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Timing in music means different things to different people.

To me it means knowing when to play, and when not to play. Coming in at exactly the right time after a break, or when to make a solo relax or climax. When to play a repeated riff or one long note and when to go "out". When to play simply and when to play clever fast stuff on the changes. When to use the exact same "time" concept as the rest of the band and when to use your own or play in front of the beat, on it or lay behind ...

Tags: rhythm, timing

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Pete's Blogs , Saxophones , Playing the saxophone , Miscellaneous Music

This question comes up a lot, and it can be quite a difficult one to answer. People tend to use various analogies rather than a pure physiological analysis of what happens. You may have heard people referring to "breathing from the stomach" or using "warm air" or "cold air", fast air or slow air, all of which can be quite confusing. Almost as confusing as telling people to push with their diaphragm, a part of their body that most people can't identify let alone have any idea about how to control ...

Something I've been meaning to do for a while is consolidate a few tone exercises into one. I often get asked about practising long notes. Everyone knows it is something they should do but not enough people do it because they don't know how. Sounds odd, that doesn't it. How can it be so hard to play a long note?

Well, I can tell you it's very hard because it's so boring. That's one of the reasons I started thinking about different ways to practise long notes. This exercise, or rather ...

Tags: saxophone, sound, tone

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Saxophone Sound & Tone , Pete's Blogs , Saxophones

While writing the article on intonation, I remembered what was probably the hardest recording session in my life was for a Michael Caine movie, Blue Ice. My brief was to compose and play a tune in the style of Charlie Parker. I assembled some great musicians for this including Bobby Orr on drums, Steve Rose on piano and Guy Barker on Trumpet. I was quite confident about the tune as I'd studied a lot of be bop in my time, but to play and sound like the great Charlie Parker was rather daunting. ...

The previous entry about practising what you preach got me thinking. I decided that in this case I would let myself off, I eventually did get back to finishing the warm-up exercise plus I got a tune composed. (But did I write it down, is it in my subconscious or have I totally forgotten it? More on that later. The question got begged though - how do you make sure you can always (or as far as possible) keep your practising ordered and not jump from one thing to another so nothing really gets achieved? ...

Tags: faster tempos, practise, saxophone

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Pete's Blogs , Saxophones , Practising