forum question

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnny,
I know you already have a forum for members to share a sax video – which is great as they often highlight some examples of tricks, styles etc..,

But is it worth your while doing a separate forum for ‘requests for future backing tracks’ – this could be one where someone requests a backing track, and other members add their comments (whether or not they are in favor) or you could provide a short list of possible backing track and get feed back as to which one we’d like first?

It might not be practicsl, as this relies heavily on memmbers finding the time to add their own comments to other peoples conments.

Just an idea, may not be such a good one.

[john]

JB, I totally understand what you’re sayin and it’s a good idea in theory. I do get requests here, in emails and on my Youtube pages because after people hear a tune they’ll think of another that they like and ask me to do it. I just can’t do this because these tracks take me a very long time. Put it this way…even if that’s all I did all day long every day I still couldn’t do it. Michael found a site where the guy will take requests for personalized backing tracks and charges quite a bit for them (I forgot how much) so maybe he’ll jump in on this. The other thing is that I can’t labour over music I don’t like.

The good news is I’m getting 2 maybe 3 Christmas tunes together soon before I go on a bit of a road trip next month. these songs will probably be all I have time for in this time frame so I want to get them out for you guys to have some new Christmas stuff. when I get back it will be Dec already and so I have to do this now.

[Michael Bishop]

Hi JB–Like Johnny was saying, I found someone who can create just about anything you want and is very good at it; on the down side he’s expensive…but this is all the guy does for a living. He doesn’t go on tour or anything like Johnny does. Johnny gets all kinds of requests as you know, but we can only imagine how much time he would spend on making backing tracks alone?!? It keeps the guy I found so busy, that making custom tracks is all he does, literally. He makes them in a real recording studio with real instruments and with some cpu. software too, of course. But they are very, very good and sound just about like the real thing….not “robotic” like so much garbage out there. In fact, before I turned to the man I found who produced music in a real recording studio, I first turned to Johnny to see if he would be interested…Johnny was obviously my first choice 🙂 I got these tracks done back in the Spring when I got my Tax return and paid for my Saxophones. They’re expensive, but the tracks are fantastic. I can pass that info. on to you if you want it, just e-mail me. He made custom tracks for the songs below that will be part of my series of uploads starting between now and December. I did one of them this past Spring on the Alto with the stock MP that comes with the Sax just so that you could see how everything sounds when you get the Sax “as is”, but I had same track made of the same song and he only charged me $15 to change it to the key that I wanted to play it in Tenor Sax…killing Tenor Sax solo 🙂 The only song I haven’t finished yet is “I’m A Road Runner”. I’m alloted 45 min. of playing for the show in November, so that song will probably go for my audition in December along with a couple of others from Johnny’s. This Motown stuff with Altissimo REALLY hits home with people…I saw that for myself a couple of months ago 🙂

[Michael Bishop]

On a side note Johnny, you may recall I e-mailed you the sheet music for “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” that was weird because on the C#7 chord he showed the E notes to be played as E naturals..but playing them like that against my backing track sounded too “flat” so I’m going to play those E Naturals as E#, meaning F natural, which is correct with the C# scale anyway. However, the B notes which would typically be a B# for this scale (C natural LOL) sounded correct with my track played as B Natural..meaning we flatten the 7th note on our C# Scale–perfectly acceptable with our dominant chords, correct? This song “set my soul on fire” to say the least 🙂 There was a whole section of the song where he didn’t include any sheet music at all, about 30 second or so worth–I was still okay because I had the scale to work with, had the song to work with listen to hear the licks/riffs King Curtis was playing. He was basically using those same key notes in the scale over and over, just changing it up between each lick/riff….good lesson in our own Improvisation.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Johnny – for the feedback, i’m in a similar boat – at this moment in time i’ve got too many backing tracks, and it doesn’t help being a slow learner, the number of tracks i’ve got should keep me going for years, and like you say about laboring over music you don’t like, the same unfortunatelyb applies to buying backing tracks. All your tracks are great, there are a few that don’t float my boat, but i look at music from the perspective, that there will be stuff i have to play in my music grades that don’t appeal to me, but technically i will benifit from playing them, also i’m sure some friends will request me to play some i can’t stand, lol

Glad that you will be dong more xmas backing tracks – these are the kind that everyone wants to hear rond december, and ones no one can afford not to have!

Thanks Michael for the offer, just too snowed under with sax grade work to take on more stuff, it’s time consuming just getting the sax grade work done.

[Dazza]

Hey Johnny. It might be a bit early but is there any chance you know the Xmas songs you will be doing and perhaps what Key? In my scales practice I have been trying to play a few carols by ear in different keys and it would be good to get a head start on familiarising ourselves with the upcoming tunes so we can in fact be ready for Xmas (2016 that is!).Cheers

[john]

Well, I’ve started working on them but have yet to commit to the keys.
There will be 3:
Silent Night
Winter Wonderland
Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad will be similar to the original version by Jose Feliciano but his was in D and mine will probably be in C as this will be better for Bb and Eb horns.
I don’t always like to make them in the original key because some keys don’t work well for all saxes and so I’m still experimenting on a couple of the tunes but they’re sounding good… Silent Night has a slow gospel feel and Winter Wonderland will be more of a swingin’ bluesy jazzy feel.
I’ll try to remember to update here when keys have been finalized. if you don’t see it in the next few days remind me!

[Anonymous]

Johnny thats great, Silent Night is one of my wifes favorites!

Unfortunately due to problems with my Pc dying (managed to recover it with chkdsk software – without losing anything) & also i cant inststall the latest apples i-tunes update as it doesnt work with windows xp, so if i download any backing tracks to my pc i cant copy them to my i-touch. As the old version of itunes won’t connect to any devices with the new version of i-tunes. To cut a long story short – i have to buy a new pc. Until then i can’t buy anymore stuff!

The annoying thing is Apple has one new laptop, with a different cable connection, and they haven’t
rolled out all the other models with the new connection – so i’ll probably have to hold back until the desktop version has the new connection.

The other option is i download but don’t use the backing tracks until later on. And to anyone else reading this – i don’t have a cd player, and i don’t have speakers connected to my pc. I have to copy the tracks to my i-touch and play them through 2inch speakers connected to my i-touch

[William Cingolani]

I can’t store any of the saxJohnny backing tracks into my iTunes library as mp3 files. I have to store them in a folder and access them as a link to the saxJohnny site. That means I can’t use them in Garage Band unless I have the backing track file. My computer is a mac. In Garage Band I have to be able to add them to the Garage Band project as an mp3 file. If any body knows how I can turn Johnny’s backing tracks into mp3 files let me now. Thanks
William

[john]

William, all my tracks are mp3 files. I store them in iTunes fine. when you download them from my download pages you will see that the extension is .mp3 so I don’t know why this is giving you a problem?

[Author]

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