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Beginner Practice Tunes in 12 Keys

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6441

 
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One piece of common advice in learning to play jazz (or other improvised music) is to play the blues in all 12 keys. There's even a space to post your recordings on this site. I do play in all 12, but I emphasise the guitar keys because they are common to most bands. They are concert E, A, D, G, C, and F. Lately I've been playing one song daily, solo, rubato in all keys. Instead of moving in fifths or fourths, I do it chromatically. It feels like it's making a huge difference in my feel for intervals and the relation between notes, i.e;, where the next note is from where you are. The song I play is not a blues, but the Tennessee Waltz. Something about the simplicity of this major song makes it a great exercise, in my opinion.

I wonder what other songs you'd recommend anyone practicing on in 12 keys to help in the task of knowing where the notes are?

Here's Sonny Rollins demonstrating how you can put your feeling into this simple tune. Truth is, a gospel approach like this makes most tunes better. ;)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtmqceDsAYU
 
Funny, I used to play the Tennessee Waltz. Might be because my Mom was from there, so I heard it a lot as a kid.

An exercise I highly recommend to align your musical brain to your fingers is also a 12 key exercise, but with a twist. You use a random start note and DO NOT think about what the key is or in any way try to visualize or rationalize what you're doing. Play your tune of choice from that start note. I also emphasize guitar keys, but as a result am weak in playing in concert C# and F#.
 
Wade Cornell said:
I think you'll find you won't like playing them on sax as they don't lay well under the fingers.
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The one in C#m I put in Cm to play but it's better in C#. The blues in F# I haven't tried yet, but on guitar it uses open strings that make sense. Still, imagine if a sax player sits in on my songs on those keys. It might be a revelation to them.
 
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About keys. On the guitar, keys make a huge difference, but in a different way, via open strings. No one has hands that can play certain combinations of notes, but thanks to open strings, you play low A, octave A, C#, B, E, a nice sounding A add 9. If a strum or finger picking, the order of the notes can be changed to good effect. On the saxophone, it's different. A fingering may be awkward, but it exists and is possible. From what I feel right now, playing the simple tunes and/or blues, it hardly matters what key you play them in. Granted, playing over a tune with complicated changes like say, Inner Urge, which I can't play in any key, would be a big challenge. The Tennessee Waltz isn't a blues per se, but it has that same quality of a pentatonic(-ish), gospel(-ish) melody and changes that make it relatively easy to play in every key. It also has a lot of opportunities for expression, as the Sonny or Norah Jones versions show. Come to think of it, Amazing Grace was featured in some early lesson plans. It is also a great tune to run through in different keys. Unlike Tennessee, it has only I, IV, and V chords in it.
For the same effect in minor keys, Coltrane's Spiritual, mostly in a single key, works well. Funny thing, this live version is played more simply (with less embellishment) than it is on the 1963 album.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7m5joZPP0U
 
Practice tunes in 12 keys. No. Why should I? I'm 64 years old and just playing rock, blues, soul, .... . "Old school honkin'" is nothing for me.
6441 said:
concert E, A, D, G, C, and F. I play tenor sax as it was an electric guitar. Sometimes I play with a guy who is very much into the Stevie Ray Vaughn thing. Also playing tuned down. Why can't he play SRV like most other in E instead of Eb? Very annoying. I have to play in F (tenor) or C (bari) instead of F# and C#.
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Concert A and E are two keys that the tenor sax comes out great. I don't know why? And so does the guitar. Some says A and E are easy keys to play in for the guitarists. And many guitar playes sings as well. To sing in E is not so easy. So they took lessons i singing instead of playing the guitar in other keys?
 
That quote is mixed up, I didn't say anything about SRV who tuned his guitar a half-step down, so he was in Eb.
Guitar ease is all about the open strings, especially in simpler music with triads or sevenths. I sand nearly everything in E because playing and singing at the same time is pretty hard.

The only reason to practice in 12 keys isn't to play the songs, but to get to know what fingering produces the note you want. It's been very helpful to me as a beginner, especially since I hear the note, but need to know what to do with my hands to produce it on a saxophone.
 
6441 said:
That quote is mixed up, I didn't say anything about SRV who tuned his guitar a half-step down, so he was in Eb.
Guitar ease is all about the open strings, especially in simpler music with triads or sevenths. I sand nearly everything in E because playing and singing at the same time is pretty hard.

The only reason to practice in 12 keys isn't to play the songs, but to get to know what fingering produces the note you want. It's been very helpful to me as a beginner, especially since I hear the note, but need to know what to do with my hands to produce it on a saxophone.
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Yes, the quote is mixed up. Sorry.
I wrote: I play tenor sax as it was an electric guitar. Sometimes I play with a guy who is very much into the Stevie Ray Vaughn thing. Also playing tuned down. Why can't he play SRV like most other in E instead of Eb? Very annoying. I have to play in F (tenor) or C (bari) instead of F# and C#.
 
6441 said:
On the saxophone, it's different. A fingering may be awkward, but it exists and is possible. From what I feel right now, playing the simple tunes and/or blues, it hardly matters what key you play them in.
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That's pretty much how I think albeit through the lens of my relatively impoverished music theory and experience. You could argue that a particular melody or arrangement will sound similar on sax within a fairly small key range

But you know there are factors that clip the wings such as the tight note range of the sax. You can simply run out of notes even with a semitone shift

I know you're talking about simple tunes but if playing an arrangement there may be certain runs, riffs, trills or other note combos that suffer if transposed. A lot of sax is played to sheet music where a semitone shift can open new levels of reading difficulty if not tone. Any instrument has a change in tone quality through the range which may be employed best in a few keys
 
Yes, all true. But remember, this was a suggestion to practice a simple song like Spiritual or Tennessee Waltz in 12 keys, just to hear where those notes are in relation to each other. The other funny thing about sax compared to guitar or piano is that you can't see your hands, unless you use a mirror, and then you're seeing them reversed. I think it's better not to see them, unless you are trying to correct a specific problem. The more my friend who's played guitar forever asks me about modes and scales, the more I realize that some musicians don't understand the most important thing if you want to improvise: hearing the notes in relation to each other. This is has no meaning if you only read music and never invent it on the spot. Those modes and scales (etc) are there to help you hear melody and harmony. You have to hear them, not just know they exist and their names. Yes, they help with facility when you practice them, but I'm done with that phase of my life. I only need to hear the next note(s) in my head and know how to hit them on the instrument I'm playing.
 

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