Category: saxophone

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Candy Dulfer – Nothing Compares 2 U

More Prince. More Candy. Same CD box set as the previous two transcriptions.

This is such a beautiful song! Most people associate it with the 1990 Sinead O’Connor recording (and music video), but of course Prince wrote it. He originally recorded it with ‘The Family’ in 1985. It was hard to find that recording, and not worth the effort (for me), although some people swear that the original is the best recording.

Rumor has it that Prince did a studio recording of his own that was never released. Maybe it will see the light of day eventually? Until then, I’m only aware of his two live recordings – this one, and the more famous one that he recorded with NPG. I’ll try to work up that solo too, but my tenor high chops may not be up for it.

Candy really kills it on this solo. The third bar of the solo is pure genius the way she builds such connects such complex (and yet simple) ideas so fluidly – and nails it! I probably spent about an hour shedding that bar alone and still can’t play it as smoothly as she did.

And just try to play that high part at the end in one breath like she does. I like to think I get some pretty big air (I play a LOT of bari), and I couldn’t make it through both measures in one breath. But she pulls it off somehow!

The written transcription covers most of the song until the time stops. I’m only uploading the main solo to YouTube so I don’t run afoul of the copyright filters.

Slow songs are always the hardest to notate and read, so I really suggest listening closely to the recording as you’re trying to learn it. That’s always the best way anyway, but on ballads it’s almost impossible to do any other way.

Candy Dulfer - Nothing Compares 2 U

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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Candy Dulfer – Girls and Boys

More Prince. I just can’t get enough! Same CD as the previous transcription, but this time it’s Candy Dulfer.

Not to be too controversial, but when I first became aware of Candy, I didn’t take her seriously enough. I thought that she was just another Sanborn clone, and the only reason she got any recognition (let alone a record deal) was because of her supermodel looks.

Years later (and hopefully wiser), I’m much more hip to what she brings to the table. Are there guys who can play better than her? Probably, but that’s always the case with pretty anyone. Chris Potter can play rings around Maceo, but Prince is going to choose Maceo every time for his band.

If it were all about technical ability, there would be only one sax player in the world who everyone would want for their gig.

Hopefully you can hear from this track just how funky she can be. It’s also a great contrast with the previous Maceo solo. Same band, same night, two different soloists with pretty different approaches, but both are killing it in their own way!

Candy Dulfer - Girls and Boys

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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Maceo Parker – We Do This

Since we lost Prince, I haven’t listened to anything else. It’s been very bittersweet to re-discover corners of his vast catalog that I had forgotten about!

This week has been all about the three-CD set “One Night Alone”. It features both Maceo Parker and Candy Dulfer prominently, so expect a bunch of solos from this set over the next month.

The thing I love about this set is how it shows Prince’s versatility. You don’t hear any synth-pop dance tracks. If you dropped the needle in random places, you’d might think it was a live P-Funk show. In fact, George Clinton makes an appearance on this track – re-uniting with his old sideman Maceo.

The solo is meat and potatoes Maceo – super funky and in the pocket over a slow, heavy groove. I’d love to find a video of this concert!

Maceo Parker - We Do This

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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Brian Gallagher – Sexy MF

I can’t believe that we lost Prince this week. I’m still in shock over it. So I process the loss of this artist like I always do: by immersing myself in their music. I could write for pages about what his music meant to me, but I’ll save that for another time.

I wanted to find a suitable sax solo from his catalog for the blog. Prince worked with many great horn players over the years (Maceo, Candy Dulfer, the Hornheads), but he doesn’t often feature saxophone solos on his studio recordings.

I was familiar with the tenor solo on Sexy MF, but I had always assumed that it was Kenni Holman (from the Hornheads) playing it. But when I did my research, I found out that it was Brian Gallagher, who also passed away very recently at far too young of an age.

The track (and solo) are very funky, with a hard driving rhythm. When Doctorfunk was in the studio working on our album “Second Opinion“, we were having a hard time getting the track for my song “Better Get Hip” to come together. Jeff Tamalier, our producer, told the guys to think of the groove from Sexy MF. They didn’t even have to listen to it. Everyone knew exactly the type of feel and energy this track captured. I’m sure that you can hear the influence if you listen back to the track. I hope we did it justice!

Because Prince was so protective of his copyright (and because the lyrics are so explicit), I kept the volume on the original track very low, just loud enough to hear the solo in context. There is a radio-friendly edit of the track, but it doesn’t include the sax solo. I also age-restricted the video on YouTube just to be safe.

Brian Gallagher - Sexy MF

 

  • Artist: Brian Gallagher
  • Album: Prince – Prince_logo.svg_ (1992)
  • Track: Sexy MF (Explicit Lyrics)
  • Instrument: Tenor Sax

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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David Sanborn – Same Girl

Continuing through the Close-Up album, this is track #5 Same Girl. This is a short track – a beautiful ballad with no improvisation. It’s very straightforward to play, just a little tricky to follow since the time is loose.

For some reason, every time I hear this song I’m reminded of the theme song from the old 70’s Incredible Hulk show with Bill Bixby. As far as I can tell, there’s no relation between the two, but here’s a link so you can have a listen for yourself and be the judge.

This is the last of the ‘legacy’ transcriptions I did of this album in high school, so the rest of the transcriptions will be all new!

I’ll get to them as soon as I can. It’s been hard finding the time to transcribe and post regularly over the past month or so, but having this blog helps keep me motivated to practice even when I’m busy.

David Sanborn - Same Girl

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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David Sanborn – Goodbye

Continuing through the Close-Up album, this is track #4 Goodbye.

This fits nicely with the rest of the album – a down tempo track with another soaring melody line. The thing I like the most about this track is how Sanborn’s vibrato is perfectly in time and is so pronounced on the held notes during the ‘A’ section. It’s something that you don’t hear done very much, and it was very tough for me to match exactly.

The ‘B’ section is equally powerful – use lots of air! I wasn’t ready and I couldn’t make it through the first note. This section is a real workout!

Like the other tracks on the album, there’s a brief solo section, then a return to the melody and some more soloing on the ride out. Lots of altissimo, including a high D. I feel like it’s getting a little better, but I still need to work out some short fingerings that will make the high B-A-G-A run.

This is a continuation in my series of resurrected high school transcriptions. I found some glaring errors so I spent about 15 mintues fixing things up, but there are still big gaps (especially at the end). Hey, at least it’s free, right?!

David Sanborn - Goodbye

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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David Sanborn – J.T.

Continuing through the Close-Up album, this is track #2: JT.

This is probably one of the hardest tracks on the album for me to play. There’s a ton of tricky altissimo passages that are right in the break between F-A (the hardest range for me to navigate fluidly).

This month has been a busy one for me, making it hard for me to hit my self-defined goal of posting one transcription per week. I did these Sanborn transcriptions back in High School (with pencil and paper!) Given my limited time, I quickly keyed them in to Finale, played through once or twice to fix the most egregious errors and then rolled tape.

The quality of the transcriptions that I did back then doesn’t meet my current bar for quality. I neglected to put in chord changes, I didn’t transcribe all the way to the end of the fade (I think I stopped when I got to the end of the page!), and there are occasionally multiple parts being played simultaneously that I didn’t capture. Not to mention little inaccuracies with notes and rhythms that I didn’t catch until playing them a few times.

I might need to do a ‘Take 2’ pass of these when I get more time. I could only find my written transcriptions for the first half of the album, so the second half will have to all be done from scratch. Hopefully you will notice an improvement in quality as I go!

David Sanborn - JT

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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David Sanborn – Lesley Ann

Continuing through the Close-Up album, this is track #3 Lesley Ann. A really beautiful track with a soaring melody. There’s not a lot of soloing to this one, just melody, but it’s one of my favorite tracks from the album.

A brief editorial note – You may catch a small overdub in the video. As much as I try to get everything in one take, I don’t always have the time for that. Sometimes I’ll record longer or more difficult pieces in sections and choose the best takes for each section. In this case, there were no breaks in the track, and I blew one altissimo passage late in the track. So I grabbed the audio from another take to patch it up. But there are a few bars where the audio and video don’t line up well 🙂

David Sanborn - Lesley Ann

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

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David Sanborn – Slam

A few weeks ago, I was reading a discussion on Facebook where someone asked what the best David Sanborn album was. They weren’t looking for the best solo, the best track, or an album that contained a few great tracks and a few filler ones. They wanted to know what people thought the best overall end-to-end album was. And the overwhelming majority said ‘Close Up’. I couldn’t agree more!

The production values sound a little dated now, but the playing is amazing. Whenever Marcus Miller is involved, you know it’s going to be good.

When I was in high school, I transcribed most of this album, and it’s how I learned altissimo on the alto. Since reading that discussion thread, I’ve gone back through my archives and dug up those old transcriptions. They needed a little work to get up to snuff (and so do my altissimo chops!)

Slam is the first cut of the album. The melody is simple yet powerful. You need a lot of air to deliver it with conviction the way Sanborn does. This track has some really crazy high parts that I’m not quite solid on, but I did my best.

Hopefully by the time I get around to posting all the tracks from this album, I’ll have a much better handle on the upper register of my alto with this new mouthpiece!

David Sanborn - Slam

 

Enjoy!

@SdartSax

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Maceo Parker – Hamp’s Boogie Woogie

I don’t think I’ve posted anything from the Mo’ Roots album. I look at this as a transitional album for Maceo, where he was really starting to establish himself as a solo artist. More importantly, it’s pretty much a straight ahead jazz album. I feel as though he was trying to expand people’s thinking about what kind of music he was capable of.

This is a very straight forward tune – a hard-swinging version of the classic Lionel Hampton big band song from the forties. Maceo himself was still a toddler when this song was popular, but he does a great rendition here.

Maceo Parker - Hamp's Boogie Woogie

 

Enjoy!

@SdartSax