Chords for Easy On Me | Adele Saxophone Warm Up

G'day, it's Nigel here from Sax School.
Today I want to show you a really cool idea for a warm-up,
because the thing is, warm-ups don't need to be boring, you can actually make them fun.
So today
what I'm doing is I've actually taken the opening riff from the new Adele tune Easy On Me,
and I've turned it into a fun warm-up that you can do at whatever level.
Now in today's video I'm
going to demonstrate on the alto and the tenor saxophone.
I'm also going to walk you through
six different variations of this warm-up that you can use right away.
Now there's a backing track
and a pdf for this lesson.
You can get it, it's absolutely free, and it's available along with
all of our other free resources inside our Sax School locker.
There's a link down below where
you can go and get it, or you can find it on the courses page of saxschoolonline.com. The locker
is absolutely free, it's where we keep all of our stuff.
You just need to give us your email
address so that we can send you the details on how to log in.
Now you might be thinking to yourself,
why am I even bothering with a warm-up?
Why do we do warm-ups?
But the thing is,
warm-ups are super important.
It's something we talk about a lot with our thousands of students
inside Sax School, and it's probably also one of the reasons why so many of those students
make such amazing progress.
A warm-up really is important.
It gets us all set up for playing,
but we need to make it fun so that we actually do it more often.
Now if you need some more advice
on how you can make better use of your practice time, then go check out the recent video that I
did with the four essential practice elements that you need to incorporate in every practice
routine.
I'll put a link for that up here.
To be honest with you, I see so many players lose their
way with a really poor practice routine, so it's definitely something to check out.
Okay, let's get
stuck in with this warm-up.
So I'll start off by showing you the notes on the alto saxophone.
This
is dead easy because we're actually going to use a single scale.
So I'm going to show you six
different variations of the warm-up, but they all use the one scale.
So for the alto saxophone,
we're using the D major scale.
So that's all these notes from D, E, F sharp, so middle finger for F
sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, so that's no fingers, and then up to D again.
_ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] And for the tenor saxophone,
we're using the G major scale.
So that's all these notes from G, A, B, C, D, I've got my octave key on
now, E, F sharp, so middle finger again, and then high G. _ _
[E] _ [F] _ _ _ So here's how the warm-up works.
What we're
going to do is play through each of the six variations just a single time through.
Well, we
might do the last one through twice, and what I really want to encourage you to do here is just
to try all of these warm-ups, but then, once you've learned how they actually go, go download the
resources and then use each of these warm-ups individually.
So you spend a session just working
on one of the six, or maybe two of them, but I want you to play in your practice over each of
these six warm-ups over and over and over, checking with your tuner if you need to, to make sure your
fingers are close to the keys, to make sure you're in tune, and to really visualize that perfect sound
that you're aiming for, so we can get the biggest, fullest [Db] sound we can.
Remember, your warm-up is
your time to get your tone going, sort of meditate on the sound that you want to get, and really
concentrate on getting the biggest, best sound that you can.
So grab your saxophone, your alto,
your tenor, soprano, or your bari sax, and let's play through these warm-ups.
We're going to go
through them one at a time, starting with this first one.
Here we go.
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _
[Dm] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Okay, lovely.
[C] For our second warm-up,
we're going to move [D] in two-count notes, or minims, or half notes, okay?
So [F] just keep your fingers [A] close
to the keys, keep those phrases joined together [Bb] in pairs.
Here we go.
_ _ [F] _ _ _ _
[Dm] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ [Am] _ _
[F] _ _ _ _ Very lovely.
[C] Our third warm-up,
we're going to move [D] in one-beat notes, or quarter notes, or crotches, and I want you to think [F] about
joining [Am] every phrase where we go up and down in [Bb] one breath.
Big, long phrases.
[C] Here we go.
_ [F] _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ [F] For warm-up number four, we're [C] going to use five-note groupings [D] from the scale, and we're going to move
in eighth notes, or quavers, [F] with a minim or [A] a two-count note at the end.
Join each group of
five notes [Bb] together in a big, long slur.
Here we go.
_ [F] _ _ [C] _ _
[Dm] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ [F] Okay, for number [C] five, we're going to look at a whole
[D] octave scale in quavers, or eighth notes.
Slur it all [F] the way up, and [Am] then back down, and if you want
an extra [F] workout, swell up, [C] volume, and then back down as you go down again.
[F] _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ [F] We're going to step it up
a notch [C] with number six, and this time we're moving in [D] thirds.
So the first note, third note, second, fourth,
third, and [F] fifth note.
We're going to [A] do this whole pattern twice.
So think about long [Bb] phrases all the way
up, and all the way down.
Here we go.
[F] _ _ _ _
[Dm] _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ [Am] _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _
Hey, how awesome was that?
Now they got a bit harder toward the
end there, and that last one's a bit of a finger buster, but it's great now to go and work on each
of these individually.
And if you want to go an extra step further with this, then there is actually
an advanced version of this lesson inside sax school, where we take the same groove, but we do a
warm-up using some improvising, and I'll show you how to do that very easily with some simple note
choices and a few simple rhythms.
It's a really great exercise.
It gets your tone and everything
going, but also gets your brain going, so you can start to get those creative juices flowing, and it's
a brilliant way to prepare yourself for improvising, whether you're just starting with improvising, or
whether you're even a more advanced player, just to sort of open up some options.
So you can get access
to that with our 14-day trial for sax school.
I'll put a link down below, and the 14-day trial is a
brilliant way to check out all the amazing resources that we've got inside sax school, this warm-up,
but also there's over a thousand other lessons, plus you get access to our tutors for questions,
you can join our masterclasses, get involved with our community, our monthly challenges, and so much
more.
So go check that out, 14-day trial, with the link down below.
Hey, I hope you enjoyed that warm-up.
Don't forget to leave me a comment, let me know what you think, and I really hope you'll take
advantage of using this warm-up and make it part of your practice routine.
Don't forget, if you're
new here, click subscribe so you don't miss out the future videos that we're doing, and go and explore
the other content that's on my channel here too.
There's so much stuff to help you really push your
playing ahead.
Whatever you do though, keep practicing hard, [C] and I'll catch you next [D] time.
Hey, by the way, today I was using the John [F] Paul AS400 Alto.
I'm [Am] just testing this at the moment
in sax school.
[Bb] It sounds pretty good.
What do you think?
Let me know in a comment [C] down below.