toolkit as an improviser.As a classical player myself I can totally relate with you on the feeling of being ‘stuck’. It definitely will take some work and repetitions of ideas but the main thing that we all need to do is improvisers is relocate the visual element (reading music) of playing music to the ear. This is where the exercises over chord changes come into play.
When you are able to take musical ideas, shapes and melodies and apply them to any chord you see… BOOM! You are improvising! People a lot of times don’t realize that it is that simple I don’t think. The difficult part is training your brain to think this way. We’ll get there!
Thanks for joining the studio and just one more rule: Ask me any questions that may come up as you are looking through material. I’m here to help! A lot of time you will not be the only person that has a question and this helps me understand how to be a better teacher.
Looking forward to hearing you play and working on some tunes! Have a great weekend 🙂
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Steve, Great advice.
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Becky, Welcome to the group. My story is very similar. I put the saxophone down for 40 years and picked it up again 18 months ago. I never learned to improvise back then, however, because of all the technical work I had done the restart was much easier than anticipated.
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Thanks for the welcome, Robert. Part of what makes this online thing a positive experience is the interaction. 😊. Looking forward to having this experience as a group with encouragement, support, sharing expertise, and of course, Steve’s incredible knowledge base and tutelage. 🤓
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Super glad you’re here Becky! Talk to you soon I’m sure 🙂
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Love to hear this Robert- welcome back! I will agree that there is some technical work involved but once you can get a nice workflow going where you understand what to practice, I’ve found it can be such a rewarding experience regardless of what level you’re at. It sounds like you have a good trajectory going on – super happy to hear this! Thanks for sharing 🎶
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