Hi again, jodaboda,

Band in a Box has a rather excellent feature that should really help the aspiring saxophonist along these lines. Or any other instrumentalist who is looking to learn what notes to play over a given chord, for that matter.

Take a look in the Help section of BiaB, selsct the "Topic Search" and type "Generate Scales" without the quotes into the Search slot at the top left.

This command is found under the Soloist menu, "Generate and play a scale..." -- the second command down from the top of the Soloist menu.

Then doubleclick on Generate Scales in the LH results pane and see how to invoke the Scale Wizard.

Quote:


This Scale Wizard allows you to easily generate scales, which appear as notation on the Soloist track. Options include Instrument Range, Patch Selection, Jazzy Mode (will use Lydian dominant scales for some 7th chords), and Diatonic Mode (keeps scales relative to the song key).

Menu items on the Soloist menu allow you to generate scales for a certain song, or auto-generate them for all loaded songs. View the scales in the notation or the on-screen guitar and piano.

When the Generate Scales menu command is selected it opens the Use Jazz Scales dialog. In this dialog you can set a number of options for the scales that are generated.




The neat thing about this feature is that you can, with one mouseclick, generate notes in scalar fashion that will appear on the Soloist track. The notes chosen will already be the appropriate basic scale and key for each chord in ANY songfile you have.

At first, just practice playing those scales along with BiaB, at perhaps a lowered Tempo. Rinse, repeat, as practice is really only repetition, right?

After a bit, maybe sleep on it overnight, the next session, try Muting the BiaB soloist so you don't also hear the scales as the song plays, and use your own instrument to read the scales and play them as they go by. Always try to play everything MUSICALLY, don't let the practice turn into just a bad sounding thang with scales going up and down. For example, apply your own dynamics at the same time, playing some of the bars pianissimo - as soft as you can - others you might play a bit louder, some you might build to a Crescendo, etc. as you practice the scales over the chords for each particular song.

This is a very cool feature and a real timesaver over the old method that I had to do way back in music school when the only tools we had were pencils and staff paper and that gray stuff between the ears.

After becoming familiar enough with each scale for each chord in whatever songfile, try playing them using *every other note* in the scale generated, like the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc. odd numbered notes in the scale, which, in most cases, would be the arpeggio for the scale. At any rate, any of the notes generated for the chord will always be "right" notes.

Take notice of any accidentals for the scales for each chord as well. Try to figure out which Key that invokes, for it is often the case in jazz songs that the song itself goes through Transpositions internally, even though the Main Key Sig is written. Unlike Classical Music, we don't write a new key signature for every time that happens. Which is a good thing IMO. Instead, we learn to recognize those transitions. Most of them will be ii-V7-I situations that serve to modulate to a new key temporarily inside the song, but will soon return the thing back to the original key.

And never forget the most important part of practicing -- which is tightly associated with the unofficial Band in a Box motto.

Don't "drill".

Instead, always strive to "Have Fun" -- the fastest way to get "there".

HAVE FUN,

--Mac

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