Dexter Gordon playing Blue Bossa on tenor.  Really like this song, hadn’t heard Dexter’s version until recently.  Great sax player!

When I was playing clarinet more for a month during the summer, I played Blue Bossa.  Knew it pretty well on saxophone and knew the changes, so it wasn’t too hard to transfer over.

The changes start with four bars that are like the blues – the minor sixth chord for two bars and then the minor four chord for two bars, then there’s a minor two five one, a major two five one, and back to that first minor two five one before going back to the top.

There are some alterations for the chords.  It seems like alterations happen more often on the dominant chords.  The ii V I sound is very known in music, so it seems like the alterations make it more interesting in the way you’re getting to the resolution, less “Mr. Rodgers” as Paul Contos said.

Over the years that Sax Station has been online, I have heard from a number of sax players who played when they were younger, took a twenty year (or so) hiatus and then returned to the saxophone and started playing a lot.

One of the first guys I talked to with a story like that was Jim over at The Bis Key Chronicles

A few days ago, Ron commented on the Sax Station facebook page.

Ron: Great site!! I know I am going to be checking in with you often.

I played saxophones when I was a high school student and interested in a career in music. I graduated and life got in the way. Fifty years later when I retired I asked myself what I wanted to do. So I bought a Yamaha alto and a Yanagisawa tenor and picked… up the thread again, as they say.

Amazed that I remembered everything I knew as a kid and found moving on easier than before. The thing that boggles my mind is the difference between the 1950s and 2000s in resources available to the amateur musician.

At my pc I can go to a concert every night and hear the masters play. Also, many altruistic saxophonists are freely offering tips and insights aimed at improving performance. And, of course, now there are mountains of method books with cd accompaniment and play-alongs to choose from.
Best wishes to all, Ron

A couple of tips:
1) rather than just playing scales around the Circle of Fifths, pick a favorite tune, focus on a particular phrase or two, play that segment around the circle; after you can do that up to speed in all keys, pick another tu…ne; you can always slide over into scales, if you want; repeat ad infinitum;

2) after you’ve got facility in fingering notes in all registers, focus on “playing” the mouthpiece (on the horn); this is important for shading notes and playing expressively and will take concentrated attention and some time to master; after you are mouthpiece adept, you might focus on the effects of changing the course of the air stream from the lungs through the mouth; when you accomplish that, you are probably virtuoso.

After you can play a phrase of a tune around the Circle of Fifths, make the exercise more elaborate by adding phrases until you can play the entire tune in all keys. It doesn’t have to be a tune you have to work hard at to play well.

I started on “When the Red, Red Robbin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin’ Along!” A lot more fun than running scales, anyway, to me.

Neal: Hey Ron, welcome to Sax Station. Thanks for the tips. Can tell you love music.

Ron: Love music? I guess I do, Neal, I guess I do. Sax Station is a great idea. And, you have just the right tone and demeanor that bespeaks a fine teacher.

Just finished reading “Bob Dylan in America.” A fine addition to the literature on American music. I recently heard him in concert here at the U of I. Unbalanced. Band too loud. Dylan unintelligible in his raspy vocals. Still, we knew the lyrics to most of his tunes, so it didn’t matter.

Fakebooks!  Godsend or plague to musicians?

Casa Valdez recently had a post with included a masterclass by Joe Henderson.  One thing he got asked about was fakebooks.  Made me think about the issue a bit.

I love Joe Henderson’s sound and feel  a bit more connected to his style of teaching actually since he taught two of my saxophone teachers.  Definitely respect his opinion.

Basically, he said that as he learned music, the fakebook phenomena did not exist.  They were not an option.  So he learned songs by listening to them.

When he attended music classes and they were learning basic musical ideas by ear, these things were simple for him since he had already transcribed bebop.

If you really listen, what you get out of learning music by ear far exceeds what can be written on paper (not even going into the shoddy quality of some fakebooks).

Joe Henderson did say that fakebooks can be a useful tool and that he wouldn’t tell a musician not to get what he or she can out of them.

A mathematician or physicist can derive equations from fundamental ideas.

For example the quadratic formula can be derived without too much effort, it just takes a minute.

A quadratic formula looks like

ax² + bx + c

For example,

x² + 4x + 4

It looks like a parabola on a graph.

It’s useful to know where the two points crosses the horizontal axis where y = 0.  So there is a formula that does that for you.

In this, it’s easy enough to factor it or graph it and look at what the answer is.

Or you could plug it into the quadratic formula.

If it was 0.435x² – 3.264x – 0.6, you can’t factor it or solve it immediately.

In this case, you often look up a formula.  The quadratic formula in this case.

If you couldn’t look it up, you have to start with the general form and set it equal to zero.

ax² + bx + c = 0

Starting here, you want an expression for x

If you have done a monkey load of mathematics and physics like I have, you learn ‘tricks’.  You learn ‘tricks’ in transcribing and become more comfortable as you transcribe more too.

The steps I would take are:

ax² + bx + c = 0

ax² + bx = -c

(subtracting c from both sides of the equation)

x² + (b/a)x = -c/a

(dividing everything by a)

x² + (b/a)x + (b/2a)² = -c/a + (b/2a)²

(adding (b/2a)² to both sides)

x = ⁺_– sqrt( -c/a + (b/2a)²)

(taking the square root of both sides)

After cleaning it up a little bit, you get

That took some time though, and you could have just looked it up.

If you’re bad at math or even rusty, you probably want to look it up.

Even if you’re good at math, you probably want to look it up (if you don’t have it memorized).

A fakebook lets you look things up and not start at the beginning.

Unlike a mathematical formula, a song in a facebook won’t necessarily be that accurate.  But it is a starting point, you don’t have to do everything yourself.

The wrong way to use a fakebook is to learn a song without listening to it and read it exactly as it’s written on the page.  Don’t do that!!

There’s also the issue of legality and whether the composer gets paid for the work.

Many newer books, like the ‘new real book’, etc, are legal.  And some fakebooks have a lot higher quality than those first fakebooks that came onto the scene years ago.

Saw a book called ‘the real easy book’ that includes basslines, listening suggestions, and more.  Far beyond a poorly written fakebook.  But that book also has limitations.

My advice is to get a fakebook or two, they’ll give you a headstart in learning some songs.  And as you learn more songs, the process of learning them will become easier.

Saw that there’s a sale on fake books right now too.  20% off at sheet music plus.

Just don’t rely on it too much!

Remember to listen.  That’s what music is about.

Congratulations for making it through the post!  A bit of a not mainstream comparison, thought it might be a useful one.

What do you think about fakebooks?  (and/or equation derivation, haha)  Leave a comment!