Ain't no sunshine

[john]

If you’re talking about Ain’t No Sunshine the guitar plays in A minor. My tenor chart is in B minor…remember, tenor sax is one whole tone up from concert pitch.

[Jan]

Thanks. The guitar/keyboard/bass should be okay if I give them the sheets marked as C major then? On a different note, I’ve tried to mimic your “I know, I know…” section with the A – G (occasionally D and F#) notes but find it difficult to get beyond these. It’s clearly shorter then the 23 repetitions played in the original song, and obviously much more appealing to play than just mimicking the singer, so – is there any chance that you’ll publish the rest of the lesson soon?

Jan

[john]

No, the song is in the key of A minor.
As for all the improvising I do on that song, it’s all based on the pentatonic minor scale which is why I chose that song as the example in the first place. There is a bit more of a lesson on this after the video so check it out if you missed it.
I’m not doing any more than playing the minor pentatonic here which is one, flat three, four, five, and seven which in the key of B would be B, D, E, F#, and A.
Practice playing riffs using only these notes over the backing tracks – you can copy my riffs of course but they are all based on these exact notes.

[Jan]

Thanks Johnny, your help is immensely appreciated.

I must be extraordinarily thick because I always thought that Cmaj = Amin (two notes removed) but that obviously isn’t the same. I’ll try the minor pentatonic scale to improvise through the solo section.

Jan

[Jan]

One more question regarding C blues improv. The progression is I – IV – V – I. This means that I on my Tenor should improvise over the pentatonic scales of D – G – A (and back to D), or am I wrong again?

[john]

You are right.

Regarding the C maj and A min…theses are related to each other. The relative minor of C major is A minor. Neither have flats or sharps.
Here’s what it means to us as far as improvising:
the notes of the C major pentatonic are C, D, E, G, A
the notes of the A minor pentatonic are A, C, D, E, G

If you take a close look you’ll notice they are exactly the same notes, just in a different order.

[Gary Mills]

Hi Johnny, I have bought your sax backing tracks & enjoy playing with them, I have a problem with the Ain’t No Sunshine for Tenor, my music players all state the MP3 is 2min long but they all skip to the next track at 28 seconds. No problem with the alto track & this is happening on PC & Mac macines. Help Please Gary

[john]

Hey Gary, I checked my file and it’s fine and no one else has this problem so I think somehow during your download something went wrong. I’ll email you the track. Let me know if all’s ok after.

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