Song Surgeon Review Blog

Song Surgeon 3.0 / Slowed Down Saxophone

The video below shows four absolutes giants of the ‘modern’ Jazz scene in full flight. This tune ‘Footprints’ was composed by Wayne Shorter. I like how in some genres we ‘write’ pieces of music and songs, but in Jazz like this we ‘compose’ .

Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stanley Clarke, Omar Hakim – [1991] – LIVE IN MONTREAUX – Footprints

This is pretty ‘hardcore’ Jazz and if you love this type of music, well it is done here at its peak by these four masters. I went thru a huge ‘Stanley Clarke’ phase during my early years but I went of him a bit later as his Tone changed.

I loved his early work such as on the albums ‘Stanley Clarke’, ‘Journey to Love’, and ‘Rocks, Pebbles And Sand’. I guess it was a sort of ‘Jazzy-Rock’. I started playing Electric Bass then too, with ‘Stanley Clarke’, ‘Phil Lynott’, and ‘Jaco Pastorious’ as my influences. Interesting combination lol.

I also got into Herbie Hancock thru his work with Clarke around this time, and I heard a lot of Omar Hakim with different line ups over the years – serious Drummer. Two giants if ever was the case.

I had my ‘Weather Report’ phase too. I particularly like the album ‘Heavy Weather’ with my fave track ‘Teen Town’ on it and of course ‘Birdland’. This is where I first heard Wayne Shorter.

I used to musically ‘steal’ my favorite bits from these players and play them on the guitar where suitable. Yup a good old vinyl record player, slow it down and work it out that way. I had rigged the record player to slow down to various speeds (I was an Electrician) so ‘don’t try this at home’ as they say.

It worked to a degree but the sound quality was very bad plus it changed the key of the piece, so I had to first learn a piece in this lowered, slowed down speed key, and then transpose it back up. It was a nightmare but it worked – I persevered thru the love of music .

Nowadays I still do all this but in a much better way. I discovered ‘Song Surgeon’ a few years back, and it is designed to do exactly this but its all done on your computer. No more scratched vinyls, blown expensive electronics to replace, and terrible humming sounds straining from my record player. Wow, when I think of it!

Here’s an example of what I mean. Here I’m taking a piece of Wayne Shorter’s Sax solo and slowing it down to 40% speed.

Notice how you hear each note clearly and its in the same key – just slowed right down. His speed bursts are brought right down to a learnable level. Hey Song Surgeon where were you when I wanted you .

If you can hear these mega-musicians at this clear and slowed down speed, you can work out a lot easier what they are doing and add their material to your own ‘bank’ of sounds. Change it around a bit to suit the music you are playing over. Change key to suit. Make it your own. Build up an arsenal of soloing pieces this way and you will build your own style. If you can do this for these four virtuosi you can do it for any musician you like right?

Learning soloing thru audio is the way forward on any lead musical instrument (it also works for Rhythm). I suggest that you get a great player and teacher (if necessary), and combine their instruction with your own Song Surgeon 3 ‘sound experiments’. This method suits beginners to advanced players – that’s just one beauty of it. Another? You’re learning directly from the masters themselves. Want another? It suits most all styles of music.

The words ‘effective breakthru’ spring to mind.

You can check it out at my site Song Surgeon Review and pickup a nice little bonus if you invest in it from there (howto easily do this is on that page):