Backing Tracks How to find a good backing track

[Chris Smith UK]

Hi everyone, I have a couple of questions about backing tracks. I have been playing for 7 weeks, and for the last week I have been learning Summertime. Initially just concentrating in getting the fingering right , now I have added a metronome to improve my timing. My next step is to find a backing track. This leads to my questions...

I am playing it in A Major (I can just about find C#, F#, and G#). I started looking on Youtube for "Summertime backing tracks in A major", but they all seem to be in A minor or D minor.
1) Am I looking in the wrong place? (I'm quite a visual person so having a video along with the track helps me).
2) Or am I looking for the wrong thing?

View: https://youtu.be/DddzcNSSIrE?t=1m50s

 

[nigeld]

Don't forget that the saxophone is a transposing instrument, so the key you are playing it in is not the concert pitch key.

Summertime is in a minor key, so you are (hopefully) not playing it in A major. If you are playing in 3 sharps then it is in the relative minor of A major - i.e. F# minor. The pitch you are playing in your video confirms this.

So here comes the tricky part:
Your alto sax is an Eb transposing instrument. So it sounds 3 semitones higher than what the written notes suggest.
So if you play an F# on the alto sax, it corresponds to an A natural on the piano (3 semitones higher).
Piano pitch is known as "Concert Pitch".
So when you play in F# minor, the actual sounds correspond to A minor in concert pitch.
The key given for a backing track is usually concert pitch, not saxophone pitch, because the track need not just be for saxophones.
This means that you should look for a backing track that is in concert A minor.

Sorry if this seems confusing (it is!), but it is one of the delights of playing saxophone.

 

[nigeld]

If you have a smartphone or a tablet then I strongly recommend getting the iReal Pro app for backing tracks.
It has backings for thousands of tunes, and you can select what key and speed you want the track to play.
Having the ability to slow down the backing can be very useful.

 

[Chris Smith UK]

Don't forget that the saxophone is a transposing instrument, so the key you are playing it in is not the concert pitch key.

Summertime is in a minor key, so you are (hopefully) not playing it in A major. If you are playing in 3 sharps then it is in the relative minor of A major - i.e. F# minor. The pitch you are playing in your video confirms this.

So here comes the tricky part:
Your alto sax is an Eb transposing instrument. So it sounds 3 semitones higher than what the written notes suggest.
So if you play an F# on the alto sax, it corresponds to an A natural on the piano (3 semitones higher).
Piano pitch is known as "Concert Pitch".
So when you play in F# minor, the actual sounds correspond to A minor in concert pitch.
The key given for a backing track is usually concert pitch, not saxophone pitch, because the track need not just be for saxophones.
This means that you should look for a backing track that is in concert A minor.

Sorry if this seems confusing (it is!), but it is one of the delights of playing saxophone.

Wow that is confusing! Thanks for clarifying that Nigel. ☺

 

[nigeld]

Wow that is confusing! Thanks for clarifying that Nigel. ☺

I think everyone gets a shock when they first have to deal with what it means to play a transposing instrument.
For me, it was when I tried checking my first (tenor) sax with a tuner, and discovered to my horror that I was playing a whole tone flat. For an unpleasant few minutes I thought I had bought a lemon.

The good news is that if you ever want to play one of the other sizes of saxophone, you will find that the fingering is the same as your alto.

 

[nigeld]

Summertime was Café Ballad of the month fairly recently, so here are the notes and backing track which were used then.
Summertime

Hopefully the printed notes will be pretty much the same as what you have. It doesn't matter if some of the note lengths are a bit different - it's Jazz! But if the notes you have are very different from these, then just ignore this post.

You can ignore the hieroglyphs above the notes - they are chord symbols for people who want to improvise. They say what chords are being played in the backing track.

The backing track is slow, and it has a 3-and-a-half bar introduction, before you come in. It then repeats the melody 4 times.

The Summertime thread, with recordings by Cafe members is here:
Nov 2016 - Summertime