Cantaloupe Island Improvisation…too many licks/riffs?

[Michael Bishop]

Hi Johnny,
I couldn’t help but think how great of a Saxophone Cover the famous song by Herbie Hancock “Cantaloupe Island” would be on the Saxophone–throw in some of our own Improvisation and we have a great song that we could truely call “our own” In this video of this gentleman as he starts Improvising with some guys on guitar and he can obviously play the Saxophone, but his Improvisation strikes me as just “too much”. It seems like he’s totally out-of-synche from the other guys playing behind him, don’t you think? I know he’s using same Jazz-type of Improvisation, but as he stars Improvising it just doesn’t sound like he “blends in” with the other guys. Didn’t Michael Brecker say if we can’t play it in less than a Fifth, then it’s not worth playing?

[john]

it’s acrobatics for sure but some people like it I guess.
to me it’s cerebral rather than soulful.
some musicians I have gigged with would say “are they paying you by the note”? as a joke of course!
Michael Brecker did say that to make an important point and I quoted him on it but remember that Brecker himself really stretched his jazz playing quite a bit and certainly never kept his solo ideas to within a 5th.

[Anonymous]

I listened to it – it doesn’t sound quite right, the acoustics in the room doesn’t suit the sax sound recording, that sax should sound a lot more sexed up than that. It great performance, some of the notes he struggled to get out correctly. Listening to that performance, makes me understand why the pro that teaches me, always does a room check the day before with his sax, and changes his setup to the room acoustics.

[Anonymous]

now this sounds more sexy

but its a cornet!

and this one with a tenor sax is sexy as well

better harmonics in these 2

[Anonymous]

interestingly enough in the 2nd recording i can hear traces of pink panther.

[Michael Bishop]

That’s a good way to put it Johnny about cerebral v.s. soulful, that nails it on the head. I know Michael Brecker played licks/riffs in more than just a 5th, but with that quote I was just thinking how with a song like Cantaloupe Island there is so, so much that you could do within a fifth and it would sound great–and then we can build on playing beyond the Fifth, right? But I just think this guy went way overboard….he’s not in harmony with the band at all.
JB: Great videos, thanks for sharing, you bring up some great points. You should show the video I posted to your Pro Sax Instructor and see what he says about it. I mean, the guy on this video can obviously play, but like Johnny said it seems to be a kind of “intellectual” type of playing.

[Anonymous]

Michael – i’d love to ask my teacher, but at $25 a lesson for only half an hour, you get me, also being unemployed as well, and the wife working 4 days a week, i can’t waste valuable teaching time chatting (and believe me it happens)

I’ve got the killer blues course on my list to do after the major improvisation course, which i fit in with my grade 3 sax exam work.

I was going to do my grade 3 sax exam in november, but i’ll have to push it back to next march – the wifes getting the 3 bedrooms & bathroom redecorated over the next months, so thats going to disrupt everything (bit like your house move.

Over here, we have smaller houses, that were built in the days when everyone had coal fires to warm the houses. Then they introduced central heating, which was designed for these houses. So because of that a lot of the heat condenses on the walls, which in turn grows mould on the walls and ceilings. So every few years you sometimes have to paint over, or replace the wall paper. At lot of the newer houses are better designed to avoid these problems.

Thats what we brits enjoy when we come to florida and we see those great big rooms in houses, and villas!

[Author]

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