Welcome back to Get Your Sax Together.
Hope you had a great week, I'm pro saxophonist
Jamie Anderson and on this week's
video I'm gonna teach you how to play
like David Sanborn on David Bowie's
"Young Americans".
"Young Americans" was David Bowie's ninth
studio album, released in 1975, and he
took things in a more soulful and R&B
direction.
The title track "Young Americans" features
alto saxophonist Dave Sanborn wailing
and funking out over the entire track,
virtually from beginning to end, so
there's too much to transcribe in my
usual style with the notes coming up and
all that. However, if you go down into
the description and click the link you can
get a free pdf with the intro and the
bridge all transcribed. They're the two
main bits where Sanborn plays on
his own on Young Americans. And in the
meantime I'm going to teach you
something even better, and that is how
you play exactly like David Sanborn on
Young Americans. Let's do it!
First things first, let's cover the main predominant
scale that Sanborn uses for this tune and
it is, predictably, a pentatonic scale
with the blues variation. Now if you want
to learn a bit more about pentatonic
scales and how to use the blues scale
with it, go to the card linked up
there, which is probably obscuring my
face because I'm this side of the camera.
That will teach you everything you need
to know as an introduction to pentatonics
and what the bluesy variations are. Now
virtually everything Sanborn plays on
Young Americans is within that
pentatonic and blues. The key is concert
C, which is concert A major for alto. For
this video I'm just going to talk Alto
pitch from now on. So most of it is
around to the A major pentatonic which
sounds like this...
That is the main scale that is used
throughout the whole thing.
Now sometimes he swaps the major third,
which is a C sharp for a C natural, and it
sounds like this...
If you watch the video that was carded
earlier on pentatonics I explained that
you can interchange the major and minor
third on these kind of funk one chord
things. That is the scale, and that is
something that you need to be very
familiar with across the whole
instrument.
Let's move on to the first
cell you can use to sound like Sanborn
on Young Americans. By the way, what we're
going to do is link up all these
concepts into a whole solo, okay? This is,
I'm going to teach you how to solo
like him and we're going to break it
into little chunks and then you just
weave them together like a jigsaw to
make your solo, because what he does is
quite formulaic. The key for this little
segment is to play two quavers, or two
eighth notes, should we say, for
Americans, and it's going to be A and B,
or E and F sharp, and they come on the
first beat or the third beat.
Super
simple! First one is long, second one is
short. That's very important, the phrasing
is very important.
Okay, so that is cell one.
Moving on to cell two, and that is using
the flattened third and playing this
phrase...
That's C, B, A, F# back to A.
It's a bit faster than that on the actual track
of course.
Now there's a variation that
you can add into this second cell to
play like Sanborn, and that is to add a
high F sharp just before you play the
lick like he does the second time in the
intro for example. It sounds like this...
So, insert the high F sharp and then play
the bluesy lick, or, just play the bluesy
lick. That's the second segment. So we've
got eighth notes on the beat, we've got
the bluesy lick with an optional high
note, and even using those two things you
can sound just like Sanborn on this track.
For example...
Well... maybe not quite, but
we're getting there, let's say!
All right,
moving swiftly on to the third segment, the
third cell, now this is what he uses on
the bridge and he plays it twice in the
bridge. Remember you can go down into the
description and get your PDF which has got
the transcription of the bridge and the
intro. So it sounds like this..
I'm going
to play that nice and slowly for you, but
it's c-sharp and then a very quick B and
A to F sharp, E and then the two quavers,
two eighth notes, I keep saying quavers
but it's mostly people in America who watch
it! The two eighth notes are f-sharp and
A, so...
And again, the eighth notes are long
and short to finish. So that is cell 3,
that's what he uses in the bridge. Now,
interestingly, the bridge in our key, in
alto key, goes to F sharp minor, but he
still uses exactly the same scale
because the A major pentatonic fits on F
sharp minor stuff, as discussed in the
pentatonics video, the "introduction to
pentatonics" video that I carded earlier.
So that is a great lick that you can
throw in.
The fourth segment, or cell, is
actually a rhythm and it's the rhythm he uses throughout the whole thing,
which is...1...da dahh dat. It's a pushed
sixteenth, tied over, and then another
eighth note. So...1...2...ga gaa..dat.
He uses this rhythm throughout the solo,
so that is something that you can throw
in into your solos, and that is the
fourth thing.
Let's have a quick recap of the four
things we're gonna use. That is - eighth
notes on the beat, A and B, and E and
f-sharp, we're gonna use the bluesy...
...phrase with the optional high f-sharp,
and we're going to use the one he uses
in the bridge...[lick].. and finally, the basis of
this whole solo is going to be
the ..dat day dat... rhythm.
Stringing together those
four ideas you should be able to sound a
bit like Sanborn. Now remember you
need a big attack, really hit the notes
hard and that is what you get from
transcribing solos - you learn how to
phrase the same. so I'm going to
attempt to string together those four
concepts and impersonate David Sanborn
on Young Americans. I haven't got a
backing track to play along to
unfortunately. Fingers crossed, here we go...1 2 3 4..
Just for the record I'm
now going to play the introduction
exactly as he plays it and I'm going to
play the bridge exactly as he plays it.
Now remember to go down and get your PDF in the
description and you can get a
transcription of those two bits and I've
written it for alto and tenor sax,
although you can probably take some of
the tenor sax down the octave if it's a
bit high.
Okay here we go, here is the intro and
the bridge played for you.. 3 4 1 2..
And now the bridge exactly as Sanborn
plays it... 2 3 4 1...
Don't forget, halfway through the tune
the key goes up a tone, so whatever
you've learned in the key of A on alto
you're gonna have to learn it in B as
well. I forgot to say that! lol Right, that's
it! Don't forget to go down and get your
PDF in the description, whatever it's
called, the box, and also subscribe to
the channel, ring the bell,
that way you'll be notified when I
upload new videos, new videos even, and go
check out my Instagram feed, and I look
forward to joining you next week for
more wicked and wild sax material - bye!
