cheers Mel!
Made a mistake, the second song in my busking list should be “Blue Moon”, not “Moon River”. lol

The good news is – Mr Ferreira has provided three of these tracks in a different key.

My lesson went something like this.

Teacher “Have you heard Blue Moon?”

sxpoet “Yes”

Teacher “Ok, it starts on middle G, now try and play it on the sax”

sxpoet – plays middle G, then fumbles around the keys on the sax, and manages to hit some correct keys and hits some wrong keys which he has to fumble around and find the correct key by trial and error.

sxpoet – has a couple more goes, and manages to play the main part of the tune.

Teacher “Well done, now just practice that each day. Next week i want to hear all four songs”

If you can hum or sing a song, then by trial and error you can play it on the sax eventually. Once you manage to do that, you should be able to retain it a lot longer or pick it up a lot quicker later on , than if you sit down and look at the sheet and try and memorise a few bars at a time which is harder.

However, if you cant sing or hum the song in your head, then you are not familiar with the song, and need to listen to it played.