All right, so when we're having a duet between saxophone and piano It's a really beautiful place to play with these two instruments. When you're the saxophone player, one thing to be aware of a saxophone can be quite loud. And when you're just getting started playing it quietly can be one of the bigger challenges. So I actually really liked playing duets with piano players because it lets me practice keeping a really full sound but not blowing as loud as I possibly can. The other thing to think about when you're starting out is that the saxophone and the piano are not in the same key. So I'm playing a tenor saxophone.

So when we're playing in the key of G on the piano, which is what we're playing, it's the key of A on the saxophone. So our notes are not going to be the same. And one of the easiest ways to make this work and keep it simple, is if I think of my first note is being a is the number one and Kenny's first note is g is the number one and then when I say play the first note of the scale, we're both we can be talking about the same thing at the same time. Like our ones are starting in different places, but they sound The same, um, one. Yeah. What are some things that you like to think about when you're playing the saxophone?

Well, I love the saxophone a lot of people do. So, it's a great instrument to, to be to, to express yourself with and it's a louder instrument than the other, the softer woodwind family, the flute and the clarinet. So as a piano player, I'm thinking a bit stronger I'm going to make sure that I'm sounding core to the person so they feel like they've got a nice bass sound to to backdrop background to improvise around. So in that one, I was really just playing those chords, and enjoying listening to the sound of the tog like moving through the notes and exploring the notes of the scale that go with that chord. You know, G scale goes with G chord, so it's not too hard and then in the middle, I threw in a little running feature. Because I know a lot of my beginner students, they don't always play with all their hands or play a chord with just one hand, you should figure music out how it makes sense to you.

So if you know if I show a student sometimes with one hand, well, I've had a lot of beginner students that come up and say, I can do that. And they do it with one finger because that's where their brains at. So that's, that's something you should allow yourself to do. However you explore it, though, make sure that you're also listening and looking as much as possible as you can act at the people you're playing with. Because when you start to play with a duel, you know, eye contact is really important so that you know when we're beginning together and and knowing when we're going to end together so using our our heads to nod the ending or not the beginning. This is a great way to stay on the same track.

Yeah. And in terms of playing together, we're keeping this as simple as possible. We're just staying on one chord and we're Not really having any rhythm yet, we're allowing it to be a very free flowing conversation, something called a soundscape is what we're basically doing, which is like painting a picture. But with sound, we're just keeping it. It's almost like imagining that you can color outside the lines and kind of it's a little more of an abstract kind of picture that we're painting. And when you're just starting out, I really want to encourage you to just go for it and try it and have the confidence to make sound.

So you can think about how little little kids learn to talk. They sort of start by just making the hear adults talking. And then they go with them because there the instinct to communicate is there even though the languages are really that developed. So our brains have what I call a copycat brain as an inner teacher when we're small. everyone learns through mimicry or copycat, so and still even as you grow up to be an adult, that's still a very strong thing that people will do is just copy what the other see when they see others. people doing.

So one of the things that I think about with the saxophone and any of the wind instruments as a piano player is that most of them have a smaller range of notes to choose from. So sometimes I try to expand what I'm doing. Even in a simple way, as a beginner, you know, if I know that the G chord has been, well, you'll notice that when we did the track, sometimes I jumped up here and at the end, I put that one there and I could just play that one g down there by itself and a D up here. And there's your keyboard as well. So that's what we call opening up the voicing. And that way I'm playing on the outside ranges of it, and then his notes are all in the middle.

So it provides what we call a contrast, which is a really beautiful thing to do in music.