Saxophone as a complementary of blues genre
Rhythm & Blues on the saxophone, however, is almost impossible to teach. It’s not that conventional technique and music reading skills make it any less possible to be a blues player.
Neither does not being able to read music or limited knowledge of theory make it any more or less likely you can play the blues. It’s also the case that being down on your luck and having an empty bed are not automatic requisites of being a blues musician, but it probably helps to have a broad experience of life and it’s ups and downs.
One important thing though is that if you do have a phenomenal technique and knowledge of music theory, you will need to temporarily sideline it to be a good rhythm & blues saxophonist. One thing you may notice from listening to some of the great rhythm & blues and rock and roll players such as King Curtis, Lee Allen and Sam Taylor is the ability to express as many jazz musicians can with a hundred. This is as much to do with an intangible “attitude” as it is with musicianship and knowledge of the style. It is very difficult to teach, but I believe it’s possible to learn it.
How do I play blues on the saxophone?
The quickest way to play improvised blues on the sax is learn the minor blues scale and just play it, preferably in fragments (i.e. phrases) rather just running up and down the scale. This will get you through a 12 bar chorus adequately, but as soon as possible after that learn how to use melodic phrases, riffs etc instead of relying on scales (especially the minor blues scale which gets boring very quickly). You need to listen to what you play as you play it, think of those fragments as language: words, sentences, questions, answers. Also explore the tone and sound effects you can get from your instrument: shouting, whispering, crying, moaning, and laughing – one long soulful bending note can take up several bars of a blues solo.
Listen to, learn and transcribe improvised solos – start with simple ones that aren’t as well challenging – and don’t just stick to saxophone players – listen to blues and jazz singers – try to phrase the way they do.
To play blues properly, it helps to experience the blues. This can’t be taught and it’s not even something you can or would normally choose to experience. The next best thing is to listen to a lot of blues and rhythm & blues. The saxophone does not feature in early (country) blues, which is predominantly a guitar and vocal style, but became very important in later urban developments: R & B, jump blues, jumps jive etc.
As with blues guitar styles, it’s useful to think “vocally” on the saxophone, so it’s very useful to master a wide range of expression, especially the note bending, “growling” and other effects.
You can find a lot of useful blues licks, riffs, phrases and chords on the jazz part of this website (see below), but I’ll be adding some specifically for the saxophone very soon. It is useful to learn the pentatonic and blues scales, both major and minor, but remember these are just a means towards an end – it’s not good to use theme as too much in their scale form: it’s best to use them as a reference for inventing melodic fragments, riffs and licks from which to build a focused, articulate and truly emotional blues solo.
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