Play Sax By Ear - Crash Course
Bb Instruments
PSBE Lesson 5
Advanced Ear Training
Welcome Back
Today’s lesson is an essential step in your journey to improvise solid solos.
AET stands for Advanced Ear Training, but don’t worry, if you’ve kept up with your assignments so far, your ears and fingers should be ready for this “advanced” exercise.
Before we begin, I want you to warm up by playing PE1 a few times with the metronome at a comfortable tempo.
In today’s video, I’m going to play a simple musical phrase over the Oh Susanna backing track accompaniment.
I will only use notes from the pentatonic scale that is now part of your mind, body and soul.
You will then repeat back exactly what you heard me play in the space that follows.
Feel free to play through this video over and over again to improve your ability to play back what you just heard.
When improvising, we are doing exactly that, except the phrase you hear is coming out of your head.
Our goal as improvisors is to be able to make what we hear in our head come out of our instrument.
This AET exercise is the best way to improve this essential skill. In the full Pentatonic Foundation Course, there are 3 other AET lessons like this one that get progressively more advanced.
Understanding Song Form is essential. This is the first thing you must know about a song when learning it.
The diagram above explains in detail the song form of Oh Susanna.
Other songs will have different forms, but the concepts remain constant.
The Next Lesson
So far in our PSBE Crash Course, we have briefly covered the steps in the most effective method for learning how to play popular melodies by ear and improvise solos.
In Lesson 6 I’ve got a treat for you as well as some tips that will make all the solos you play from this day forward sound better.
See you then…
***Remember, the next lesson can only be accessed using the link in the email you will receive tomorrow, so look out for it in your inbox, and if you haven’t done so already, add jay@bettersax.com to your list of contacts or whitelist my email address.
Just because you received an email from me already does not mean that future emails won’t go into spam or junk mail.
PSBE Lesson 5 Assignment
- Play through the Lesson 5 video as many times as you like
- When repeating back the phrases, make sure the rhythm is identical to what you heard
- All the notes used in the video come from the major pentatonic scale
- Have fun playing this lesson!
Can't Wait?
If you really can’t wait, and want to dive in and get all of my training on how to learn to play melodies by ear and improvise great solos using only the 5 notes of the pentatonic scale you can always jump ahead of the line and order the full Pentatonic Foundation Course here.
Pentatonic Foundation
Learn to play melodies by ear and improvise solos using the 5 notes of the pentatonic scale.
Blues Foundation
Develop your ability to play improvised solos using the Blues style and language.
