Question:
Mr. Neal, I’ve been playing the alto sax for approximately 25 years… for some unknown reason, I’m unable to get my chords to flow like a true sax player.
My family and friends thinks that I’m good, but in my personal opinion, I stinks.
I can read music, but my ear training needs a lot of work….and yes, my ultimate goal is for my sax to control the mood of the audience….
what do you recommend…..
-Danny
My Response:
Hello Danny,
It’s not so much an issue of how much time you have been playing but more what you have been working on.
You could own a car and live in New York yet still never have stepped foot in California. You have the equipment to do it, but to get there takes specific actions and consistency in those actions.
You said that you aren’t sure how to make the chords flow and that you hear runs in your head, but are unable to play them.
You could sit down and try and play one of the runs you play in your head. You should be able to work it out, but it might take quite a bit of time. Especially early on, could take some number of hours to get several measures exactly as you want it to be. With practice, the process gets much easier. Without practice, it remains extremely time consuming.
But what I would suggest doing before that is learning some sax solos you have heard and liked. By taking it a small piece at a time.
A great sax player named Charles McNeal started transposing a lot of solos fairly early on and continues to do so, it is one of the elements of how he practices that makes him really good.
Seems to be the case that artists usually start painting things they can see, copying what is around them. Art can be more abstract as well. But I would think most artists start with things that are more real.
With music, you can take a similar approach and start to learn the language and vocabulary. And how to speak on the saxophone. That includes rhythm, space, and articulation.
You probably want to work on ear training more as well as technique. Technique builds a foundation that very much affects how you sound. Bad technique will make it much harder to play the things you hear in your head, partly because there are transitions between notes all over the place that you may not have paid a lot of attention to and those transitions can easily sound sloppy on the saxophone.
Practicing everyday will also help, but practicing the wrong way will build bad habits.
You can sign up for my program Saxophone Tribe if you want to work with me on those things.
Thanks
-Neal
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