Blues Brother's "Shotgun Blues" Saxophone Instrumental

[Michael Bishop]

Yeah, it’s all part of the learning process for sure and I was certainly starting to let loose/blow my brains out as you can see. It’s taken so, so much hard work to play in the Altissimo range ( not to mention holding those Altissimo notes as long as I was here near the end) & Improvise like this…but it all went down the drain because of being out of tune LOL –But that’s the great thing about uploading here because it reveals things that we don’t see ourselves…..now imagine if we hold back from uploading? Our progress would be way slower, we would develop really bad habits, etc.. Like what you see on this video here..it could have become a very bad habit of sorts of not paying more attention. I have my first-ever live performance coming Nov.14th and an audition in December for the annual River Fest that’s held here every Memorial Day weekend…can you imagine the “pain” of being out-of-tune for these upcoming events?!? I think it’s easy to see where I’m going with that one..but it all starts here on the blog to make sure we’re doing things right…I’m very grateful to Johnny for adding this aspect to his website and taking out time from his busy to schedule to look at our videos/provide feedback….what a HUGE help to say the least. I don’t know of another Saxophone website where you can get this kind of support.

The thing about it is that I’ve always certainly been aware of tuning the Sax and as mentioned I have been relying on A440 hz videos to do it, but as we can see I need more help. The good news is that I have a tuner coming from Amazon, already on it’s way “in transit” on the shipping and in quick order the tuning will be fixed, so no worries and I’ll upload it again after I get my tuner. I also think being able to visually see on the tuner whether I’m flat/sharp is going to really help me fine-tune my ears because once I see it, then it will be easier for me to hear it. I was actually just thinking about this very thing today because in focusing like Crazy on Blues/Rock Improvisation in Johnny’s Killer Blues ebook, the thing that made it all click for me mentally….(drums please LOL)…was the keyboard. Johnny talks about lots of things like major/minor intervals, flat 5, minor 3rd, perfect fifths, etc.. Once you understand the Piano keyboard, then you know exactly what he’s talking about. Once I understood all of that, then I was able to hear those things on the Saxophone. But without having a visual aide of the keyboard, it would have been much harder to understand. The visual aide of the keyboard is what helped me understand Johnny’s lessons in Killer Blues. I would take his exercises and play them on the keyboard first. Once I saw how they worked/the theory behind it all, then it was FAR EASIER to understand on the Saxophone. So I think being able to visually see on a tuner v.s. trying to “hear” it, at this point in time, will help me immensely…..the visual aide of the keyboard is how I came to understand Johnny’s lessons in Killer Blues. Because we can take the knowledge in not just Killer Blues, but his new Improvisation course and apply it to any scale…provided we know our scales first. I will get to his new course in time to come, but I’m focusing on this kind of playing first because it allows me to express myself & allows me to play the way I’ve always imagined playing a Saxophone. Even before I started learning how to play from Johnny, this is the kind of music I would buy on CDs (now ways it’s all mp3 LOL) But at least now you know what goes on in my mind, musically, when you hear this kind of playing….I love this stuff 🙂
To anyone who may be thinking about uploading a video but are a little “hesitant” to do it, I would strongly encourage you to not hold back and upload to get that valuable feedback from Johnny–he’s the only pro player here on his site (maybe he has another member or 2 who is a pro player here? I don’t know of anyone else) and the rest of us are mere student players who make loads of mistakes….sorry for the long post LOL

[Anonymous]

its mystery to me how a lot of people just can’t tell when they play their instrument in accompanyment with other instruments, or a backing track that they don’t notice straight away they sound off tune or at least way off tune in parts.

Tuning up beforehand is a good preventative, but i feel should be able to notice sonethings wrong – whether you tune up or not?

I guess we are all different!

[Michael Bishop]

I removed this video because I’m getting ready to re-upload it this week–the tuner was showing that I had the MP pushed into too far…really glad to have gotten a good tuner 🙂

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