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Home Alt Forums Music Theory Question about rewriting other instrument sheets to play on a sax?

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  • #57558
    jak Swift
    Participant

      Sxpoet, hi man. In a word , no. I gather you have a decent grasp of transposition. If a melody line for guitar is not working out on sax, you have two choices. One, forget it and move on.
      Two, and in my opinion, take from it what you can, and use the skill sets you have to make it work.
      I posted a while back r.e ” Honky Tonk “. The first 32 bars are a guitar intro. I use it as it makes a great if not too challenging tune a little more lively. I’ve had an off on project for years. Putting Hendrix tunes onto tenorsax with effects. Its a combination of the dots, your ear, and your approach to the given melody. Hope that’s been some help and if I may ask , what tunes do you have in mind ? Best: jak

      #57559
      jak Swift
      Participant

        Sorry man, this was addressed to Johnny, I see.
        No worries, good luck.😕

        #57560
        Anonymous

          Thanks for the feedback Jak,
          i’ve got my own opinions on this topic, which seem identical to yours,
          so thanks, it just reinforces what i thought.

          I only buy alto sax music sheets, so i don’t have this problem, but someone that e-mailed me, converts a lot of different instrument sheets to play on his sax, so he was looking for a second opinion – from someone higher up the Sax chain.

          #57561
          jak Swift
          Participant

            Your more than welcome !!

            #57614
            john
            Keymaster

              writing for sax can present certain problems depending on the piece of music of course.
              I often face problems while arranging the songs I create backing tracks for.
              but just because it’s written for guitar doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t work on sax…it has everything to do with how it was arranged…
              for example, the guitar can play chords so if it was arranged to have chords in it this needs to be re-worked for the sax version.
              the song ‘Maria Elena” (which was a recent upload) I pretty much copied what the guitar played and it worked almost perfectly….only thing I had to change was a couple of the long descending scale riffs which were longer than the sax range could handle so those had to be re-worked to fit the sax. this type of thing also happens when transposing a tenor arrangement over to Eb….sometimes certain parts need to be altered to fit the range of the sax.

              #57616
              Anonymous

                Johnny,
                Thanks for your feedback.
                I’ll get the person that e-mailed to check out your feedback!

                #57636
                john
                Keymaster

                  you guys can also check out 2 other videos I transcribed from guitar to sax which turned out pretty good:
                  Santana’s Europa and Samba Pa Ti.
                  I have both these videos on my music section and there are plenty of youtube videos with Santana playing the original vertsion.

                  #57638
                  jak Swift
                  Participant

                    Thanks Johnny, Samba pa ti really works well; I recently saw an electric bass player do a solo version. When that double time changes comes…it like the Suns come out after a long winter.
                    Great thankyou !!…jak

                    #57639
                    jak Swift
                    Participant

                      Europa !! STUNNING !! Was Gato a later influence on you Johnny, or from the early days ?

                      #57640
                      jak Swift
                      Participant

                        I never got massively into Santana. Loved the band, especially the drummer who’s name has completely gone. Lear ? ” head, hands and feet ” off one of the live albums, is one of the best drum solos I’ve heard. Yeah, in short I found Carlos a bit clichéd. Fabulous player none the less.
                        His comeback with Rob Thomas ( matchbox 22 ) was great. Reminded me just how good he really was. Single , I think ” cool “….
                        Mel, how’s things man? 😉

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