The more scales, modes and chords I know…then all the better?

[john]

No, Baker’s right. The young keyboard player is simply seeing the sax as an instrument that plays one note at a time (and he’s right of course) but shows ignorance for the instrument. While we don’t strike chords at once like a guitar or piano player, we still need to play chords as a succession of individual notes or else how could we improvise? No one can improvise without playing chords and scales, it’s as simple as that.
I will put together a detailed lesson covering some needed theory as it pertains especially to improvisation.

[Michael]

What was confusing me was trying to understand exactly what their keyboard/piano player was talking about. I know very well the importance of Scales and chords–and while I have so much to learn, I’ve learned enough to know better than anyone saying that I don’t need to learn scales and chords and he wasn’t disagreeing with me about it. He was implying that, when it comes to the specific music theory that I have been learning about, it really didn’t come into play with the Saxophone and didn’t need to worry about it. So I think your right Johnny that it’s ignorance.
In his reply e-mail to me, Mr. Baker provided me with a list of some pretty amazing well-known pieces of music to check out online and I’m actually doing that tonight–a lot of it is Symphony. He brings out in his e-mail that while each of these Symphonies have their own distinct sound and feel, they also have a lot of factors in common too and help to drive home the importance of what he’s conveying to me to refute what I was told: without an understanding of music theory, it would be impossible to create our own melodies or Improvise on the Saxophone over an existing song and that I would never become more than an “average” player. I don’t want to be just “average”!!!

[Anonymous]

Johnny, I’m interested in seeing what part of music theory is needed in improvisation as well.

If you want to play sheet music everyone knows that you need some level of music theory knowledge to play it.
It’s the same as driving a car – you have to pass a driving theory test as well, otherwise you’d end up driving through red lights not realising you’re meant to stop at them.
If you are going to play from memory, 9 times out of 10 you’ll be looking at a sheet of music and memorising it, so you still need the music theory, unless you’ve got someone to show you how to play it by hand.
But the one good thing about music theory is, once you know it, it applies to all instruments in some way or another.

[Anonymous]

Another interesting thing, there are improvisation courses out there that claim not to use any music theory!
They basicaly train you to know in your head what key to play for any sound you hear.
So if you can play the song in your mind, you can play it on your instrument.
I knew a very old guitar player that could do that, and he could accompany any singer with chord arrangements.
In fact its a far lot easier to accompany a singer on a keyboard, just playing chords only, than it is to play straight melody.
But i’ve looked at some of these courses and they don’t get you to learn individual scales but they get you to learn the scale patterns.
eg all major scales have the same patterns.
The reason being, cause they know all western music is wriiten around scales!
So if you know what scale a song is in, you know what notes to play roughly.

[john]

if you know what key the song is in then you know some theory.

[Author]

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