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Home Alt Forums Daily Practice Routine #1 Jazz & Swing – big band

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  • #19816
    Anonymous

      Hey Johnny – Today i joined a big band (40+ players, surrounded
      by lots of very experienced players, and a professional conductor),
      that was starting up for the 1st time.

      We practiced for 3 hrs – guess what – 1st song we played was
      watermelon man! The altos were divided into melody & harmony players,
      completely random, & i got melody sheet music parts! there must
      have been 15 altos.

      It was fantastic, no problems with timing with a drummer at the back,
      and a double base & base guitar.The rest of the band as made up of
      Tenor Saxs, clarinets & trumpets.

      The best part – Thanks to the amount of work i put into
      using your daily sax routine – my tone was exactly spot on
      with all the rest of the players – CREDIT to your routine
      without which my tone would be CRAP!

      I had lots of timing issues – but to me sounding GOOD – outweighs
      everything else – if i had sounded crap – i would have packed it in.

      So now its a monthly practice with the band – as its new – hopefully
      playing public by the end of the year!

      I also have to give credit to my teacher for sorting out my setup,
      & credit to myself for practicing at least between 12 & 18 hours a week.
      But i’m really pleased to be in a proper band after just starting 18
      months ago.

      I’ve still got a long way to go, but for me – to sound exactly like
      them is ace!

      cheers
      sxpoet

      #19828
      john
      Keymaster

        That’s good JB. Nothing like working out with a live group like that. will do wonders for your timing too. just have “big” ears when rehearsing and you’ll do fine. we can practice all day long by ourselves but nothing is as valuable as working out with a live situation….especially a big band like that.

        #19845
        Anonymous

          yeah – compared to the rest of the plsyers i was out of my depth, felt i was among a lot of music
          teschers & older university music players! To be fair the band was
          formed from a lot of existing orchestra players who wanted to
          start up a separate jazz/swing band.

          But for me i feel that i entered at the right time, it gives me more incentive to get the timing right & the dynamics right for
          a lot of the phrasing – when i do
          my own practicing! I told my
          sax teacher – so now he’s giving
          me a harder time with getting
          things right! lol

          The left hand side of the band
          had 5 rows of sax players – 2 alto
          rows, 3 rows for tenors and bari’s. The right hand side had
          3 rows of clarinets, and 2 of trumpets, not sure if trumbones
          were there. as i sat 2nd row from
          front! Really wierd – i though you
          could sit anywhere – lol, everyone
          else knew where to sit.

          Next month – spending a day playing in a real orchestra – that’s going to be a chsllenge!

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