Here’s a few pieces we recorded on Saturday with Brian playing Soprano & Tenor sax, and me on WX5 as Clarinet and Flugel Horn.
“Nobody Does it Better” from James Bond – The Spy Who Loved Me. Brian plays Soprano Sax and I’m playing WX5 as Clarinet.
“Diamonds are Forever” from the James Bond movie of the same name. Brian plays Soprano Sax while i play Flugel Horn on the Wx5.
“Blue and Sweatty” a blues improvisation with Brian on Tenor and me on the WX5 Clarinet.
The backing tracks for the Bond tracks are great to play along to. But the raw and real feeling of that last blues piece, with no backing track – I really enjoy that.
Here’s a piece Brian and I did a couple of weeks ago as part of my lesson.
It’s “C Jam Blues” by Duke Ellington.
The Drums, Bass and Piano are on a backing track.
I’m playing the brass quartet at the start, plus the clarinet, trombone and trumpet, all on the WX5.
Brian’s playing guitar.
This is one of the reasons the WX5 is so much fun to play – there are so many different instruments available. the challenging part is that when you play a “trumpet” it’s important to think like a trumpet. When you play like a trombone, imagine you’re playing a trombone, and how you’d like it to sound. I have to adjust my playing technique depending on the type of instrument I’m trying to mimic, otherwise it doesnt sound convincing.
With this piece, although we in front of us the chord progression that Ellington used, we improvised all of what we played.
One thing Brian has taught me about improvisation is that it’s not about trying to play every riff and lick in your repertoire. It’s all about fitting in with your fellow players, and with the ideas that the composer originally had.
One of the highlights of my week is my jazz music lessons with a fantastic musician named Brian Hayes.
Each week I bring my WX5 and he teaches me as he plays along on Guitar, Sax, Flute or Clarinet. I find it really enjoyable, and am continually amazed at his wonderful musicianship.
Late last year, Brian suggested we record our session. He played some tunes on his guitar, and got me to improvise on the WX5, playing whatever I wanted. I made lots of mistakes, but we decided to record it “as is”, and these songs are the result. We called the collection “Warts and All”.
Thinking of Lizzie
Elephant Blues
Cheeky Liquorice
Black Brassy Blues
Frightfully Flugel
Laid Back Fanfare
Morning Reed
Not Quite Danny
Saxsquito
Sunset Blue
For each song, I chose a different voice on the VL-70m synthesizer – the challenge being to select the most appropriate voice, and to play it in such a way that my style suites it. I find brass, clarinet and flute voices fairly easy. Sax voices are difficult to do well.
If you can look beyond my mistakes in these songs, I hope you can get an idea of how much fun this is!
I recently bought a book of Jazz Duets by Richard Jasinski.
A lot of them are pretty simple, but I really liked this piece:
The book doesn’t contain any backing track music, so I entered the chords into “Band in a Box”, and created my own backing track thru my secondary Yahama MU50R synthesizer.
The solo instrument is a “Pan Picolo” (number 57) voice from my VL70M synth that I played on my beloved Wx5.
I had a lot of fun playing it, and hope you like it 🙂
I wanted to share this with you, not because I think I’m great, but because I had so much fun making it.
Friends and family will know I’ve bought myself a Yamaha WX5 Wind Midi Controller for my 44th birthday. It looks like a clarinet, but it is more like a synthesizer keyboard that you play like a wind instrument. You can see a picture of it here.
I thought you might like an idea of what it sounds like, so I’ve uploaded some of my own recordings to give you an idea.
Some of them I just played from memory by ear because they’re tunes I love (Like the Dark Isle, The Parting Glass, and Basin Street Blues). Some of them are from a “Play along” music book I recently bought which has the backing tracks that you can play along to. For one of them (Beauty and the Beast) I took a midi of the the tune, removed the melody line, and dubbed my own melody line over the top. (I’ll promise to explain how to do this in my technical blog soon).
“Beauty and the Beast” is a very pretty melody. If you only listen to one of these tunes, I hope you listen to this one.
Anyway – here they are – the sounds of me having fun.
