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Stevie Ray Vaughan

thomsax

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I recommend Rocksaxplayers, to listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Great music. Songs like "Crossfire", "Pride and Joy", "The House Is Rocking", "Look At Little Sister" .... comes out good on the tenorsax. Some songs have a saxolo or a hornsection. Good traning to pick up some lines and ideas.

Thomas
 
Great guitarist .Plays with really heavy gauge strings. Does some stunning covers of Hendrix songs. Got me thinking now. Good shout Thomas.
Andrew
 
I love the intensity that he plays with...you can see his face contorting with every note he plays.

I also like the way his strat' looks so beaten up...although I bet it's just cosmetic...I reckon it probably plays like a dream...saw a DVD where he stands on it at the end of one song...

His brother, Jimmy Vaughan is worth checking too.

Martin
 
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Yes, Stevie Ray Vaughan got inspiration from guitarplayers like Hendrix, B.B. King, Freddie King .... . And some of the guitarists in early Rock 'n' Roll were inspired by the R&B honkers of the 50's. Today Rocksaxplayers get lots of ideas by listening to guitarists! I just had a saxteacher for a short time. I learned more from a guitarplayer/teacher. We did lots of call and respons exercises, filling, riffs .... . So I think the guitarplayer is the saxophonists "best friend"!

Here is a videoclip from a TV show back in the late 80's. The songs "Crossfire" was just out. The hornsection behind Stevie Ray is David "Woody" Woodford (bs), Joe Sublett (ts) and Daryl Leonard (trp) (Sublett and Leonard aka the Taxacali horns). Joe Sublett was in a band with Stevie Ray called The Cobras, before SRV became famous. I think most saxsolos on Stevie Rays recording are done by Joe Sublett.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zepJFlehn6Q
 
Great clip Thomas. Wish he'd left a bit of space for a sax solo.
As a guitarist/saxophonist I get totally confused. Want to make my guitar sound like my sax and vice versa.
It does keep things fresh though. It's really nice to play a bit of Wes Montgomery or Django on the tenor,or Shorter and Coltrane on the guitar. It stops you playing what falls under your fingers.
Tried five string banjo pieces on the sax but I tend to go blue and fall over.
There is a limit
 
Does anyone know a version of Tightrope with a horn section. I'm asking because I have to play it on Friday and I'm looking for ideas for sax input. My thirteen year old son will be playing lead guitar as guest with the band I play in...so I've got to figure out something good.

Martin
 
Does anyone know a version of Tightrope with a horn section. I'm asking because I have to play it on Friday and I'm looking for ideas for sax input. My thirteen year old son will be playing lead guitar as guest with the band I play in...so I've got to figure out something good.

Martin

I think there is a live version with a hornsection. The horns are not out in the front. It's on the "SVR" record. I have horncharts for a 3- part hornsection (trp, ts, trb/bari). If I find the charts, my saxroom is a mess, I'll let you know. I think the song is in B concert.

Thomas
 
I think there is a live version with a hornsection. The horns are not out in the front. It's on the "SVR" record. I have horncharts for a 3- part hornsection (trp, ts, trb/bari). If I find the charts, my saxroom is a mess, I'll let you know. I think the song is in B concert.

Thomas

Hi Thomas,

I'm still not finding any brass in it...I think I'll just join the keyboard line and stay out of the way! Let my son do his stuff...

Thanks,
Martin
 
Hi Thomas,

I'm still not finding any brass in it...I think I'll just join the keyboard line and stay out of the way! Let my son do his stuff...

Thanks,
Martin

You're right. Ther is no horns on Tightrope. It's another live recording, not SVR, I have. But I found my charts!!

Thomas
 
Great clip Thomas. Wish he'd left a bit of space for a sax solo.
As a guitarist/saxophonist I get totally confused. Want to make my guitar sound like my sax and vice versa.
It does keep things fresh though. It's really nice to play a bit of Wes Montgomery or Django on the tenor,or Shorter and Coltrane on the guitar. It stops you playing what falls under your fingers.
Tried five string banjo pieces on the sax but I tend to go blue and fall over.
There is a limit

Hi Andrew,

The rocksaxophonist Andrew Clark, Boston, is doing some teaching and he is also writing about how to get along with the guitar in rockmusic. He is two quotations from Andrew Clark column "Rock & Roll Saxophone" in Saxophone Journal Jan/Feb 1999 vol 23 #3:

EXAMPLE 2 starts with a typical blues line that is usually played as a bend on the guitar. So when you play it make the A bend or slide into the B and out again. This type of lick is like Voodoo Chile Dy Jimi Hendrix. It's extremely common in rock and it's usually played very fluidly. On alto it is in C# and I will play this with my left hand pinky down on the low C# so that I can hit the C# hard. Having that pinky down early makes it easier for me to time the lick in different ways as I go from one guitarist to the next.

Guitarists also use a lot of trills and tremolos. These are easy to do on the sax. The most common trill is flat seven to one. The most common tremolo is five to flat seven. Go through your blues scales and try to trill between the adjacent notes and tremolo between the wider intervals. It's also a common harmonica lick.


As you can read the (rock)saxtechniques bending, thrills, tremolos are used to get along with the sax. So is also the growl, flutter tone, false fingerings, overtones .... .

Thomas
 
Hi Thomas,
Have just been listening to Robben Ford and his band The Thin Blue Line. If you like SRV I'm sure you'll love Robben's work.
He's a real hard blues player with a jazzy element that makes him stand out from a very large crowd.
Andrew
 
Hi Thomas,
Have just been listening to Robben Ford and his band The Thin Blue Line. If you like SRV I'm sure you'll love Robben's work.
He's a real hard blues player with a jazzy element that makes him stand out from a very large crowd.
Andrew

And he's a sax player too !

Rhys
 
Really! Tell me more.

http://digitalinterviews.com/digitalinterviews/views/ford.shtml has an interview with him. It includes this:

Digital Interviews: You started out on the saxophone when you were 10 years old?

Robben Ford: Yes. At 10, I started playing the saxophone because I saw someone play it and it just totally inspired me. I had an epiphany. I was just, “That’s it! That’s what I want to do!” That was the first instrument I really fell in love with, and ran with.

Another website on him has this: Along with his love for the blues, Robben began listening to jazz in those early years, and artists that to this day are probably his most important influences, including John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Robben's approach to playing the guitar was greatly influenced by the music of these and other jazz masters. Although he enjoyed the many great jazz guitarists, such as Wes Montgomery, it was really the horns that most moved him, espeaally the saxophone work of John Coltrane. Though Robben no longer plays the saxophone, he did not give it up until the mid 1970s after his work with Jimmy Witherspoon. He felt he needed to give his all to just one instrument. Up until that time he would on some nights play almost as much sax as guitar. According to many, Robben's skills on sax were in fact equal to his skills on guitar. When Robben joined Charlie Musselwhite's band in 1970, Charlie often had Robben playing sax on such instrumentals as Ray Charles' "Hard Times" or Robben's own "Blue Stu".



He has also recorded on sax in the 1970s: albums include "Talk to your Daughter", "Discovering the Blues", "Schizophrenic" and "Sunrise".

Apparently he gave up the sax quite a long time ago, but used to be really good.

Rhys
 
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Thanks Rhys,
I never heard that he'd played sax. Some of his single line solos are very friendly to the saxophone and now it makes sense.
The album I'm listening to at present is called "Handful of Blues" and is inspiring some good noodling on the tenor.
Thanks for the info
Andy
 
Saxfriendly music. Robben Ford use to have great players on his recordings. David "Woody" Woodford, Ronnie Cuber, Edgar Winter ... .
 

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