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Sax Music Pink Panther Originally Played on Tenor Sax by Plas Johnson

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sax music pink panther

Plas Johnson played the original sax music for the Pink Panther theme on tenor sax.

Great player, I saw him live a few years back in Carmel, not long after I started playing saxophone actually.

The original tune has tenor on the melody.

I have also played a saxophone quartet arrangement of the Pink Panther Theme, it’s pretty fun. Even played the bari part a couple of times. It’s not a beginning piece- probably would call it intermediate-advanced, a couple parts are tricky.

Pink Panther Saxophone Quartet Arrangement

Pink Panther solo tenor sax music

Henry Mancini wrote some cool music, so if you would like the Pink Panther and some of his other songs, you could get

The Music of Henry Mancini

The arrangements on the CD feature a jazz trio and, in some cases, a full orchestra. All books are compatible with each other and are playable in any instrumental combination. Titles include: Baby Elephant Walk * Breakfast at Tiffany’s * Days of Wine and Roses * Le Jazz Hot! * Moon River * Peter Gunn * The Pink Panther and more.

"Earplugs for Saxophone Players – What Happens Without Them and When You Need Them."

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More cowbell!  That’s what Christopher Walken insisted on…..

With a salsa band, sometimes you’re standing next to that cowbell though.

Earplugs are pretty much a necessity if you want to not have your eardrums ringing for the rest of the night and lose your hearing later in your life.

Sound intensity is measured in units called decibels.  Deci being a prefix meaning 1/10 and bels being the unit.  But decibels are the commonly used form.

The units aren’t on a linear scale, instead they are on a ‘logarithmic’ scale.  So something that is twice as many decibels isn’t twice as loud.

Human perception of intensity and volume also do not correspond.

I have taken advanced acoustics classes… so if you really want to get into the mathematics, ask me!

What is important for a saxophone player is that anything about 120 decibels (abbreviated as dB) will cause permanent hearing loss.

Your distance from the source of sound affects the intensity level too.  You can think of sound as propagating as a sphere from the source.  The intensity decreases as a factor of one divided by the square of the distance.  So a sound that is coming from 1 meter away is actually four times the intensity as something that is two meters away since  1/2^2 = 1/4.

So you should probably not be right next to a source of loud noise even if you are wearing earplugs.

Earplugs themselves reduce sound by different amounts of dB.  A reduction of six dB is the same as being twice as far from the sound source.

So if you’re in a really loud group, get enough sound reduction.  If it’s not so loud, you still want to hear the music, so don’t overdo it with the earplugs.

And in a small jazz combo, generally you don’t need earplugs, but still you probably shouldn’t stand right next to the drums.

Earplugs also reduce certain frequencies more than others, so just be aware of that.

You can get special ‘musicians earplugs’ that are specially fitted to your ear and reduce the range of pitches equally, I don’t have them yet, but may get some.

Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner – Laying Down the Blues – Moaning

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The blues tune ‘Moanin’ with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet

McCoy Tyner on drums

Freddie Hubbard was one of my favorite jazz and blues trumpet players.
Freddie Hubbard CDs

Freddie Hubbard Sheet Music

Dizzy used to tell me that I am playing too hard. He used to say to not give everything. Miles used to tell me that too.
-Freddie Hubbard

Eric was different. He would get up and practice with the birds in the morning on his flute. I thought that was different because it would be early in the morning and most of the cats were getting home from any jobs that they had at three or four in the morning. Eric was up bright and early.
-Freddie Hubbard

I advise all the young kids to not overwork. You can’t be out there blowing hard. You have to pace yourself.
-Freddie Hubbard

I got a scholarship on French horn and I went to a conservatory for about a year. I left there and went to New York.
-Freddie Hubbard

I had been playing with this band at Birdland on Monday nights and Miles was on the side of the stage. He looked up and I was playing his licks. I played this solo and I opened my eyes and saw him looking up at me, so all of the sudden, I had to come up with some of my own ideas.
-Freddie Hubbard

I had heard Ornette a couple of times, but I didn’t really know where he was coming from until we started the record and it was beautiful, Fred. It opened up my mind.
-Freddie Hubbard

I met up with Art Blakey in 1963, I think. It was right after Lee Morgan left and I played with him for about two and a half years.
-Freddie Hubbard

I quit drinking, so I can think clear. When you have chop trouble, drinking doesn’t help the healing process.
-Freddie Hubbard

I was living with Slide Hampton. Slide Hampton took us in and we were living over his house for about a year and a half.
-Freddie Hubbard

I’m going to Yoshi’s. I’m taking a few gigs. I’m playing. I’m not going to play all the time. I’m going to take it easy and take it slow and warm up so I can come back.
-Freddie Hubbard

Man, they gave me a key to the city. Can you imagine going back to Indiana and getting the key to the city? So that made me feel pretty good.
-Freddie Hubbard

Now, Ascension was different, with all those free form playing guys, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai, these are brothers I never even thought about playing with.
-Freddie Hubbard

That was the biggest thrill, going over to these guy’s houses and having them want me to practice with them and they would show me a lot of stuff, which was really advanced stuff to me at my age.
-Freddie Hubbard

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.
-Freddie Hubbard

We all kind of grew up together with Art Blakey because we all were young and he gave us a chance to write. We had to write something that was good and to sit up with a great guy like Art Blakey and watch him.
-Freddie Hubbard

Well, my sister played trumpet. Can you imagine having a sister blowing the trumpet around the house, Fred? And my brother, he played piano. Everybody was playing some kind of music, so it was natural for me to get into it.
-Freddie Hubbard

When I got started in New York, it wasn’t like it is now. If you were different from Miles and Dizzy, it was very difficult to make gigs and make money with your own style.
-Freddie Hubbard

Yes, I can play. I can play. I can’t play as long as I did and as hard, but I don’t think I have to.
-Freddie Hubbard

Charlie Parker Celerity

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Charlie Parker played a major role in the creation of bebop.  Players like Sonny Stitt refined it, but Parker started the style.  Here’s a video of ‘Celerity’ that I liked.

Charlie Parker playing Celerity on alto sax.  Sweet drums in there too.

Surrounding Yourself with Saxophone and Music

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“Well, when I was young, I was surrounded by people who spoke English. I was probably hearing it even before I was born. So, since I’ve heard people speaking English every day of my life, it was easy for me to pick up because it was always around.”
(pg. 24 The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten)

Because you’re surrounded by English, you learn it very quickly.  You learn any language more quickly by being immersed in it.

Ernie Watts

You don’t need to constantly be ‘practicing’ either.  You practice part of the time, but also constantly hear it.

Music can be understood as a language too.

When you learned to speak, you were also surrounded by people who had already mastered the language- people who spoke fluently.

So you should try and surround yourself with great musicians and great music.  Learn from them.  Just be humble and show respect when you do.

Saxophone Salsa – Salson Playing Lagrimas Negras

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I’m playing tenor sax with my band Salson in Aptos, CA a few months back.

The song is ‘Lagrimas Negras’ that we’re playing as an instrumental.

The video actually comes in at the line before solos, then I take the first solo, followed by James on piano.

It was taken on a flip.

The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten

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Just got The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music

by Victor Wooten and it’s amazing.  I heard about the book in June and again recently from George Young.

I wish I had read this book earlier.

One of the first things Victor Wooten does is show how his teacher, Michael, broke down how music is not all about notes.

Notes are important, but they are only an element of the equation.

Groove, Feel, Rhythm, etc are equally important and as a group are much more important than just notes.

You can still have music without notes- think of Brazillian rhythms that are played on drums and percussion.

There was some interesting stuff about vibrations too- like how rhythm is just notes slowed way down.  An A 440 vibrates at 440 times per second and if you slow things down, eventually you get to rhtyhms that are closer to one per second.  Or a few more in fast bebop.