So it’s like talking back and forth to each other? I like that 🙂 No, take that back….I love that 🙂 He has our lesson plan set out for the next few months, said we would start working with Call and Response after I complete his exercises with Pentatonics and Scales. He was saying too many people practice their scales by just going up and down the scale vs practicing their scales in a way that helps them to Improvise and make music, so we’ll see how it goes 🙂

My problem has been ‘stage freight’ and thinking about what I wanna do vs just letting it happen. He said these exercises would help be get more confident Improvising in front of other players. Before I got with the Blues Society, I had never been around other live musicians–it was always with just backing tracks. Johnny told me I need to think of the other players as my backing track. My goal is to get back to playing with them in time to come, so he’s going to help to play/Improvise with other players with confidence vs. just being a back up player like I was before.

I’ll check that out for sure Johnny, thanks for the heads up 🙂 With me rebooting myself/getting myself back into playing shape, all’s I’ve been focusing on is what you teach in the Beginner’s Guide and the Daily Saxophone Routine for beginners, along with Altissimo and the Killer Blues course. There’s stuff in the premium membership I haven’t tried to re-tackle yet because I’m just taking it 1 step at a time.

I started looking through them today–awesome stuff Johnny 🙂 Junior Walker! One of my favorite Sax players of all time–His entire solo Shotgun is based on the Call & Response 🙂 It doesn’t have to be very complicated either–I think this Call and Response is really going to help me out. With this stuff, seems like we don’t have to do much thinking at all; kind of just like we’re talking back and forth to each other through our Saxophones?

I like what you said in the intro Johnny about feeling mystified. For me, it’s been about being creative and confident in front of other live players. Like I was saying before, I haven’t had problems Improvising over a backing track, but I’ve had to ‘work things out’ by playing it through a few times to make sure the lick/riff was going to work. When I was with the Blues Society, I was okay playing back up but felt terrified to solo in front of others because of feeling ‘stuck’. Now I can see why my Sax Instructor said we’re going to work on this together….I can also see why he said I’m over-thinking my scales–don’t really need to think about too much with Call and Response.

I’m going to go ahead and start working on the first few lessons and go from there–great timing to make this post! 🙂