Share a Story on what shaped your playing

[saxboy]

We all have teachers and great players that have shaped our playing, inspired, and influenced our musical direction.

I started writing them down and posting them as Pearls Of Wisdom on my website. You can hit the link and see what I'm talking about by example.

www.gregvail.com/sys-tmpl/pearlsofwisdom/

Some of you guys have stories about hanging with a legend or seeing someone play that altered reality from that point on.

I would love to read and learn from some of these personal experiences.

Please Share...

SAXBOY
www.gregvail.com

[sax_appeal]

My playing was shaped mainly by the band I'm in- The TTG Redbacks. As the band approaches gigs like the National Band Championships and the Sensational Adelaide International Police Tattoo, my playing seems to improve along with the band. A friend of mine in the Band of the South Australian Police, who is brilliant, has also influenced my playing. My teachers too, I guess

[sessionsax]

Probably the single most influential people in my life was my first band director in high school and my sax instructor at belmont university back in the 90s. They were influential for totally opposite reasons.

My first high school band director was an ex-member of the airmen of note. He was the first person that I ever met that could improvise. I followed his lead, and we would have jam sessions -- just me and him -- after school. He was a great trumpet player and he taught me to learn to express myself through my instrument and he really helped point me in the right direction for getting my improv happening. If I had not met him, I would have probably been a "by the note" player and would have never ended up doing what I am doing.

The second most influential person was Jeff Kirk -- my sax instructor at belmont. Jeff was a former lead alto player with Maynard Fergusons band back in the late 70s -- sometime after the Hollywood album and was a Phil Woods fanatic. His technical command and improvisational abilitys were awe inspiring. His command of the bebop language was just unbelievable. I was so intimidated by him in college, that I stayed in a shell for the 3 years I studied under him.

I came from a small town, and in that setting, I was "the sax player". I was considered the best and thought that I was the best. I had the ego to go with it.

Jeffs contribution to me was showing what good really is. It is a lesson that I have learned over and over every time I seem to get a chip on my shoulder.

As a matter of fact, I quit playing altogether for about 4 years right after college -- I was just defeated emotionally.

I finally came to the realization that I would never be a great be-bop player and it wasn't where my heart was. If I hadn't met Jeff, I never would have found and been happy focusing on the styles that really matter to me.

I had to face the fact that I was an R&B guy and that it is the style of music that connects with my soul. I have never really enjoyed listening to much "true" jazz and bebop (but I do respect it).

I do very well in the commercial genre, and I will never beat a player that lives and breathes jazz and bebop at his game.

I do have a degree of pride when I realize that I could toast Jeff on a blues and R&B gig though :wink:

[Frank D]

Sessionsax - sounds like you had the good fortune to be in contact with a couple of real players early on.

In my family, playing music was a normal thing to do. I had uncles and cousins on both sides of the family who had day jobs and played gigs on weekends. My dad played drums. Our neighbor was an accountant and trumpet player who got calls for musicals and other shows that came through town. The biggest influence there was an uncle who played sax in the Army band where he was buddies with Al Hirt.

Given that background, my parents were always buying albums (yes, I'm that old) especially Stan Getz. I was about 10 when the whole Girl From Ipanema/bossa nova craze hit, and Stan was touring behind it. My parents took me to see him play at a local college, and it made a big impression on me. I can still remember that the band was Gary Burton, Steve Swallow and Roy Haynes. After that it was gung ho into clarinet, and later sax lessons.

I stopped formal studies in high school (much to my regret), but by that time was playing wedding gigs on a weekly basis. I continued to buy records and go to concerts whenever possible, and am basically self-taught from that point on. Big influences were mostly the soul-jazz guys at that time, Wilton Felder of the Crusaders, and Stanley Turrentine. I also listened to guys on other instruments, Freddie Hubbard comes to mind.

[jvsax]

I took lessons from Jerry Bergonzi for a couple of years, and I have to recommend it for anyone who wants to learn jazz from an incredible musician and teacher. There were so many "pearls of wisdom" that he provided!

[Keith Ridenhour]

I heard a guy playing tenor in an RnB band a few years ago and bugged him after the gig for a lesson. The reason I approached him was that his time and swing stuck out like a sore thumb from anybody else in the band. It turned out that he had been a music director for a pit band in a european casino for years and really had the working pro side of music down. We spent the hour with him basically telling me to play less with alot more emphasis. He actually liked my tone better than his for RnB (at the time I had a Martin Comimttee and a Vandoran Java T75) but his tiime and lines that were so in the pocket marked him as a world class player. So, condensed that would be less notes more feeling. Time , Time, Time. Probably the major influence of why I play music at all is the lady that babysat me from 0 until 7 years old who was playing organ in church in her 80s. As I started on trpt and took lessons (before the switch to sax in college) she would say over and over again , "Don't ever leave your music". I think about that when I'm tired, achy and playing set 3 at midnight in a crappy bar making 60 bucks. That passion for music has influened the rest of my life greatly. Don't ever leave your music.

[rcwjd]

I'm not a working sax pro,, but have enjoyed hearing what has shaped some of the players whose names I see frequently in the postings. My own lifelong love of jazz and big band really got firmly rooted in having the good fortune to have a super band director in the sixties. I went to a very small and remote high school in a farming and ranching community in the Oklahoma Panhandle near the Texas border. This director (who had played with Stan Kenton) took a bunch of goat ropers and clod hoppers and had us playing Basie, Goodman, and others in a tight little big band complete with a killer vocalist. We were good enough to get hired by a college near us to be the pit band for its beauty pageant (we outplayed its own college band) and regularly won competitions all over the state. The director arranged for us to attend a clinic taught by Doc Severinson, Tommy Newsome, and others (after a several hour drive to a slightly larger school) and I still remember the awesome sound of those "Tonight Show" regulars in the concert they put on. It was living in that community with parents who thought it was important for their kids to get a well rounded education, including music, and a willingness to spend few cents more for the best teachers they could recruit, that made the difference. Those parents and teachers deserve a special spot in heaven for their efforts. Quite a contrast to today's general public education scene.

[saxgirl9]

My greatest teacher - the one that shaped my playing the most was this guy named Greg. Have you heard of him?

Hahaha

[tomsch]

One thing I've learned is that there is no replacement for gigging and putting time in with live bands. Practicing at home is required to get your chops together but when you step on stage many things change. Being able to adjust to different players, pick out tunes by ear, and adjusting to new musical styles is important. The primary band I play with is R&B based but do sub work for other bands in the area. The ability to sub on a gig with no rehearsal, and sound good, can be a challenge and requires the ability to think in your feet.

[vonbraig]

Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner and Paul DeMarinis at Webster University are the reasons I'm still trying to do this.

[groove66]

I started playing the sax thanks to an italian sax player who was busking his way around the world with just a small back pack and his soprano. He had already busked his way around Europe and then he moved on to South America all the way to my hometown in the south of Argentina.
His name was Bianco and I saw him the first time playing his soprano on a corner around the center of town. I was a young teenager who played a little guitar. I didn't know much about saxophones but I was really impressed by the beautiful sound coming out of that horn. He could really play! I remember he stayed in my town around 3 weeks, I befriended him and I would stand right next to him everyday while he played on the street and made some cash to pay his way to his next destination. I thought he was so cool. Right there I knew I wanted to play the sax. After he left I convinced my mother to buy me a cheap alto sax and she hesitantly did so thinking this would be another one of those things I would start and just drop after a few months. That was 20 years ago and playing the saxophone has been the love of my life ever since. I never saw Bianco again. I'm sure he doesn't know it, but he changed my life forever. Thanks Bianco.

[saxgirl9]

I recently started working for the guy that really made me love music and take it seriously. It is pretty fun hanging out and talking with him about when I was a kid and just starting out. He thought I lived in the band room!

I think it's really important to hang around and be with the people that have helped to shape who you are so they know the importance they played in our careers.

[Ken]

Greg, I just read one of your articles about Eddie Daniels. Great stuff! I'll have to check some more on that page.

Here's my rant.

The person who shaped my playing the most was my sax teacher. I was 24 when I started and only went to him on prompting from my dad's band mates who said "Don't be lug musicians like us, get a teacher" and they recommended this guy. I was only intending it to be a casual thing, but in no time at all he had me hooked. He would tell me stories about his playing experiences. Here are some:

He played a studio session with the Ellington band and there was this trumpet player there who kept banging his head against the wall, totally loony. He asked the others "What's up with this guy". They told him that as long as the guy could play Ellington would be loyal and keep him in his band. He said his musical brain was spot on.

He once played with Tommy Dorsey's brother, and after the gig they went out to listen to some music and ended up at a jam session. There was a sax player who got up, a Coltrane clone, and started wailing away. Dorsey said "Yeah man, go ahead, say it all in one bar"

He once led a big band recording session and one of the trumpets was Maynard Ferguson. He said he put him on 5th trumpet to save his chops so he could wail away on his solos.

He was a fan of Stan Getz. He said whenever they met, no matter how much time had passed, Stan would always greet him with a warm welcome.

He once met Buddy DeFranco and tried to play his mouthpiece. Even though he himself used a wide open mpc, he said it was so wide he couldn't even get a sound out of it.

He once was talking with another teacher about a student and the other guy was telling him "This guy is grade 7 e.t.c" He said "Yes, but what's he like as a musician?"

What I liked about the guy, was his approach to teaching music was based on his own practical experience, and not out of some text book. I once showed him the "Patterns for Jazz" book I bought, and he looked at it pretty ambivalently and said "Well, it's ok as a technical exercise". The way he believed in teaching musicianship at least for me was by first transcribing chords until I was able get them right, then do arranging. He gave me practical experience as well by making me record these arrangements with a big band. He also saw that I was not really cut out to be a pro soloist and said "You'd be better off working towards being a pit musician" That was many years ago, and he was right!