[Steve]

Hey Robert – Welcome aboard and thanks for sharing this with us! Welcome back to the saxophone, the community is very glad to have you. I can say that this journey of playing the sax for the past 30 years for me has been quite an interesting one but I am thankful for every minute of it 🙂
We can’t wait to hear your playing and how your progress is coming along. I think you will be very satisfied with the results you get from practicing these methods. Many of the students I have worked with in the past end up realizing that improvisation is not exactly what you think it is. We aren’t just over here ‘making things up’ but rather learning the key elements of music composition so that we can create musical stories using that information.
By all means reach out if you have any questions and I look forward to hearing how your journey is unfolding! 🎷🚀

[Steve]

Hey Chrissy!

Thanks for dropping a line here. While this area is a bit of a ghost town at the moment I see that changing in the near future when I create some things designed for users to participate in this section more.

There’s not enough jazz flute players in the world – you are very welcome here! I think you’ll find that playing through the exercises in each unit will provide you with some different perspectives on improvisation. One of the common misconceptions about improvisation is that it is completely made up. A lot of what people are doing when improvising is preconceived!

If I could make one suggestion: Start with the most recent unit (in this case the ‘Stella By Starlight’ Unit) as that will be the one emphasized throughout the month. From there, go back and have a look at other tunes that might interest you. If Confirmation is calling you, by all means have at it!

I’m going to have to check out that Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson Solo. I love hearing about things that inspire and I’m sure others will too when they learn about it. Linking the songs below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvt6lyiDwQc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2RNe2jwHE0

Thanks for sharing – See you around the studio!

[Steve]

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!

[Steve]

Hey Guillaume!
Great to meet you and thanks for letting us know your background. Bari is truly for the lovers of the saxophone, it definitely takes patience as does any instrument I guess haha.

It would seem that we have a lot of similar influences – I’m really looking forward to hearing you play 🙂 Really nice set up on your alto as well. I am thinking of going back to a more closed tip opening and playing harder reeds these days in order to fatten up my tone.

Thanks so much for the kind words about the studio, much appreciated as always and thats what this is all about: saving time in the practice room, more focused practice sessions and overall… more fun!

See you around the studio ✌️

[Steve]

Hey Jeff! Great to get the opportunity to work with you again. Looking forward to hearing what you’re working on and can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to 🙂

[Steve]

Hey Busso – Welcome! Looking forward to hearing you play and learning with you. Have a look around and feel free to comment on anything that moves you 🙂

[Steve]

Hey Trinus! This is very beautiful playing! What a marvelous tribute to a masterful craftsman.

What tune is this that you are playing over? I love it!

With regards to the feeling of relying on ‘ready mades’, I think what we have laid out here will force you to start believing in yourself and give you the tools to play from the top of your head rather than always feeling like you’re using something you worked out ahead of time. A big thing that will help if you don’t already do it is learning lines in all 12 and then learning how to apply language to a chord progression in a musical and motivic way.

Can’t wait to hear you improvise – See you around the studio!

[Steve]

Welcome CAT! Looking forward to hearing you shred some of these exercises. You are correct, we need a trumpeter as I don’t think we have one yet. Anybody reading this is going to want to make sure to check out your posts 👀 Super bad dude right here!

[Steve]

Hey Carmen – sorry for the late reply here and thanks for sharing all your experience! This is awesome – I love all the name dropping and the references to where you are as a player. You seem to have a pretty high level of natural ability and a great sound if you’re getting these lead alto gigs! This is no easy feat and I’m sure you’re not too bad as a soloist either if you have that list of cats as your contemporaries.

Thanks for sharing this – very cool… looking forward to hearing you play at some point!

[Steve]

Love this Alain – somehow I have managed to miss your posts I apologize for this! Such a great journey you have chosen for yourself and I can safely say that the more you do it, the more fun it gets because you just start to gain more and more options as a player the more things you work out and get under your fingers. I can already hear you walking down this path and am so thankful to have you here and working on these concepts giving your feedback. Im looking forward to hearing you internalize these things and further define your musical voice – thanks for sharing!

[Steve]

I appreciate this response! Barry Harris is the ‘go to’ when it comes to having a clear explanation for theory. His method is very specific and helps provide clarity to this broad topic of complexity – I strongly approve 🙂

[Steve]

Hey Busso – thanks for the feedback here!

-Yes, have heard of the travel sax 🙂 Pretty awesome little instrument!

-Confirmation is indeed challenging. The organization of these lessons is designed that any level of player has a path from beginning to end so what you are doing here is great – just take one unit at a time and practice what interests you. It is impossible to get it all in one day but monitor your improvement and ask questions as they come up 👍 RE: the Confirmation track at 120 BPM – this is great to practice. There is not a track that slow because I felt it would be better to practice that slowly without the track and gradually work up the tempo of each section to 150 BPM before trying to use a track. What I would recommend doing is downloading the practice track sections of the melody and listening to those a few times to get them in your head and then work on getting them under your fingers.
-Body and Soul is definitely also a challenge but a great one! When building diminished chords you want to think all minor 3rds stacked on top of eachother. Root, 3rd, b5 and bb7 is how they are built. In the case of F#dim7 you would have F#, A, C, Eb. You can also apply an F# Whole Half diminished scale to this sound and practice getting that into your ears too. F#, G#, A, B, C, D, Eb, F, F# – go slow and play up and down the chord and scale while visualizing just that chord.

As you play through the exercises over the progression and start to learn them, the sound of the diminished chord will become more familiar to you and how it fits in with the chord progression.

Let me know if this makes sense and if you have any other questions 🙂

[Steve]

Awesome about the different key centers. Thats the idea – theres always things to practice. If we as improvisers can learn to build a positive association with growth and improvement we can be in a blissful state every time we pick up the instrument 🙂 Enjoy!

[Steve]

Makes sense, I have been there before definitely. Repetition is a big factor in getting out of the ‘fight or flight’ feeling that comes in when the audience is there. When you are practicing also at the end of your sessions you can imagine the audience being there and how you would respond if you were there. A lot of people don’t think to do this, but if you make it a part of your practice session (5 – 10 minutes), you’ll get a lot better at it!

[Steve]

I have heard of Tim but not familiar with his playing – will check it out!