Question:

How do i play without being flat? when i play with a backing track in D (made for guitar) and use the D blues scale to improvise, every note is a whole step flat. is my sax out of tune?

-Jordan

My Response:

You are probably not a whole step flat.

Try playing the E blues scale when you play with the track in D. The tenor sax is in the key of Bb so every nite is shifted by a whole step. The shifting of the notes is called ‘transposition’.

If you don’t account for that, you would be in the wrong key if you try to read music written for piano, guitar, flute, etc. Those instruments are in ‘concert pitch’. The saxophones are not (except the somewhat uncommon C melody).

The alto saxophone is a minor third away from the note displayed on the tuner. If you play ‘C’ on alto sax, it will display ‘D#’ or ‘Eb’ etc on the tuner.