Blog - Cambridge Saxophone

John Coltrane ’58

1958 was a pivotal year in John Coltrane’s development as one of the most important ‘voices’ in jazz. In 1957 he had undergone what was in his own words a ‘spiritual awakening’ which had led him to getting REALLY serious about his music and saxophone playing.

In March this year, all of Coltrane’s Prestige recordings were collected into a new 8 x LP set – click here to purchase (watch Ashley Kahn’s unboxing video below). The box-set is set out in chronological order from January to December 1958, so you can really hear Coltrane’s development during the year. 1959 was a year when Coltrane made two of the most seminal albums in jazz, his own Giant Steps and Kind of Blue for Miles Davis.

Coltrane ’58 features 37 tracks, all of which have been remastered from the original tapes, such as ‘Lush Life’, ‘Lover Come Back to Me’, ‘Stardust’, ‘Good Bait’, and ‘Little Melonae’, plus first recordings of ‘Nakatini Serenade’, ‘The Believer’, ‘Black Pearls’, ‘Theme for Ernie’, ‘Russian Lullaby’, ‘Sweet Sapphire Blues’ and ‘I Want to Talk About You’.

All of the recordings took place in New Jersey at Rudy Van Gelder’s home studio, created during a series of 3-hour sessions…

Enjoy!

#DFBlues Challenge 2 – Minor Blues

So the second of my #DFBlues Challenge is now upon us!

It’s really simple to do and open for EVERYONE to enter. All you have to do is video yourself playing, (or singing) a Minor Blues, (with my backing track if you can, but hey as long as it’s a Minor Blues, you do what you want!) & then post it to Social Media using the hashtag #DFBlues

I’ll then pick my favourites at the end of May and do a follow up Vlog episode then. Make sure you are subscribing to my YouTube channel!

Minor-Blues-Backing-only Download

12barClock Download

Why Transcribing Is So Important

If you run through this website you would notice that there is one type of course that keeps popping up – transcription.

Transcribing in its strictest sense is the art of musical dictation, that is writing down what is played – but I don’t want you to do that, (at least most of the time.)

Why? Well, music is sound. I’ll say it again MUSIC IS SOUND! So often we spend far too much time using our eyes when we play music rather than our ears. If you truly want to understand how a musician, especially a saxophonist sounds then you need to learn the art of imitation.

But I thought jazz was all about self-expression, being unique. Self-expression is a really important part of jazz, but you’d be very much mistaken if you thought jazz was all about making it up on the spot, etc. Jazz is a language, like French and if you really want to become fluent in a language, to communicate with others in that language, to express yourself in that language then you need to learn how to converse in that language.

There is no better way of understanding how Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Paul Desmond, Miles Davis (not a sax player, but worth transcribing,) John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and many others construct their solos than listening intently and learning how they play by USING YOUR EARS!!

Here’s one of my students Simon playing a transcription project he’s been studying on Sonny Rollins’ version of ‘Three Little Words’ (there’s no course for this, Simon’s been working on this by himself.)

You can listen to our transcription projects below

If you want to start learning how to transcribe, or how you can apply it to your playing, then click here

100 Jazz Standards you HAVE to know

The Great American Song Book has formed the backbone of the jazz repertoire for the past one hundred years.

Whilst many of the songs are approaching the 100th anniversary of their composition, that is no reason not to play close attention to them. Jazz standards have played an important role in the development of jazz during the 20th and into the 21st century. I regularly get asked by students which jazz standards they should know, and whilst this list is not exhaustive, these are the top 100 that you should know, and in the Vlog episode below I explain how you should go about learning them, (tip start with the playlists below…)

Cambridge Saxophone 100 Essential Jazz Standards (click to download)

(If you’re reading this and Spotify isn’t showing correctly, please either view this page in Chrome or click here)

The Best Tenor Sax Mouthpiece In The WORLD

Over on my YouTube & Twitter channels I recently hosted a ‘Mouthpiece Shootout’ competition between eight different tenor saxophone mouthpieces.

The eight mouthpieces (not in order) were

An original Otto Link HR Slant Sig (that I recorded What if Rupert Murdoch liked Jazz, #JazzTrio and Jazz Vespers )
A copy of the above by Ed Pillinger
My current vintage Otto Link Metal Super Tone Master 8*
The SYOS ‘Dan Forshaw’ mouthpiece
The SYOS ‘Tivon Pennicott’ mouthpiece
The SYOS ‘Daro Behrooki’ mouthpiece
‘Standard’ Yanagisawa HR mouthpiece (the stock mouthpiece with the ‘WO’ series tenor saxophones)
D’Addario Select Jazz HR Tenor Mouthpiece

Joshua Redman interviews Sonny Rollins

I’ve always loved finding out what makes great musicians ‘tick’. I often find some of the best interviews can be hosted by fellow musicians as they often have insights into the right questions.

This article that I found years ago on the JazzWise website contains an interview that Joshua Redman did with the legendary Sonny Rollins back in 2005. It was based around Sonny’s release of his Without A Song the 9/11 concert – recorded just days after the tragic events of the 11th September 2001 in New York and Washington. Sonny lived just a few blocks from the World Trade Centre site and has suffered in recent years from lung issues, thought to be from the toxic fumes released in NYC during and after the attacks.

You can read the full interview here, and of course please do watch my #DansVlog episode. I’ve also put together an exclusive Sonny Rollins playlist which compliments the interview.

Some of my favourite quotes from the interview..

When I was a little kid I tried to sing in front of one of these places on 133rd Street, which years ago used to be a real haven for clubs when people used to come uptown. And Buddy Johnson said he really dug my playing-I was about 12 years old; that was a great feeling. As I grew older, all the great people were living uptown: Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman, Erskine Hawkins, Duke Ellington.

JR: One thing that’s completely astounding to me is I’ve heard recordings that you did when you weren’t even 20, and some of your first recordings you did in your early 20s, and you had been playing the saxophone for less than 10 years. You were an absolute prodigy, you were playing on the highest level imaginable. It’s kind of intimidating and almost depressing for a musician like me to hear that. Did it feel like it came naturally?

SR: You’re very, very kind. I just practiced a lot; I practiced a lot because I loved playing. I’d be practicing all day long. My mother used to have to call me to come and eat dinner because I was in there practicing all the time. I guess some of that came through. I was also lucky to be around some of these great people. I was able to record with a genius like Bud Powell when I was very young, and so I always try to get myself up as close as I can to that level.

You can’t spend too much time thinking about what you’re going to play, it comes out so fast.

But right now, Joshua, I still have hopes of improving and sounding better and making a better record. Hope burns eternal. I’m going to put off going into the vaults and trying to find something I’ve done before. This [new CD] was a special occasion and we’ll see what happens in the future.

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