Question on playing Mack the Knife

[Michael Bishop]

😎 Hi Johnny,
I have working on “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Mack the Knife” and love both of them, they both make the kids/wife want to dance a little 🙂 My question is about the way you’re playing a couple of the notes on Mack the Knife(big difference in how we play the notes v.s. just playing them)—-the first one is when the scale changes to C-sharp Major and you play the the first 3 C# notes, seems like your scooping them just a little (something of the sorts)? It’s really subtle but makes a great difference v.s. just playing a C# with no kind of swing or anything. In practicing this song seems like there’s lots of notes that I can actually do that to–kind of like scooping them & holding them, just a litttle bit anyway.
The other note is when the Scale changes to D Major and your playing the E notes immediately after the 2 quarter rests that are preceded with a low F#. In practicing it v.s. watching you play it seems like there’s a certain swing going on there and it carries through to the D, B, and 3 C# notes that follow? Hope this all makes sense in reading it, thanks!

[john]

Yes, scoops, glissandos up and down and more… these are embellishments we pick up along the way. It’s how we can make even a very simple melody a little more exiting. I plan on doing a lesson video covering this very soon I hope.

[Michael Bishop]

Thanks Johnny–I could really see immediately the need from some scoops/embellishments on Mack the Knife almost immediately when starting to learn it, and it was those 2 parts of the song in particular where I was having to watch you very carefully to think about mentally what you’re doing there HOW I needed to play it v.s just playing the notes. That E note in particular seems to have a certain little “swing” to it that is new to me.
Mr Baker, the local band instructor who teaches me Music theory on Monday afternoons for 30-45 min, said it would help me to “hum” a melody to myself a little bit as it help me mentally think about that rhythm while learning it, as there are things like embellishments that sheet music alone won’t tell me how to play. When it comes to the Saxophone, he says I’ve been in good hands learning here 🙂
I’ve gotten to the portion of the song where we’re playing in Eb Major, near the end of it.

[john]

Hi baboon – i play guitar in a church band once a month & everytime we get a new song to play that i’ve never heard, i get the instructor or band leader to sing it first while at the same time looking at the sheet music. That way i can automatically pick up the mood, tempo, where the chords change. Then i have a go at playing with the singing or humming if you like. Whereas if i played it from the sheet alone it tends to come out dull and lifeless, and often completely different to what it should sound like.

[john]

One of the most incredible things about the mind – and a lot of people don’t know this, is that if you can play back a tune in your head then you have actually remembered it, same thing applies to photographs, if you shut your eyes and recall everything in the photo then you’ve remembered it. Basically if you can imagine anything then unwittingly youv’e remembered it.

[john]

If you want to be creative then you’ve got to be able to imagine it. Once you can imagine it in your mind, then you can start playing round with it in your mind & try playing what you’ve played around in your mind, record it play it back – was the sound or tune what you wanted in your mind. Its a bit like what if i played it this way? explore discard move on. The other problem with the mind is that the mind has a mind of its own. eg you must have heard a song on the radio and its got stuck in your head all day and you can’t get it out of your mind. Whats happening there is the mind is playing the tune to itself and enjoying it and ignoring you. You need to break out of it and get back in control if this happens – this is how people get into bad moods which can last for days! One other thing is people usually associate minor scales with sadness and majir scales with happyness – true, but you can play the exact same notes and by just altering the tempo, articulation & dynamics you can make a song sad, happy in fact any mood you want it. In my teens i could play Fur Elise really sad, excitingly bright, in a reggae style etc.. but at the end of the day its still the same Fur Elise

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