How to Master Difficult Music When You Just Don't Have Enough Time

Now that we're back in school, the assignments are piling up quickly. It's as if a sleeping giant has suddenly come awake and is issuing demands left and right.

This applies to band class too. Many of my students have challenging set pieces to learn for winter concert band shows and fall marching band competitions. Not to mention performance exams and juries.

It can be overwhelming. In fact, it probably IS overwhelming, especially for a few of my students who have been handed some difficult assignments.

You know who you are!

But rest assured that it can be done. The process I use is three-step: Identify, Isolate, then Integrate.

No, I didn't invent this. But I use it and it works.

Begin by playing through the piece at a slow/moderate pace. When you hit those passages that cause the fingers to fumble, Identify them, then, Isolate them. Focus on practicing just the few measures at a time that you have the most difficulty with.

Practice each phrase in small increments, very slowly at first, building up speed only when it gets better. Use a metronome.

Then, Integrate: play the entire movement at a moderate tempo and if the difficult phrase sails by, move on to the next one.

Five minutes of total concentration in the mastery of a single sax problem is worth an hour of blowing notes once a week.

Now go practice. You can do this. We've done it before.

Key words:  saxophone, better practice tips, how to play better, learning difficult woodwind music

HOW TO SURVIVE THE SAXOPHONE FAILURE BLUES

Crummy gig, practice going nowhere, stale solos, can't play as fast as you want...stuff like this got you down?

Sure, I've been there. We all have at one time or another.

How to get out of it?

Know, first of all, that it's temporary, whatever it is that is displeasing you about your performance. Someone wiser than me once said it best - this too shall pass.

Second, If you didn't nail it today, you have the next gig. And the next. And the one after that.

Third, everybody has days like this. It's one of the unwritten laws of learning to play a musical instrument. Even the greats: no, Charlie Parker wasn't born with talent, believe it or not. The legend surrounding him would make you think so but no. He earned his place, one sweaty lousy scale at a time.

Over a period of years.

They all did. Lester Young, Eddie Harris, Cannonball Adderley, you name it.

So, get back to making music. And remember -- if you're not failing, you're not trying.

Key words: saxophone practice, private lessons, performance anxiety

HOW TO PLAY BETTER SOLOS 

You've got your scales down cold, you practice arpeggios with a metronome, and you use a tuner when blowing long tones.  You've been at this for a while. You show up regularly at open mics and jam sessions, but, your improvised solos are lacking.  Here's how to fix that:

Transcribe.

Meaning, transcribe solos. There's only about a billion to choose from. Find one you like, and copy it as best you can with your own instrument.  Then, do it again, and again, and again. That's called studying the masters. All artists do this, whether they are painters or writers or accomplished musicians.

So why don't more intermediate-level jazz and blues improv students transcribe? Because it is a time-consuming and challenging process, especially in a world that offers you ten killer saxophone licks in three easy lessons.

Let me break it down and simplify the process for you.

1. Choose a solo within your skill range. Giant Steps? Not at first. The goal is to be able to play what you hear, and, to finish what you start.

2. Play it over and over. And over and over again. Listen. Repeat. Do this so much that in time you can sing the solo note-for-note. Yes - sing it first. I studied with a jazz tenor monster player named Robert Dove for a while, and I recall him saying "You can't play it if you can't sing it."

3. Now pick up your instrument and start the process by playing short passages and then replicating them. Mimic as best you can the performer's shading, dynamics, bends, as well.  Some think you should write the transcription down. I find it more valuable to transcribe directly to the horn and memorize the solo at the same time you are learning it.

4. Make it easy on yourself. Use any of the many software programs and apps available to assist you in transcribing. Back in the day when I was a kid, we had these things called turntables and we played records on them. You'd pick the needle up and put it back down, over and over and over, until you could get the passage into your head. Now, I use Transcribe!

5. The benefits of transcribing are many: learning how a master craftsman develops a solo line and handles harmonic changes, development of your critical listening abilities, enhancing your ear training, and improving your memory, to name a few.

The final step in this process is to play along with the recorded version. Remember to go easy on yourself -- it takes as long as it takes, so give the process time. Transcribing is hard at first. It gets easier with repetition, so finish what you start.

A shortcut is to purchase solos from the catalogs of the many transcribers our there and play along with the recorded version. Charles McNeal is a great source of material.  Good? Yes. But in my opinion, you will get so much more from learning with your ears instead of your eyes. Do that first, and then study a manuscript.

I'll leave you with this: transcribing a solo is the single best thing you will ever do to learn the craft of improvisation.  Only do it if you want to get better.

Key words: transcribe, sax improvisation, saxophone lessons, jazz, transcription, John Coltrane, Giant Steps, Transcribe!, Charles McNeal, Robert Dove

KEEP IT SIMPLE, OKAY?

As part of my own continuing education, I subscribe to many different music education web sites. Each week, there's some new lesson or brilliant insight in my email inbox, which I of course open in hopes that this will be the one thing that will break it wide open and move my playing to the next level. 

Sound familiar?

Of course it does. We all do it. There is a growing industry designed to feed us (at no small cost)  that manner of information, as often and as much as we can afford.

In this case, I scanned the information quickly before realizing that what was being told to me was not only way over my head, but, suitable only for a college classroom.

Not a bandstand.

The authors of this popular jazz web site broke down a blues solo and describes it in academic terms like approach notes, tri-tones, enclosures, implies sharp sevenths, and on and on.

I closed the web page and I moved it to a folder for later study...where I'd filed every single one of their previous posts. There were dozens of them, all there waiting for me to get back to them and figure out what they meant. 

In one fell swoop, I deleted them all.  Here's why:

If you are spending time reading web tutorials trying to figure out what they mean and how they apply, you are not playing your instrument. And if you are not playing your instrument, you are burning daylight.

Playing is the most important thing you will do. Ever. Learning off of a page or a web site uses a different part of your brain than does actual listening and playing. I'm not the first person to say that, either. 

Play what, you ask?  The answer is Keep It Simple.  Focus on the one thing that needs improvement in the area in which you find yourself playing most of the time.  Some examples:

1. If you are a middle school student, you likely have band class assignments to learn. Or, there's a passage in an assigned piece of music that is difficult. Work on that until it's as good as you can get it.

2. If you are an intermediate-level player but your fingering is sluggish, for example, you'll want to become close friends with your scales and arpeggios and your metronome.

3. You're an advanced intermediate student but you run out of ideas while soloing at the blues jams. Listen to a sax player you really like and respect, and then transcribe a riff or two to your horn. Emulate the phrasing, the tone, and the feel of it. Memorize it. Then, work it in some other of the keys most commonly called at the jams. 

Learn songs. Spend time playing them with your tuner and metronome handy. But don't sit and just read the latest newest lesson on the Internet. Instead, pack your time with music - listen, and play your horn as much as you possibly can. 

We learn music the same way we learned to speak: through imitation.

Key words: imitate, transcribe, shed, simple practice, saxophone, music lessons