Mr. Alaadeen’s blog is a bit of a throwback to the early days of the Internet when extremely personal, “diary”-style writing was much more common.

You wouldn’t think that long long blog posts concerned with the viewpoint and personal life would necessarily be that interesting….

However, in this case, you might want to check out Mr. Alaadeen. His rich history and amazing life experiences could easily be made into a documentary about the history of jazz in America.

The blog is title “Sho ‘Nuff,” with the tag line “Alaadeen’s Musings.” This is very descriptive of the contents of the blog. These posts are the unabashed musings of a jazz player who has lived through some of America’s most turbulent times, and who has played with some of the jazz world’s biggest and brightest stars.

The majority of posts are recollections of days gone by, primarily focused on encounters with jazz musicians known and unknown. Some of the posts are purely historical, while others tie in the history with ideas about how it has effected Mr. Alaadeen’s career. For example, there is a post about his early influences. In this post he reflects on how he first met John Coltrane and what effect that meeting had on him. This same post talks about listening to Charlie Parker at an early age and almost unconsciously absorbing bits of his style. That is what happens when you play a record over and over again as he did with the great song “Embraceable You.”

Later on he describes his interactions with Miles Davis. These posts, when taken together, make up a first-person history of the great jazz culture of the 1950’s and 60’s. There is much here that would be of interest to anyone who enjoys jazz music, from the fan to the scholar. Mr. Alaadeen’s clear love of history is probably what prompted him to pen an ebook entitled, “The Rest of the Story: Jazz Improvisation and History.”

It is available for free download. Again, this is probably of interest to anyone who considers themselves to be a fan of jazz music, either from a scholarly or casual perspective.

Reading this site, and the book, are bound to help give perspective on the last century, when jazz and society were changing so much and so rapidly. If you are a fan of history, and you enjoy jazz music, it is likely that you will enjoy the blog. You’ll get a taste of what is was like to be a working performer in a very different era.

Mr Battaglia. How do you remember all the chords..?? How do you do it..?? i mean, there are loads.
-Robert

Hey Robert, you want to start simple. Learning the blues progression is a good step. Once you know the blues progression, you know the chords for a large number of songs already. There might be variations, but the basic progression is going to be the same.

Then there is the ii V7 I progression, that one comes up all the time in jazz. All those chords are in the same key. So you could just think, there’s a ii V7 I in the key of G or whatever coming up.

The song ‘Blue Bossa’ has the following chords (concert pitch)

There’s a story about two woodchoppers that I heard.

We’ll call them Rush and Richard.

Each woodchopper starts the day with an identical axe that they bought from the Acme Axe Corporation of Canada.

And they each set to work chopping down trees.

Rush keeps chopping down trees constantly through the day.  He has on a camel back which is a backpack with a pouch full of water that he drinks through a long rubber straw.  Rush takes 20 minutes to eat lunch and then keeps on chopping.

Richard does things a little different, he chops wood, but often takes breaks and sits down.

Rush thinks that Richard is being lazy.

But at the end of the day…. Richard has cut down three times as much wood as Rush.

It turns out that Richard was sharpening his axe while he was sitting down.

While you’re learning saxophone, you can take either approach

You can constantly push and play a lot of shows in the same way.  You practice the same thing every day since it’s the way you’ve always practiced saxophone.  You’ll get slowly better.

Or you can really sharpen your skills on sax and also think about your approach, listen to new music, take new approaches, and experiment.  You can also pay attention to the audience and see which songs and styles move the people.  Then you can change up what you’re doing.

I like the second approach.

What do you think?

You might hear a song and be able to play it instantly on your sax.

Or you could sit at the piano and then write out scores of music.

Maybe you play a little by ear in a blues band and then pick up an oboe for orchestra.

Learning saxophone isn’t a one size fits all activity.  Eldon was talking about language being similar, so I thought about what he said for a minute.

So try out different ways of learning sax and music.  Through experiment, you’ll figure out a ‘method’ or combination of things that work for you.

And keep trying out new ideas.

Playing etudes, using a metronome, listening, transcribing, jamming, learning harmony, working on your parts, there are many ways of learning.

Just because another player learns in one way doesn’t mean it will be the best method for you.

Figure out what works for you.

Leave a comment with your favorite way to learn saxophone, thanks!

The other day I read a post about learning languages and passive listening.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/passive-learning

Basically, passively listening to anything won’t help you learn it.

While I was in Sri Lanka for a month, I heard an awful lot of Sinhala.  Words and phrases that I learned before arriving sometimes stayed in my memory.  It helped a lot if I heard them in real conversations and recognized them.  And new pieces stuck here and there, but only when I tried to remember them and used them.

Listening is really important on saxophone, but not passive listening.  You’ve got to pick the horn and try things out!

Most people on the planet listen to music quite a bit, but most people aren’t musicians.  It takes more than intercepting sound waves.

It’s great to enjoy music.  Don’t stop doing that.

However, to really learn from music you hear, take what you hear and play it yourself.  Bring it into your own music.

If you don’t already, try playing it by ear or transcribing it!