Take Five

[Alan Costin]

Hi Johnny, I recently bought your Take Five download and have to say it’s one of the hardest tunes I’ve ever tried to play.
Would you say it’s easier to play on Alto or Tenor ?
I mainly play Tenor and I’m finding it really challenging,any chance you could do a tutorial for Take Five ?

regards
Al

[john]

I agree, it’s one of the harder ones in my collection.
I would say slightly tougher on the tenor because of the key and especially when hitting that B and Bb pattern as in the 2nd bar of the melody.
you can’t use the bis key for Bb because it goes back and forth to the B natural.
also it’ll help if you work out those 16th note patterns, they can really slow you down otherwise.
practice them slow and diligently and work up to speed.
those are the kind of things I would talk about in a tutorial video, one I just can’t do at the moment because of too many commitments.

[Alan Costin]

I switched to Alto and found it a lot easier than Tenor although its still a challenge. I think slow and diligent is the way to go.

[john]

Good to hear Alan.
get the metronome.
figure out your hardest passage, then set the tempo to
the speed which allows you to play the hardest passage properly.
every time you play it perfectly, turn the tempo up one number.

[Author]

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