Hi, Welcome to the Week for tenor saxophone lesson for the music coach program. Today we're going to be working on three things, playing our a major scale, an ascending and descending, which means going up the scale and down the scale. We're going to learn the bass notes that make up the harmony underneath the melody we learned from last week for the A section of our song. And you're going to take your first steps into improvising, which is making your own note choices instead of playing them always in the same order. So to begin with, I'm going to talk a little bit about ascending and descending. So when we play the a major scale, so far, we've been starting low and ending high which is ascending.

So A, B, C, sharp D with the octave key e with the octave key F sharp with the octave key, G sharp with the octave key, and a with the octave key to play descending will start on at high a with the octave key, then G sharp with the octave key, F sharp with the octave key e with the octave key D with the octave key, C sharp, the and a. When we play these skills in the practice video, when you get to the top, you're going to repeat the note so the high a is part of the ascending and then it begins on a when it starts to descend. And in the practice video, you're going to be working on playing the scale as half notes and quarter notes. And just a quick review, if you're having trouble remembering what the difference is, whole notes have four beats, half notes have two beats and quarter notes.

Get one beat. And the click track is always clicking one beat at a time. Now the next part of the practice video for this week is going to involve playing the bass notes which make up the harmony underneath our a section. The notes for our instrument our F sharp, which you can play with the octave key. If you feel like you can play the low one on the tenor saxophone the F sharp and the lower octave is just you can play the same thing without the octave key and it sounds like this. Oh, you may have to blow a little harder and open up your throat a little bit to get it to speak.

But you can try that out if you want. And we're going to play a which I recommend playing the low A because we're trying to imitate the bass part of the instrument. Then we're going to play D which is three fingers on the top three fingers in the bottom, like the F sharp, you can use the octave key if you wish or leave it out and trying to The low one, it's a little bit deeper. Oh, that's the lower one. Our last note is going to be E, which again, you can play with the octave key or without. Try it out on your own and see if you can start working on hitting those lower notes.

The last thing we're going to work on is one of my favorite things about music, which is improvising. So, so far we're building in your little toolbox, the ability to play the a major scale in order one way going up one way going down. improvising is the first steps into making different note selections. Like maybe starting on a G sharp and then playing a C sharp and then maybe playing a B. This can at first seem a little hard to understand and your mind is probably going to try and want to get it right. The thing about improvising is there isn't a right and wrong and improvising.

There's your ability to express and at the beginning it may go Slowly and you may feel a little awkward. You probably don't remember learning to speak English, for example, because it was so long ago. But when children are learning to speak, they they're looking for the word they're trying to find the way to express themselves. And music is a language and you're taking the first steps into being able to express yourself. So just as an example, this is improvising with the a major scale. There's again, no right or wrong way to do it.

And I encourage you to try it out. When you're in the practice video. I'm going to be playing a little bit too so we won't always be on the same notes. But that's okay. Just keep going for it. All right, great work, and I'll see you in the practice video.